Huckabee defended his record, pushed back on several of Carlson’s characterizations, and offered what he called a faith-based case for the US-Israel relationship. Not all claims made during the exchange stood up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Tucker Carlson during a visit to Israel. (credit: X\/@TuckerCarlson)<\/p>\n
Former Fox News anchor Melissa Francis, who told the Post she helped facilitate the sit-down, said Carlson had tried to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through intermediaries but was rebuffed. Author and political theorist Yoram Hazony told Carlson it “would not be in his political interest to meet with you,” according to Carlson’s account. Francis said Netanyahu “was not interested.”<\/p>\n
Carlson’s monologue before the interview<\/p>\n
Carlson preceded the sit-down with a 25-minute monologue in which he laid out his case against Israel, the embassy, and Huckabee personally. It set the tone for what followed, but it also established a pattern of claims that did not match the record.<\/p>\n
After critics noted Carlson had flown in by private jet, he addressed it in his monologue, saying he had chartered the aircraft “which I never do because I’m cheap.”<\/p>\n
Carlson filmed the promotional video for his 2024 interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin from the rooftop of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. He owns three homes, including two waterfront properties on Gasparilla Island, purchased for a combined $8.4 million. His stepmother is an heiress to the Swanson frozen-food fortune.<\/p>\n
The monologue’s characterization of Israel was equally loose. Carlson called it “probably the most violent country in the world” based on the number of citizens who have “held a gun or shot someone” \u2013 conflating mandatory military service with criminal violence in a country whose homicide rate is a fraction of Honduras, Venezuela, or South Africa, and which the 2025 Global Peace Index ranks above Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria.<\/p>\n
He put the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States at “60 million” \u2013 three to six times higher than any credible estimate \u2013 and called Israel “a police state” where “they put software on your phone,” overstating the documented use of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, which has targeted specific individuals rather than visitors broadly.<\/p>\n
Pollard, embassy meeting<\/p>\n
The interview opened with Carlson confronting Huckabee over his meetings with Jonathan Pollard, the former US Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
“Everyone I’ve talked to in preparation for this has said the same thing. Jonathan Pollard,” Carlson said.<\/p>\n
He called Pollard “the greatest traitor in modern American history” and said he had sold “our battle plans against the Soviet Union” to Israel, which, according to Reagan-era CIA director William Casey, then passed the intelligence to the Soviets.<\/p>\n
Pollard’s case is among the most damaging espionage cases in US history, though intelligence professionals have debated whether Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen \u2013 both of whom spied for the Soviet Union and whose espionage led to the deaths of US agents \u2013 caused greater damage. Former CIA director James Woolsey noted that Pollard “did not get anybody killed and was not spying for an enemy.”<\/p>\n
The declassified CIA Damage Assessment found that Israel’s intelligence requests to Pollard focused on regional intelligence \u2013 information on Arab states, Pakistan, and Soviet weapons systems \u2013 rather than US war plans against Moscow.<\/p>\n
The claim that Israel passed Pollard’s intelligence to the Soviets, first reported by Seymour Hersh, has never been proven. Israel denies it.<\/p>\n
Carlson then raised Pollard’s 2021 interview<\/a> with Israel Hayom, in which Pollard said “all Jews should have dual loyalty” and told young Jewish Americans with security clearances that “not doing anything is unacceptable” and that loyalty to Israel should be “more important than your life.” Those remarks were widely reported and condemned.<\/p>\n “Do you see why the US ambassador hosting a convicted betrayer of his own country who’s encouraging Americans to continue to betray their country would seem shocking?” Carlson asked.<\/p>\n Huckabee said Pollard had visited the embassy at his own request after Huckabee sent condolences when Pollard’s wife died. “I think we met for maybe 30 minutes. We had a nice, pleasant visit,” Huckabee said.<\/p>\n He pointed out that the meeting was hardly clandestine. “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.”<\/p>\n “I did. And frankly, I don’t regret it,” he said.<\/p>\n Huckabee also said Pollard had been “sentenced to 30 years.” Pollard was, in fact, sentenced to life in prison. He served approximately 30 years before being paroled in November 2015.