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Tucker Confronts Mike Huckabee Over Israel
This got awkward fast.
Tucker Carlson’s latest interview with Mike Huckabee, conducted in Israel, is truly a must-see.
I’m not picking sides here, I’m just reporting that it did get contentious quickly and stayed rough the entire way through.
But it is a must-see and I’d love to know what you think.
Watch here:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
YES
Why We Were Interrogated in Israel
Tucker Carlson: We’re about to play you an interview we did with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee two days ago in Israel. In general, it’s never worth talking about the backstory behind an interview. It’s kind of not the point. It makes it about the interviewer, not the person being interviewed for one thing.
For another, it’s not that interesting most of the time. Um, and for another, it’s kind of off the record. You know, the other person hasn’t consented to you telling the story. So, in general, we don’t do that. Who’d want to hear that? Let the interview speak for itself.
But in this case, we want to tell you just a few things about how this interview came about because they are pretty interesting, revealing, and now weirdly relevant apparently. So, this interview with Mike Huckabee came about a couple of weeks ago on Twitter.
One of our producers showed me; he said something to the effect of, “You’re talking to Middle Eastern Christians, Tucker Carlson. Maybe you should talk to me. Why don’t you come do an interview?” And I paused for a minute.
I thought in the past about trying to interview Mike Huckabee, whom I’ve known for over 30 years and worked adjacent to at Fox, and I had mixed feelings about it. Mostly because it’s hard if you’re me to interview Mike Huckabee because of just the personal affect.
Mike Huckabee is jovial, comes off as friendly. He’s a grandfather when annoyed. I can be nasty in interviews. And so it takes a lot of self-control to interview someone like Mike Huckabee. Not because I hate him, but because it’s hard to ask him tough questions and not come off as a jerk, which I often am.
So, but I thought in this case, yeah, I should definitely do this for a bunch of different reasons. Mainly the United States is moving toward a big war, a real war with Iran, a regime change war. The biggest war we’ve had since the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003.
And Israel is driving that. We are doing this at the behest, at the demand of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So, it seems like now is the time for more Americans to understand the dynamic between the US and Israel and to call attention to that.
And for another, Huckabee’s behavior in the last year in Jerusalem as the ambassador has been very, very striking. He famously had a meeting with the most damaging spy in American history. And why did he do that? He hadn’t been asked by anybody up until two days ago, “Why did you do that?”
So, I wanted to be able to ask him that. And so we accepted and then began the usual negotiations about when and where the interview would take place. And we were constrained because we weren’t expecting this. We wanted to do it quickly, but we had tons of travel.
So, we threw them a date—them being the American embassy—we can do it on this date. And they were very accommodating. And then the question became, well, where do we do it? And maybe a Christian holy site? We said, we’ve got to get in and out really quick.
Got to be back to do a bunch of other interviews, but we’ve got this time frame. They said, “Well, why don’t you do it at the US embassy?” Great. US embassy. So, the US embassy is about an hour and 55 minutes from the big airport in Israel, Ben Gurion.
So, we said, “Okay, what about security?” Now, at this time, the Israeli government, the prime minister included, were attacking me and this show. Netanyahu suggested I was a Nazi, for example. And so, we thought, you know, how about security?
Obviously, not because the Israeli government necessarily would do something bad, but because there are a lot of people in Israel who think because they’ve been told that I’m an anti-Semite or a Nazi or want to kill Jews—this kind of crazy overstatement.
All untrue, obviously. But it would be good to have security. And I should say, having done interviews on six out of seven continents over 35 years, I’m not very security conscious at all. Never really feel uncomfortable, but this seemed like a prudent thing to do.
So, we were told by the embassy spokesman, “No, we’re not going to provide security.” And so, we said, “Okay, I guess we’ll get private security, but could we get someone from the embassy to ride in the car with us from the airport to the interview?” And we were told, “No.”
Could we get what they call a control officer, just an American with us in an official capacity as an embassy employee with us? No. Quote, “For legal reasons, we can’t do that.” So, I thought, “Well, that’s very strange.”
And then they said, “But instead, we’re turning you over to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, MFA, and they’re going to arrange everything in Israel.” Well, this was within 24 hours of the Deputy Foreign Minister, Sharon Haskell, releasing a video calling me an anti-Semite and an enemy of Israel.
