DOES THE US SUPPORT ISRAEL? OR JIHAD? Tucker Carlson and 'America First'... [PART 1]
An MOR series
There has been increasing noise in some segments of the US political right against what they see as ‘too much’ US support for Israel. This is presented as an ‘America First’ argument.
I am going to take this ‘America First’ argument seriously.
According to this line, the US should look after itself; US presidents shouldn’t be protecting other countries if that hurts US interests; and protecting Israel, ‘America Firsters’ claim, does precisely that. And don’t call us antisemites—they rush to object (even before you have a chance to say it)—because this is just ‘America First.’
Tucker Carlson has become a major exponent of this view. His position is interesting because he claims that for the US to protect Qatar, by contrast, is a policy that does enjoy perfect consistency with his ‘America First’ position. In fact, he goes further: if the US supports Qatar against Israel, that is also consistent—he claims—with his ‘America First’ position. I will take a look at his presentation.
First, a bit of context: What is Qatar?
The Emirate of Qatar is a jihadi nightmare that oppresses around 2 million literal slaves, as we have documented here:
The Al Thani family that governs Qatar is deeply intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood, the international jihadi organization that created the most horrific terrorist force in the world, Hamas, the stated objective of which—as clearly expressed in their Charter—is the extermination of the Israeli Jews.
This doesn’t necessarily matter from a purist ‘America First’ perspective. However, these Hamas guys say that, after they are done with Israel, they will destroy Western Civilization. Because they are jihadis. And… well, the United States happens to be inside Western Civilization.
We’ve explained Hamas here:
The fact that Hamas and its grand jihadi patron—the Muslim Brotherhood—are coming for all of us Westerners makes Qatar entirely relevant to ‘America First’ arguments, because Qatar, deeply intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood, has become sugar daddy to Hamas.
Second, some more context: What is Donald Trump’s policy towards Qatar?
By an application of simple and direct logic—requiring no special talent or training—if Qatar is sugar daddy to Hamas, then Qatar is the intellectual author of the terrorist massacre and hostage-taking of Israelis of 7 October 2023.
Consequently, in September of 2025, Israel made an attempt to eliminate several Hamas terrorists sheltered in Doha, Qatar, under the protection of the Qatari government, which attack the media naturally portrayed as horrendous Israeli behavior (how dare they attack terrorists?).1 The attack was aimed specifically at these Hamas terrorists, and only at them. It was half-hearted and entirely ineffective.
In reaction to this, US President Donald Trump
threw an Olympic tantrum;
made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologize to that mass murderer of innocent Israelis, the Emir of Qatar (!)
announced that he was extending NATO-level protection to Qatar; and
had Pete Hegseth (‘Secretary of War’) announce that the US would henceforth train the Qatari Air Force.
Now, these Trumpian pro-Qatar moves were visibly upsetting to the likes of Mark Levin, who holds the pro-Israel line over at FOX NEWS. And that in turn really ticked off our interesting protagonist, Tucker Carlson, who reacted with a newsletter piece titled “It’s Never Enough” that Senator Ted Cruz—via Han Shawnity—shared on X.
Carlson’s uber-shrill prose presents his interpretation that pro-Israel commentators such as Mark Levin must be “foreign shills” for Israel because “our country [the US] is barely their concern.” In his view, “the Levins of this world” are “war hawks” (warmongers, bad guys) who will harm US interests—for example, by supporting attacks against Qatar—so long as it benefits “the nation they actually care about: Israel.”
Since Carlson claims that supporting Israeli attacks against Qatar is bad for the United States, does he believe the inverse—supporting Qatar against Israel—is good for the United States? Apparently…
Carlson opines that “America’s new commitment [to Qatar]”—one that treats any new attack on Qatar as an attack on the United States—is by contrast in the interest of the United States, because it serves as “a deterrent that even [Benjamin Netanyahu] is unlikely to ignore,” thus making Qatar—a treasure that every US citizen should cherish (my precious…)—entirely safe from Israel.
Aside from what Carlson perceives as the perfect intersection of Qatari and US interests, which he never explains, and what he perceives as the null intersection between Israeli and US interests, also never explained, Carlson expresses a second opinion that I consider diagnostic.
The Israeli attack on the Hamas terrorist leaders—where they hid under their Qatari patron’s wing—lacked any just cause in Carlson’s view. The way he frames it, the injured party is Qatar. And a “pretty gracious” one, because Qatar “never sent rockets flying toward Tel Aviv in return.”
What this reveals is dramatic. Despite the fact that Qatar—using Hamas—massacred 1,200 innocent Israelis and took an additional 250 hostage, and despite the fact that Israel replied by carefully attempting to kill only the Hamas terrorists hiding in Qatar, Tucker Carlson thinks it would be appropriate now for Qatar to “sen[d] rockets flying toward Tel Aviv”—that is, against the Israeli civilians in that city.
Just in case you think I am overinterpreting, you should know that Tucker Carlson has no problem murdering civilians. He is on record saying to a shocked Ted Cruz that, if the Iranian bosses had really plotted to murder the US president, as Ted Cruz was claiming, then the United States “should just nuke Tehran,” where around 15 million civilians live.
Anyway, since, in response to Israel’s attempt to kill a handful of Hamas terrorists the Qataris didn’t launch a genocidal attack against the citizens of Tel Aviv—which attack Carlson considers fully within Qatari rights—the Qataris should be praised for their restraint. And the fact that “[Qatar’s] prime minister allowed Benjamin Netanyahu … off the hook with a disingenuous telephone apology,” says Carlson, should be considered “pretty gracious.”
But not only that.
Israel should be thankful that Qatar even exists, says Carlson. Because the entire point of US policy in Qatar, according to him, is to protect… Israel.
That’s right—that’s what he said.
