Vice President JD Vance defended his friendship with antisemitic podcaster Tucker Carlson at a White House press briefing on Thursday, saying that he would not “play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them.”

Vance made the comments after being asked to respond to the concerns raised by his continued association with the far-right commentator and accusations that he has been “avoiding addressing a lot of these issues,” as Carlson has increasingly used his show to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. 

Vice President JD Vance defended his friendship with Tucker Carlson at a White House press briefing, saying that he would not “play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them.”

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While Vance criticized Carlson’s attacks on President Donald Trump and his recent comments expressing support for Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed over former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) in Michigan’s Senate race, he did not mention Carlson’s extreme rhetoric and views.

“Look, I’m not avoiding addressing anything. Everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends,” Vance said. “I think it’s very obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with.”

The vice president acknowledged his friendship with Carlson again before urging all Americans to maintain their personal relationships regardless of political disagreements, explaining that his “attitude towards this” was shaped by his and Second Lady Usha Vance’s experience on the campaign trail in 2024.

“I remember when I became the vice presidential nominee, one of the hardest things for me personally is not when people attacked me, but when people attacked my wife, including friends of hers who knew her heart, who knew what a good person she was,” Vance said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘What a travesty it is that in the United States of America we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be.’ So yeah, Tucker is a friend of mine.”

“Tucker is a friend despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things. And I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them. I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go,” he said. 

“If you have a disagreement with somebody politically, even over a deeply held issue, you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another. That’s how I try to live my life, and I encourage everybody else to do the same.”