This was the person who the embassy was telling us was going to handle all of our travel. So it was at this point that I just called the spokesman for the US embassy in Israel and I said, “Okay, I’m an American citizen responding to an invitation from the American ambassador to Israel.”
“And by the way, I’m the son of a US ambassador so I have some sense—not an expert obviously—but I have some sense of how this works. And I think that the US ambassador has discretion to send somebody from his office to the airport to accompany someone in.”
“I think that’s right. And if it’s not right, tell me what law you’re talking about, what legal reason you’re talking about that would prevent that. And now you’re sending me over to a government official who’s been calling me a Nazi. That’s the person in charge of getting us to the embassy?”
“Like, what is going on here?” And the embassy spokesman, who’s totally nice, said, “Well, this was the decision of someone called David Brownstein. He’s the DCM, the number two guy in the embassy.” And I said, “Well, put him on a text exchange. Like, what is going on here?”
And so Brownstein got on and didn’t answer the question, but basically said, “Well, okay, let’s just do the interview at the airport in the diplomatic reception area at the airport.” Okay. I said, we’re going to be flying in from Europe, and we had to be in and out really quickly.
So at great expense, we chartered a plane, which I never do because I’m cheap. But we did. And so then I said to them, “Okay, I want to send you the flight information, tail number, flight number, route, and I want you to pass that on to the Israeli military.”
“Just so you know they don’t mistake us for an Iranian drone or something.” I mean, not to be paranoid, but again, this is probably the most violent country in the world, Israel. Is there a country in the world where a higher percentage of the population has held a gun or shot someone?
I mean, I don’t know the answer, but this is a country famously waging a seven-front war with all of its neighbors. So, this is also the country that bombed the USS Liberty knowing—we know this from NSA intercepts—that it was an American ship.
So, just send the military our flight information and, you know, we can all just sort of know it’s on the record and we can all calm down a little bit. No, the US embassy said, “No, your flight is not a matter of concern to the Israeli military.”
I said, “Okay, now you’re making me uncomfortable. Isn’t the airspace of Israel the purview of the Israeli military? Aren’t they in charge of maintaining the integrity of their airspace? When you fly over the country of Israel, its military keeps track of you because that’s their job.”
“So, why wouldn’t you send our flight information to the Israeli military? You’re making me nervous.” I took a screenshot of it and sent it to a bunch of people, including in the US government, because I’m not a paranoid person and I’m not a jumpy person.
I said, “Is this weird behavior?” “Yeah, it’s really weird behavior.” All of them said that. So, I got pretty aggressive and just said, “Look, you got to do this.” Okay. And they, to their credit, got back to us and said, “Yes, we will do that.”
But I just thought that was completely bizarre and menacing, by the way. Now at the same time, and I think this is relevant—certainly it goes to motive—I was attempting to set up a meeting, as I have been for the past three months, with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
I’ve dealt with him a lot in the past, and he denounced me as a Nazi in public, a member of the “woke Reich.” And why was I trying to do that? Not an interview. I knew he wouldn’t sit for an interview. But I wanted just to meet with him in person.
One, to show that I’m willing to go to Israel. I don’t hate Israel as a country. But two, just to say directly to him, “This is bad. This should be de-escalated. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t help anybody. Calling me specifically a Nazi and an anti-Semite when you know that I’m not.”
By the way, if I was, I would just admit it. I’ve said many times, I think anti-Semitism is immoral. It’s against my religion, just as hating any group on the basis of their bloodline is immoral. Um, and so I really pushed hard for this meeting.
I called a lot of people who know him and who are in regular contact with him. In fact, I went to go see some of those people directly. “Please, can you help me get a sit-down for five minutes with Benjamin Netanyahu?” And I probably called or met with six, seven, eight, maybe more people.
People in official capacities, people in the Israeli government. I know a number of people in the Israeli government, people in Israel, a friend of mine in California who knows him. I mean, I really, really tried and I did so for two reasons.
One, because there was a threat to my family. The Israeli government and Netanyahu himself tried to punish two members of my family. I won’t be more specific, but actually punish two members of my family because he believes in blood guilt. Amalek.
You know, when someone commits a crime against you, you punish not just him, but his family, his bloodline. There’s no idea that’s less Western than that, more anti-Christian than that. Christians reject that. Netanyahu doesn’t. That’s why he’s talking about Amalek.
And he was going after my family, literally. So I felt very threatened by that. But moreover, I think it’s bad for my country to have people using that kind of language. “Round them up, bring them to the camps, gas chambers, Nazis, anti-Semitism.”