<\/p>\n Carlson to Huckabee: ‘That is calling for genocide’<\/p>\n The interview’s most intense exchange concerned what Netanyahu said on the eve of war.<\/p>\n On October 28, 2023, as the ground invasion of Gaza<\/a> began, the prime minister addressed IDF soldiers in a televised speech. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” he said, quoting Deuteronomy 25:17.<\/p>\n Carlson walked Huckabee through 1 Samuel 15, in which God commands the Israelites to “kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the infants, kill the donkeys, kill the camels, kill everything.”<\/p>\n “That is genocide,” Carlson said. “God is calling for the genocide of the Amalekites. And the prime minister of Israel described the Palestinians in Gaza as Amalek. That’s calling for genocide. And you know that.”<\/p>\n “I totally disagree,” Huckabee said. “Tell me then what it means.”<\/p>\n Huckabee said he did not know whether it was “an illustrative metaphor” and told Carlson: “You would have to ask him.”<\/p>\n Huckabee then made a point that went to the heart of the accusation: “Because if Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could have done it in two and a half hours.” Israel possesses one of the most powerful military forces in the Middle East. His argument rested on the premise that if the intent had been total destruction, Israel had the capacity to do so long ago.<\/p>\n Carlson pressed further: “When you say that at the outset of a war, and then you wind up with massive civilian casualties… then I have to ask you, what is that? And is that kind of thinking consistent with Western values and with Christianity? Do we as Christians believe it’s okay to kill people’s children?”<\/p>\n “No, we don’t,” Huckabee said. “And neither do the Israelis because they didn’t go after their children.”<\/p>\n The Prime Minister’s Office has stressed that the verse Netanyahu quoted \u2013 a commandment to remember, from Deuteronomy \u2013 is not the more violent passage Carlson cited. The phrase appears on Holocaust memorials and at Yad Vashem, and Israel’s legal team at the International Court of Justice described it as a standard Jewish commemorative expression about antisemitic violence, calling South Africa’s use of it in its genocide case a “grave distortion.”<\/p>\n The Amalek reference has been used throughout Jewish history as a typology for existential threats, most commonly applied to the Nazis. The rabbinical consensus is that Amalek no longer exists as a people and cannot be identified with any modern group.<\/p>\n The sharpest personal confrontation came when the conversation turned to civilian casualties and the IDF.<\/p>\n Carlson asked how many civilians had been killed in Gaza. Huckabee said the only available numbers come from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which he called “dubious.”<\/p>\n “How many kids were killed?” Carlson asked.<\/p>\n “I don’t know. I’m sure it was thousands. And it’s thousands too many,” Huckabee said.<\/p>\n The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported over 17,000 children killed since October 7, 2023. Those figures have not been independently verified, and Israel has repeatedly questioned the ministry’s methodology and its failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians.<\/p>\n Huckabee defended the IDF, saying the military sends text messages, drops leaflets, and makes phone calls before strikes. “Nobody does that. The US doesn’t do that,” he said.<\/p>\n Carlson seized on the comparison. “Your dig at the United States is very revealing,” he said. “Because your priorities are very clear.”<\/p>\n “As an American, permit me a moment of outrage,” Carlson said. “I said many civilians have been killed, and you said right in the middle of your elaborate defense of the IDF’s killing of civilians, including children, you said they do a better job than the United States does. That’s my country and my government.”<\/p>\n Huckabee responded by pointing to his flag pin: “What flag am I wearing here?”<\/p>\n “Well, that’s, of course, my flag as well,” Carlson said.<\/p>\n When Carlson pushed Huckabee to cite numbers supporting his claim that the IDF had achieved a lower civilian casualty ratio than any army in modern urban warfare, Huckabee could not.<\/p>\n “You don’t know the numbers, do you?” Carlson said.<\/p>\n “From the conversations that I’ve had with the people who fought there,” Huckabee said. “I don’t have the exact numbers for you.”<\/p>\n The IDF’s warning system \u2013 phone calls, text messages, leaflets, roof-knocking, and daily evacuation maps \u2013 is well documented and widely regarded as unprecedented in scale. The US military has used similar tactics, including leaflet drops and broadcast warnings, but less frequently and not at the systematic level that has become standard IDF practice.