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Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator and former Fox News host who has spent much of 2026 breaking with President Donald Trump and attacking Israel's influence on American foreign policy, acknowledged Thursday that his years of anti-Muslim rhetoric were wrong.
"Many times, I said on television, 'The problem is Islam. The problem is Muslims. They all want to kill us. They're all crazy. They're all in this lunatic suicide cult created by Muhammad in the 7th century,'" Carlson said in an interview with Sky News. "And I believed that. I was hysterical. I believed that. Now, that's not true. Nothing about that is true, but I believed it."
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Carlson also said his view of Israel had changed. "Israel has completely changed. I feel sorry for Israel," he said. "But the Israel that I first visited decades ago bears no resemblance to modern Israel."
The reversal is the latest in a series of sharp ideological shifts for Carlson, who publicly withdrew his support for Trump in 2026 and apologized for "misleading" people into supporting him, and days ago declared he was "out" of the Republican Party.
A Documented Record
Carlson's past statements about Islam and Muslims were extensive and, by his own admission Thursday, wrong.
During his years at Fox News, Carlson regularly targeted Muslims in America and abroad. He hosted Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a vocal critic of Islam, in a segment that disparaged President Biden's outreach to Muslim voters, characterizing that engagement as political "pandering," denying that Trump's travel ban targeted Muslims, and suggesting Biden was appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other advocacy groups have repeatedly called on Fox News to fire Carlson, citing what they describe as his "long history of Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, and white supremacist rhetoric." Newsweek reached out to CAIR on Thursday for comment on Carlson's latest remarks.
Carlson has since reversed course. In December 2025, he called attacks on Muslim Americans "disgusting" and claimed that radical Islam was not a threat to the United States, asserting that fears about it came from "the Israeli government and its many defenders and informal employees in the United States."
Antisemitism Accusations
Carlson's growing criticism of Israel has drawn accusations of antisemitism that he has rejected.
The Anti-Defamation League has described Carlson as a leading mainstream amplifier of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories. In October 2025, Carlson hosted avowed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who used the appearance to claim that Jews were responsible for the world's ills.
When reminded that Fuentes denies the Holocaust, Carlson responded: "OK, but is that worse than killing kids?"
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Carlson also clashed with BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire in April over the accusations, saying: "Of course I'm not an antisemite and that's why they're calling me one. My position on Israel has nothing to do with the religion or ethnicity of Israelis, it has everything to do with decisions made by its government that hurt my country."
Polling Context
Carlson's reversal comes as American public opinion on both Islam and Israel has shifted significantly — though not always in the same direction.
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding's National Islamophobia Index, which measures public endorsement of anti-Muslim stereotypes, jumped from 25 in 2022 to 33 in 2025, with the sharpest increases among white Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews. Even so, partisan divides remain stark: 82 percent of Democrats held a favorable view of Muslims in 2025, compared to only 43 percent of Republicans, down from 71 percent in 2021.
On Israel, the shift has been more dramatic. For the first time in Gallup's annual measurement since 2001, Americans' sympathies no longer lie more with Israelis than with Palestinians. A March 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of American adults held an unfavorable view of Israel, with the shift most pronounced among voters aged 18 to 49 — 70 percent of whom reported unfavorable views.
Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans under 50 viewed Israel negatively.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 80 percent held a negative view of Israel as of March 2026, up from 69 percent in 2025 and 53 percent in 2022. Republican support for Israel, while still the strongest of any partisan group at 69 percent favorable, has fallen 15 points from 2025 to its lowest level in over two decades.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas
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