It scares the heck out of people. It makes people crazy and hysterical. And certainly in my case, none of that is true. I hate collective punishment. I hate attacking people on the basis of their bloodline. I hate anti-Semitism and anti-white racism and all of this—any kind of racism, period.
So to attack me as a Nazi for saying that suggests a total unwillingness to compromise. You know, “Anyone who doesn’t agree with us 100% must be destroyed. His family must be attacked. My family. And must be written off as a Nazi.”
Well, when you do that, it makes people hysterical. It increases the temperature to a point that someone’s going to get hurt if you keep talking that way. And it’s just bad. It’s bad for the United States; it’s bad for the world. So, I wanted to deliver that message.
I finally wound up talking to a guy called Yoram Hazony, who is an Israeli who famously organizes the American National Conservatism conferences. And I said to him, “Look, you’re having a National Conservatism conference in Jerusalem this summer.”
“You asked me to speak at the first one in the United States and I did. Obviously, I believe in national conservatism, America First. I think every nation should put its own people first. That’s why you have governments. And I would like to speak at this one.”
“And moreover, I would like you to ask your friend Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with me.” And we had this sort of long back and forth. And it was, “No, you cannot speak at the National Conservatism Conference because you’re an anti-Semite.” “No, I’m not,” I said. “Yes, you are,” he said.
And I said, “Well, I really would like to speak to Bibi to kind of de-escalate this.” And he said, it would not be in his political interest to meet with you. That’s almost verbatim what he said. Therefore, no.
So then I realized, you know, you’re dealing with people who are unreasonable, who are inflexible, who are in fact fanatical. And then add to that, of course, that my tax dollars are paying them. You know, it’s all pretty distressing.
So that was the backdrop behind our very brief and highly intense trip to Israel. So we show up on Wednesday, fly in from Europe again at great expense, and show up at the diplomatic terminal of Ben Gurion Airport where this interview is going to take place, which is bizarre in itself.
Filthy building. The windows are so dirty in the terminal you can’t see out them barely. There’s like exposed drywall. The whole thing is depressing and grim. There’s litter outside. Like, what is this? This is the diplomatic terminal in Israel.
I thought that was very strange, having been in a lot of diplomatic terminals. I’ve never seen a rattier one. We go in and Huckabee’s there and of course he’s totally friendly as he always is—very, very friendly guy and cheerful and we sort of chat.
The whole place is filled with these guys in T-shirts, thuggish-looking guys in T-shirts who are some kind of security. So we do the interview; you’re about to watch it. It’s very long at two and a half hours-ish and I try my hardest to be friendly.
I think I kind of succeeded. You can judge for yourself. But I really got the sense that Huckabee was not well able to answer any of the questions, but also not really in charge. You really got the feeling of a guy sort of trying his best to repeat the talking points but very constrained.
Unable to say certain things not because those things might harm the interest of the US government—he was happy to attack, for example, the US military and say they’re more brutal than the Israeli military. Okay. But unwilling to say certain things because they might reflect poorly on the Israeli government.
And you sort of thinking about this for a second. You’re like, “Wait, you’re the US ambassador. You’re our representative to a foreign country. Why is your red line criticism of that country? Shouldn’t you be representing us?” And it was very obvious he was representing the Israelis. Obvious.
But anyway, so we do this interview. It was cordial. And at the end, we’re set to fly out. We have a time. We have to get out. And the plane is sitting right outside. And we’re ready to go. And for some reason, the Israelis still have our passports.
There are five of us there. And four of us are flying out on this plane. One’s flying out commercial with our gear. So my business partner and I were standing there. We’ve never left the airport, never went anywhere.
But our two producers have spent the night before in Tel Aviv, and they’re called into rooms and given the third degree. Now, keep in mind, they’re about to get on a plane and leave. In fact, we’re late. We have to get out of there. We have a slot to get out.
And security, whoever this is, won’t let them go. So, I don’t really know what’s going on at this point. I’m like, “Where are our guys? We got to get out of here.” So, one of them comes out and he says, “That was the weirdest experience of my life.”
“They asked me questions about the interview. Who did you speak to?” Keep in mind, this was like eight feet from where we did the interview. “Well, the US ambassador Mike Huckabee. What did you talk about? Why did you ask those questions? Was it a hostile interview?”
