Tucker Carlson slams ‘repulsive’ campaign against country club that barred Jewish toddler |
JTA — Catherine Rampell, the economist and pundit, likes telling the story about how her father once launched a public campaign against a Palm Beach country club when it wouldn’t allow his 4-year-old son to attend a birthday party there because he was Jewish.
Now, Tucker Carlson has turned the anecdote into a sinister and “repulsive” tale of a crusade against folks who just want to hang out together.
Carlson substantially misrepresented Rampell’s anecdote, turning it into what Rampell on Wednesday said was “a coded story in defense of antisemitic and racist country clubs.”
Carlson — the far-right firebrand and harsh critic of Israel who has drawn accusations of antisemitism and sits at the center of the Republican Party’s schism over discrimination against Jews — on Tuesday interviewed his brother Buckley on his streaming show about their shared disaffection for US President Donald Trump over launching the Iran war. Tucker Carlson was until recently close to Trump, and Buckley Carlson was a former Trump speechwriter. (Tucker Carlson’s son is also named Buckley, and until recently worked for US Vice President JD Vance.)
In the podcast, the brothers discussed Trump’s purported distaste for WASPs, shorthand for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who are descended from immigrants who arrived in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Trump’s grandfather was German-born, and his mother was Scottish.
“He’s very fixated on the WASP thing, and does talk about it a lot,” Tucker Carlson said.
“There’s another group in America that’s kind of fixated on the WASPs too,” his brother responded.
“I’ve noticed that,” Tucker said. And his brother continued: “With equal fervor and hostility.”
That led into a discussion of “status anxiety” driving social change, which Tucker Carlson said “everyone lies about.” That’s when Carlson recalled meeting Rampell at Fox........