“The Qataris allow America to have its largest Middle Eastern military base on their home soil for the main purpose of protecting Israel.”
He said that.
All that Qataris have ever meant to do—go figure—is to protect Israel! It is simply outrageous, Carlson implies, that anybody should have interpreted the October 7 massacres and hostage-taking—which Qatar engineered—in any other way.
Tucker Carlson has refuted himself
Tucker Carlson is categorically opposed to US protection for Israel. And he claims that stationing “[the US’s] largest Middle Eastern military base [in Qatar]”—a GIGANTIC foreign policy move—has “for … main purpose … protecting Israel.” Then why is he in favor of US protection for Qatar? Didn’t he say he was opposed to US policies that protect Israel?
It is a perfect contradiction.
Self-refutation is the hallmark of the antisemite, because the antisemite does not care to make sense, only that every ‘argument’ should ‘conclude’ in a manner that hurts the Jews. Tucker Carlson tries to intimidate pro-Israel readers who, according to him, go “on their usual rampages about how anyone who opposes their views is antisemitic.” Yet the problem here is not even that I disagree with Tucker Carlson, but that antisemitism is the only frame that can seemingly explain his statements.
I don’t usually twist a person’s last name for fun—that’s childish. But I have succumbed to this temptation: ‘Tucker Qatarlson,’ which Israel’s defenders have begun to use. It’s too perfect. Especially in light of what Tucker Qatarlson subsequently did, which was to follow this, in December, with a fawning interview of the Emir of Qatar.
Qatarlson never asked the Emir of Qatar the inconvenient question: What about the 2 million slaves that do all the work in Qatar?
But don’t you call him a “foreign shill.”
The larger issue
I think it is perfectly legitimate, from an ‘America First’ perspective, which I consider reasonable, to ask the question: ‘Is it in the interest of US citizens to protect Israel?’
By the same token, it is perfectly legitimate, again from an ‘America First’ perspective, to ask the question: ‘Is it in the interest of US citizens to protect Qatar?’
Tucker Carlson thinks that ‘America First’ means the US should protect Qatar, a leading jihadi power allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and supporting the deadliest jihadi terror group in the world: Hamas. It is a strange position to take for someone who is always boasting about his Christianity (“Christ is my savior,” constantly rolls off his lips) because jihadis around the world—many supported by the Muslim Brotherhood—are this very minute exterminating Christians all over the Muslim world. (We will soon discuss in greater detail this ongoing anti-Christian genocide that Tucker Carlson, the self-described Christian, seems to find entirely uninteresting.)
My own view is as follows.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and it is fighting the jihadis who say out loud they’ll either force Westerners to convert to Islam, or they’ll kill them. Simple logic tells you that if the Israelis stop the jihadis, that is in the interest of Westerners, including the citizens of the United States. Supporting the Israelis is a wise investment, because somebody else is doing the fighting for US citizens. It’s a cheap way to win. Thus, protecting Israel seems entirely consistent with an ‘America First’ policy.
But ‘protecting Israel’ does not describe the policy of the United States.
The question is settled by considering US policy towards Qatar—this is entirely diagnostic. Yet the question does not reduce to US support for Qatar. For the sake of thoroughness, therefore, I will next consider the larger question:
If the entire regional context is considered, is US policy—on balance—meant to support Israel? Or meant to support the jihadis?
One way to examine that is by comparing the total dollar value of US armament flows to Israel, and to Israel’s enemies. In the next piece, I give you those numbers. You’ll be shocked.
![DOES THE US SUPPORT ISRAEL? OR JIHAD? A simple-minded look at the numbers [PART 2]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9ly4!,w_1300,h_650,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62400654-407c-4bbe-ad1d-6a595abb82a0_1701x1077.png)
Federman, J., & Gambrell, J. (2025, September 9). Israeli strike in Qatar targets Hamas leaders as they weigh Gaza ceasefire proposal. AP News
https://apnews.com/article/qatar-explosion-doha-e319dd51b170161372442831a8023db5 (apnews.com)
As you've pointed out in numerous articles, the USA has had a policy of hypocrisy towards Israel from the start. Appear to be Israel's only friend in words and weapons sales that benefit the USA even more so than Israel, while adhering to a policy that abets and empowers Israel's most ferocious enemies.
I fear, though, that the hypocrisy policy is headed towards replacement by a more honest one and that does not bode well for either Israel or the USA. The Democrats, with the exception of a few remaining decent souls among them, are being replaced, city by city (or, G-d forbid, in CA possibly even by an entire state's attorney general) by an openly antisemitic red/green alliance of Islamists and the Democratic Socialists of America.
The Republican MAGA movement, on the other hand, is now without a doubt thoroughly infiltrated by agents working with Russia, some of whom are seeking to revive a Medieval form of Catholicism and to ally it with its Russian Orthodox sibling, while, others, like Qatarlson's gang, just want to transform the Republican party to one that is, like the Democrats, openly allied with the Arabs and hostile to Israel.
They will lose the Midterms over it and possibly, though their Charmless stooge, Vance, appears to be unaware of the long game, even run a Republican candidate in the presidential election who has no chance of winning. In the meantime, as the USA under the Democrats becomes indistinguishable from Weimar Germany, their plan is to cultivate their core constituency, so as to be ready to take power when the time is ripe -- and not let it go again.
It's very troubling that while the evil, from the DSA/Islamist alliance to the Qatarlson gang, are brewing their takeover schemes, the rest of the political class appears to be unable to lift their eyes past securing their own next election, or post election highly lucrative consulting or think tank careers.
Here's the "core constituency" plan that we should all fear, yet most seem unable to grasp: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-situation-and-the-solution?utm_source=substack&publication_id=49766&post_id=181216819&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&isFreemail=true&r=8t5cg&triedRedirect=true