Everything in the diplomatic terminal is taped. Everything in Israel is taped. It’s a police state. It’s a surveillance state. Obviously, you go to Israel, they put software on your phone. Everybody knows this, okay? They’re constantly spying on you more than probably any other country.
And so they know the answers to these questions, but they’re asking my producer like, “Where do you work? How many people work there? Do you go to the office? Where is the office? What are their names?” They’re doing like an intel op and humiliation exercise on my producer.
This isn’t security. We’re leaving right now. And they’re holding his passport. The interrogator is holding the passport in his hand as he’s asking these questions. So he’s telling me this and I said, “This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Huckabee’s gone by this point. You’re an American citizen who’s just had a conversation with the US ambassador and some thug is demanding details of that conversation and I hope you didn’t answer.” And he’s like, “No, I didn’t. I don’t know what to say.”
Meanwhile, our last guy, the youngest man who was traveling with us, our last producer is still in a room being questioned. So, I pull over one of the guys and said, “We got to get out of here.” I don’t know what this is about. It’s outrageous.
And this woman comes up to me and says, “Look, let’s just go. We’re going to bring you to the plane and he’ll come later.” I said, “No, it’s my producer. He’s being interrogated, asked totally over-the-top, fully inappropriate questions that have nothing to do with security at all.”
“You know, ‘pull up your website, show us your text exchanges with other people on your staff, what are your politics like?’ And again, ‘what did you say to the US ambassador and what did he say back to you?’” Those are not relevant questions if you’re trying to keep your country secure.
Those are intel questions and they’re over the top. And I said, “I want this guy out now. Let’s go.” Oh, and they said, “No, no, just leave him here. We’ll bring him to the plane later.” Twice they told me that. “Just leave your guy behind.” No, I don’t think so.
So, I was enraged by this. Get on the plane, we get a text from a reporter who somehow knew that this had happened. I have no idea how. I had no interest in publicizing it, actually. Um, there was, you know, a long trail that showed that the US embassy had been coordinating against us.
In a public relations battle before we even got there. You know, they were leaking that we demanded to do it at the airport because we were afraid to go into Israel. We’re cowards. Okay. We’re cowards, right?
And so I just said to the reporter by text, “You know, they pulled my guys into a room interrogating them. This is outrageous, etc., etc.” The interesting thing is I never heard from Huckabee or anybody to this moment from the US embassy about what security did to my producers.
They didn’t ask us and instead Huckabee went out and called me a liar. So, it raises again the question, who exactly is Huckabee working for? We’re American citizens in a foreign country. He’s our ambassador. He represents our country.
We pay his salary, but he’s taking the side of the foreign government without even calling to say, “Hey, what happened to you at the airport? Did you get hassled? Did your guys get hassled?” No. He just immediately repeats their lies without even consulting us.
So like what are we looking at here? We’re looking at the reality which is if you’re an American in Israel, you can be certain that your government will take the side of the Israeli government and not your side. And really, is that so different from the experience of Americans in the United States?
Can you be sure that your government will take your side over the Israeli government? No, of course not. It will always take the Israeli government’s side over yours. And that’s the core problem. Even if you support a war with Iran, you still have a fair expectation that your government exists to serve you.
You have an expectation that your government will take your side against a foreign government. But the daily lived reality, the obvious truth visible to every single American, is that’s the opposite of reality. In fact, if you criticize Israel in your country, your government will work to censor you.
If there’s a standoff between you and Bibi, you know whose side your government’s going to take? Bibi’s side. That is not sustainable. That is too humiliating. It’s too clearly an inversion of the natural order. Your government exists for you, not for a foreign government.
But that’s not how we live in this country or in Israel. So that’s what we learned. And one last thing, the Israelis apparently went to the surveillance tape inside the diplomatic terminal and pulled some clip. And they’re of course getting all their little bots online to promote it.
It’s of me with my arm around somebody to show that actually I’m lying about what happened. That person was our driver who drove us from the plane to the terminal—a short drive. Very nice guy, good guy, Israeli guy.
And right when we arrived, he said, “Could I get a picture?” Of course. He’s a nice man. So I just put my arm around him, took a picture. That’s what that is. That was before the interview. It was before our producers were hassled by the thugs.
It was before any of this happened. So that’s just another installment of the propaganda war. I thought we’d give you the backstory on that. People seem to be more inflamed, not just emotionally, but physically, and more tired than ever.