<\/p>\n ‘Terror kids’ and live ammunition<\/p>\n Huckabee’s description of child casualties produced one of the interview’s most charged moments.<\/p>\n “Some of the kids who were killed had been recruited to be in the military. Kids as young as 14 years old,” Huckabee said. “They were terror kids.”<\/p>\n “Do you hear yourself?” Carlson replied.<\/p>\n Carlson later returned to the exchange: “You told me that 14-year-olds deserve to die because they’re working for Hamas.”<\/p>\n “You’re putting words in my mouth,” Huckabee said. “I never said deserve to die.”<\/p>\n “So do you think a 14-year-old child has agency?” Carlson asked. “Do you think that he deserves to die because he’s being used by adults? Isn’t his death a crushing tragedy?”<\/p>\n Hamas has run military training camps for children and has been implicated in attacks carried out by minors, according to UN reports and international monitoring organizations. The recruitment of children under 15 into armed groups constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute, and international law treats recruited children as victims \u2013 not combatants.<\/p>\n Carlson also pressed Huckabee on the use of live ammunition near aid distribution sites. “Are you okay with using live ammunition at aid distribution sites for families, women, and children?” he asked.<\/p>\n Huckabee said: “Very rarely did this happen near aid distribution sites.”<\/p>\n “How about at all?” Carlson replied. “Are you okay with that?”<\/p>\n “No,” Huckabee answered.<\/p>\n What has actually happened near Gaza’s aid distribution points remains sharply disputed. The IDF has said troops fired warning shots at suspects who deviated from designated routes, away from the sites themselves. The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the sites, has denied that gunfire occurred at its distribution centers. Hamas has accused the IDF of firing on civilians seeking food \u2013 a claim Israel denies.<\/p>\n Fugitive sex offenders? ‘Send him back’<\/p>\n Carlson then shifted to leverage. “We’re obviously the single largest source of outside funding for this country,” he said \u2013 a statement that is true of military aid, though almost all of it flows back to US defense contractors rather than funding Israel’s domestic budget.<\/p>\n He pressed Huckabee on what he described as “dozens and dozens” of accused sex offenders from the United States who had fled to Israel, citing the recent case of Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, a senior Israel National Cyber Directorate official arrested in a Las Vegas sting in August 2025 on charges of soliciting a minor online, who posted bail and returned to Israel without surrendering his passport.<\/p>\n The broader issue is well documented. A CBS News investigation and Jewish Community Watch, an American Jewish organization founded by Orthodox abuse survivors, tracked over 60 such cases between 2014 and 2020, prompting Israel to require FBI background checks for immigrating Americans.<\/p>\n “I think it would fall to you to advocate with your friend, the Prime Minister,” Carlson said. “How can you take an accused child molester and shield him from American justice? Send him back to the United States.”<\/p>\n “There has never been a request for me to engage in that,” Huckabee said. “I would be happy to do it if the White House sent a message to me.”<\/p>\n On the principle, Huckabee was careful. “It’s an allegation. Let’s be clear. One thing about our system of jurisprudence is that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But if charges exist, should he be extradited? I would say so,” Huckabee said.<\/p>\n Epstein, Herzog, and Barak<\/p>\n Carlson did not ease up when the conversation moved to Jeffrey Epstein. He looked at Huckabee and said that President Isaac Herzog “apparently was at Pedo Island.”<\/p>\n The accusation hangs on a single name \u2013 “Herzog” \u2013 that appears in a 2014 email buried among more than 3 million pages of Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice on January 30, 2026. No major investigative outlet has confirmed that this refers to the Israeli president, let alone verified a visit. The release is so vast that much of it remains unreviewed.<\/p>\n Huckabee did not engage. “I haven’t kept up with that,” he said. “I’ve never met the man. I don’t know him.”<\/p>\n Former prime minister Ehud Barak’s connections to Epstein are more extensively documented, including multiple island visits confirmed by scheduling records and photographs reviewed by the Post.