White House describes Tucker Carlson’s ‘Nazi propaganda’ interview as a ‘sadistic insult’

The Biden administration has condemned Tucker Carlson for interviewing Darryl Cooper, a “Holocaust denier who spread Nazi propaganda”, on his podcast, saying it was “unacceptable” at all times, but especially when approaching the anniversary of October 7.

This past week, the former Fox News anchor hosted Cooper on The Tucker Carlson Show, referring to him as possibly “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”

Carlson, a far-right conservative who was fired from Fox News last year, has interviewed other controversial figures including Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also been accused of promoting conspiracy theories.

Cooper, a social media influencer and podcaster who focuses on 20th-century history, has claimed that Winston Churchill was “the chief villain” of World War II and was responsible for the war.

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“He was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland,” Cooper said.

The podcaster and social media influencer said that he didn’t think Hitler was the “protagonist” of the war but that the Nazis “launched a war they were completely unprepared to deal with.”

The Holocaust was a genocide of six million Jewish people during World War II, led and carried out by Hitler’s Nazi party.

On Thursday, White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates condemned Carlson for giving Cooper’s views a platform. Carlson’s podcast is listened to by an estimated 800,000 people, according to YouTube.

Bates told CNN that  “giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over 6 million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism, and to every subsequent victim of Antisemitism.”

“Hitler was one of the most evil figures in human history and the ‘chief villain’ of World War II, full stop,” Bates told the news outlet. “The Biden-Harris Administration believes that trafficking in this moral rot is unacceptable at any time, let alone less than one year after the deadliest massacre perpetrated against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and at a time when the cancer of Antisemitism is growing all over the world.”

On 7 October 2023, militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Southern Israel, and abducted around 250 hostages.

In response to the White House’s statement, Carlson told CNN: “The fact that these lunatics have used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history disgusts me, and should terrify every American.

“They’re warmonger freaks. They don’t get the moral high ground.”

Carlson’s interview with Cooper was met with swift online backlash including former Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney who called it “pro-Nazi propaganda”.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, initially reposted the interview and wrote: “Very interesting, worth watching” but later deleted his post.

The Independent has contacted Cooper and Carlson for comment.