So, with that, here is our interview with Ambassador Mike Huckabee. I hope it’s informative. Ambassador, thank you very much for having us, for inviting me. I was grateful to be invited.
Mike Huckabee: Thank you.
Tucker: I was grateful because I don’t like all the name-calling. I’ve engaged in some of it. I want to apologize for that. I don’t think people should be going immediately to motive, calling each other Nazis or anti-Semites. I said I hate the Christian Zionists. I lost control of myself.
Of course, I don’t. I’ve apologized for that. I have problems with my anger. And so, I just want to apologize to you since you are a Christian Zionist. You and I have known each other for over 30 years.
Huckabee: Over 30 years. That is totally true. Back when you were in Little Rock. So, yes, the newspaper. It’s why I wanted us to have a conversation—talk to each other and not about each other. And I appreciate very much your coming here.
Tucker: Of course. And I’m only staying a couple hours unfortunately because I kind of shoehorned this in. But I hope that I’ll be back soon. I actually like the country. I’ve been here a lot and there are a lot of things I love about it.
And I want to talk to people in it for like a week and get a better sense of it. So I want to ask you—everyone I’ve talked to in preparation for this has said the same thing. Jonathan Pollard. Can you explain? I’m just going to show the name to you and have you explain.
Huckabee: No, I’m glad you asked. You know, interestingly, there’s been a lot of things about it. You’re the first person who has asked me about it, which I find amazing. So, I’m glad you did.
Tucker: Really? The very first. Well, it’s better to hear it.
Huckabee: Sure. I met Jonathan Pollard two times. Once I was making a speech in Jerusalem. This has been a few years ago. His wife was still alive at the time. And he was there. And someone introduced me to him and his wife.
I said hello to them. That was it. “Hi, nice to meet Esther,” his wife. And that was it. I went and made my speech and I left. Later his wife passed away here in Israel. And I sent him a note and just said, “I’m sorry to hear about your wife.”
I remember meeting her at the hotel and sorry to hear it. He then asked, “Could he come and see me?” He wanted to come and thank me for being kind to him. He came to the embassy. I think we met for maybe 30 minutes. We had a nice, pleasant visit.
The funny thing was the New York Times reported that it was a secret meeting. Tucker, if you’ve ever been to the US Embassy, you would know there’s no such thing as a secret meeting at the US Embassy. There are cameras everywhere.
You walk through Marines, you walk through security, you walk through the front office, and there’s a dozen or more people that are going to check you out when you come. And before you get there, you’re going to have to give us your passport information.
You’re going to have to be vetted and screened and all of this stuff. So, the idea that it was secret was ludicrous. The whole idea is, look, Jonathan Pollard did something that was terribly wrong. He sold secrets. He shouldn’t have done it.
He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and spent 30. Actually, I think he was sentenced to maybe more than 30 years, but he spent 30. Most people convicted of something similar, which was one count I believe, would have spent two to four, but he spent 30.
I don’t have a problem with him spending 30 because I think what he did was despicable. I’m not defending anything about what he did, but even people like the former director of the CIA, a number of other senators on the Senate Intel Committee said that he should be allowed to leave and move to…
Israel. And so, he’s here. I’m not the one who released him; the US government released him. I’m not the one who allowed him to come to Israel; the US government allowed him to come.
So, when he asked to come and say thank you for a condolence note I sent him on the death of his wife, I didn’t think that was an act of treason. I thought it was an act of common courtesy. And again, I don’t defend what he did. I think it was wrong.
But he served his time. He’s a free man. And he wanted to say thank you. That’s the extent of it. There was no policy discussed. There were no secrets shared. It was just a brief meeting between two people, one of whom had lost his wife.
The idea that this is some sort of major scandal is just, in my view, part of the hyper-politicized environment we live in today. People want to find a reason to be angry, and they’ll take a 30-minute meeting and turn it into a conspiracy.
But that’s why I’m glad you asked, because it’s a lot simpler than the headlines make it out to be. We have a lot of work to do here in Israel, and my focus remains on the relationship between our two countries and ensuring that we continue to stand together.
It’s a complicated region, and there are no easy answers. But the relationship between the US and Israel is vital, not just for the Middle East, but for the world. And I’m going to keep doing the job I was sent here to do.
I hope that clarifies things for you and for your audience. It’s important to get the facts out there, and I appreciate the opportunity to do that. Thank you, Tucker.
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