Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, who has hosted Holocaust deniers and antisemitic influencers on his podcast, used his address at the memorial for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday to compare Kirk’s assassination to the killing of Jesus. 

The former Fox News host began his remarks to the more than 70,000 people in attendance at State Farm Stadium in Glendale by noting that the political engagement brought on by Kirk’s killing “actually reminds me of my favorite story ever,” before offering an account of how Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. While he never brought up the Jewish people by name, he made references to Jewish culture to suggest that he was referring to the antisemitic trope that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. 

“It’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do: just telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up,’” Carlson said.

“I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him. That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.’ It doesn’t work that way,” he continued.

Carlson, who spoke for just under six minutes, then quoted the beatitude from Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He connected the passage to Kirk’s political message, making the argument that the slain conservative activist “was bringing the gospel to the country. He was doing the thing that the people in charge hate most, which is calling for them to repent.”

“How is Charlie’s message different? Charlie was a political person who was deeply interested in coalition building and getting the right people in office, because he knew that vast improvements are possible politically, but he also knew that politics is not the final answer. It can’t answer the deepest questions, actually, that the only real solution is Jesus,” Carlson said. “Politics at its core is a process of critiquing other people and getting them to change. Christianity, the gospel message, the message of Jesus, begins with repentance.”

Carlson went on to praise Kirk for not having “hate in his heart” and being able to “forgive other people” by following “a call to change our hearts from Jesus,” before acknowledging his own shortcomings.

“Charlie was fearless at all times, truly fearless. To his last moment, he was unafraid. He was not defensive, and there was no hate in his heart. I know that because I’ve got a little hate compartment in my heart, and I would often express that surely about various people,” Carlson said. “He would always say, ‘That’s a sad person, that’s a broken person, that’s a person who needs help, that’s a person who needs Jesus’. He said that in private, because he meant it.” 

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said on Tuesday that calls for genocide are “not tolerable” but stopped short of saying whether the phrase “from the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be considered antisemitic by university administrators.

“If there are students who are feeling that statements by students are being referred to genocide, or they’re feeling unsafe on campus, it is a responsibility of a university leader to get involved,” Cardona told reporters at a Tuesday briefing. “This is an opportunity for leadership to bring people together to talk about it and to set clear lines on how you communicate while not making students feel threatened or unsafe on campus.”

When pressed to say whether the “from the river, to the sea” phrase can be construed as an antisemitic call for genocide, Cardona declined to weigh in.

“That’s why I say we investigate each case, and it’s difficult for me to make a statement here about that. If students are feeling unsafe with that, it’s the responsibility of leadership to act,” said Cardona. “I believe antisemitism can include anti-Zionist statements,” he said, and “we take that into account when looking at cases.”

Late on Tuesday, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, called on Cardona to resign because of his comments, saying “there is no excusing Secretary Cardona’s cowardly evasion of the antisemitic character of the phrase ‘from the river, to the sea.’”

A department spokesperson on Wednesday sent Jewish Insider a statement offering further context on Cardona’s views about the phrase.

“Secretary Cardona has been consistent that calls for genocide must never be tolerated, that antisemitism can include anti-Zionist statements, and that university leaders have a responsibility to act when students feel unsafe on campus,” the spokesperson said. “He and the Department are acutely aware that many find the chant threatening and antisemitic. Students should never feel unsafe on campuses.”

Another senior department official at the Tuesday meeting pointed out that speech is only “a component of the kinds of harms that we can see.” 

“Students are sometimes surrounded, students are sometimes barricaded, students are sometimes attacked. We are seeing harassment of a variety of stripes,” the official continued.

Speaking to reporters from Jewish media outlets, Cardona touted the Department of Education’s work to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate at American schools and universities since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel. 

“The words of the students really echoed in my mind when they communicated that antisemitism in some parts of our country has become normalized,” said Cardona, a former Connecticut teacher and school administrator. “At the Department of Education, this became an all-hands-on-deck moment. After the attacks, the terrorist attacks, we really recognized that we had to step up.” 

The department has opened 60 investigations into allegations of discrimination on the basis of “shared ancestry,” a category that includes antisemitic, anti-Arab and Islamophobic discrimination, since October. It has not yet reached settlements in any of the cases and acknowledged that resolutions for the cases are months, if not years, away.

The Office of Civil Rights, which investigates the allegations, is severely understaffed, Cardona said. He wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) requesting additional funding in November.

“We need to make sure we have the tools to do our jobs to enforce civil rights systems,” Cardona said. He highlighted other work the department has done since October to address rising antisemitism — including holding webinars for university administrators and leaders in K-12 school districts, visiting campuses to meet students affected by antisemitism and making it easier for students to file complaints alleging antisemitism discrimination.

Many of these steps were described as addressing both antisemitism and Islamophobia. The department has opened roughly twice as many investigations into antisemitic discrimination as the number of investigations into Islamophobic discrimination. Some Jewish community advocates have taken issue with the frequent grouping of the two in public language from Biden administration officials. 

“I recognize and I acknowledge that some people have expressed that to me to say, ‘Look, this is what we’re dealing with, and this is a unique thing.’ And when I speak to Jewish leaders, many of them are saying, ‘Look, even before October 7, it was on the rise.’ So it’s not to not acknowledge the challenge of antisemitism,” said Cardona, who claimed that antisemitism and Islamophobia are often grouped together to make it easier for people looking for resources on department websites.

“We do have a strategy to counter antisemitism, and that is focused on antisemitism. So I respect the sentiment of those folks, and I think I want to be very clear that the way we do it, the way I’ve set it up on our website, I can’t speak for everyone else, is to make sure that these materials that are — many of them — are for both groups … [and] are quickly and easily accessible, and no other reason,” said Cardona.

Antisemitism is increasing not just on college and university campuses, but also at K-12 schools in the U.S., where it takes a different form, said Cardona.

“What I heard from younger students is, ‘I have to hide who I am,’” said Cardona. “They might hide the sticker of the Israeli flag on their computer, or they might tuck in the Star of David, where before they didn’t. That, to me, as an educator, as an educational leader, is very concerning. When students can’t be who they are unapologetically because of the conditions on campus, that to me is an unsafe learning environment, if you can’t be yourself.” 

This story was updated on Feb. 7 at 3:42 p.m.