<\/p>\n Christians, Law of Return, and spitting<\/p>\n One of the interview’s quieter but more substantive threads concerned the status of Christians in Israel \u2013 a subject Carlson has made central to his recent coverage. In his February “Christian Persecution” episode, as the Post previously reported, Carlson claimed that Christians in Israel are “far fewer in absolute numbers” than when the state was founded. Data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics shows the opposite: the Christian population has grown from approximately 34,000 in 1949 to around 185,000 today.<\/p>\n On the Law of Return, Carlson was on firmer ground. Ethnic Jews who convert to Christianity are ineligible for automatic citizenship under established Israeli case law. Huckabee said he personally knows Messianic Jews who have made aliyah \u2013 some have, through spousal or grandchild provisions \u2013 but the legal position is clear.<\/p>\n Carlson also raised Israel’s 1977 Penal Law restricting inducements for religious conversion, and incidents of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on Christian clergy in Jerusalem’s Old City \u2013 incidents the Post has reported on extensively, including arrests, an emergency academic conference, and a pledge from Netanyahu of “zero tolerance.”<\/p>\n Huckabee did not hedge. “It shouldn’t happen. It’s horrible,” he said, comparing it to antisemitic attacks in New York. But he drew on five decades of personal experience: “I’ve been coming in and out of Jerusalem and Israel for 50, well, soon to be 53 years. Before I came as an ambassador, I made over 100 trips here. I’ve never been spat on.”<\/p>\n Khalloul told the Post<\/a> separately that the spitting incidents are perpetrated by a “fanatic, tiny minority” and are “punished when reported.” He said Carlson was “totally wrong” about the broader Christian experience in Israel.<\/p>\n And it was on this subject \u2013 Arab and minority citizens \u2013 that Huckabee landed what may have been his strongest moment in the entire two and a half hours.<\/p>\n “Do you realize there are lots of Arab Israelis? They vote. They serve in the Knesset. They serve on the Supreme Court,” he said. “And did you know that it was an Arab who sentenced a former president and prime minister to prison?”<\/p>\n Judge George Karra, an Arab Christian Israeli, convicted President Moshe Katsav of rape in 2010 and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Justice Salim Joubran sat on the panel that upheld both Katsav’s conviction and former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s corruption conviction. It was a rare moment in the interview where Huckabee offered a fact that needed no qualification.<\/p>\n US aid, Iran, and free abortion<\/p>\n The final stretch of the interview turned to money, and the question of what America gets for it.<\/p>\n The Council on Foreign Relations reports that since October 7, 2023, the United States has provided at least $16.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel. The Quincy Institute estimates the total at $21.7 billion, including additional arms transfers.<\/p>\n Huckabee claimed the return on investment is “400 to 1,200 percent” \u2013 a figure common in pro-Israel advocacy but not easily traced to an independent analysis.<\/p>\n Carlson then tried an angle clearly aimed at Huckabee’s evangelical base: Israel provides universal healthcare and state-funded abortion. “Why would we send any money to a country that provides free abortion?” he asked.<\/p>\n “Because the money that we send does not pay for health care. It does not pay for abortion. It pays for military things,” Huckabee said.<\/p>\n When approaching the Iran situation<\/a>, the two men talked past each other. Carlson accused Netanyahu of pushing America toward regime change in Iran for decades. Netanyahu has long publicly opposed Iran’s nuclear program, and during the June 2025 war suggested regime change “could certainly be the result” of Israel’s strikes \u2013 though his government simultaneously said it was not a goal of the operation.<\/p>\n Huckabee argued that Iran is America’s enemy regardless of what Israel wants, citing the IRGC’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization, Iranian plots to assassinate President Donald Trump, and Tehran’s funding of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis \u2013 all confirmed by the US State Department.<\/p>\n Neither man conceded the other’s framing.<\/p>\n The airport incident<\/p>\n What happened after the cameras stopped became the trip’s most publicly contested element.<\/p>\n Carlson told The Daily Mail that producers were taken into separate rooms, questioned about the interview’s content, and that he was told twice to “leave your guy behind.” Both the Israel Airports Authority and Huckabee disputed the account, saying the group was asked routine security questions in accordance with standard procedures.<\/p>\nU.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during an interview with Reuters in Jerusalem, September 10, 2025. (credit: REUTERS\/Ronen Zvulun)What flag am I wearing here?<\/p>\n