LAS VEGAS — Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) called Tucker Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America” in remarks on Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference, in what was an unusually direct rebuke of the far-right commentator who is facing backlash over his recent friendly interview with the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

“He has chosen to take on the mantle of leader of a modern day Hitler Youth,” Fine, a freshman congressman from Florida who is one of four Jewish Republicans in the House, said of Carlson. “To broadcast and feature those who celebrate the Nazis, those who call for the extermination of Israel, to defend Hamas, to even criticize President Trump for stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Fine’s remarks came as the RJC now reckons with rising antisemitism within the Republican Party in the wake of the Fuentes interview last week, where Carlson, in a podcast conversation that ran for more than two hours, failed to challenge his guest’s praise for Adolf Hitler and Holocaust denial, among other antisemitic views. 

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, has also drawn criticism for standing by Carlson in the days after the interview, even as he has condemned Fuentes.

But while many speakers at the RJC summit have alluded to anti-Jewish prejudice on the right, few have explicitly mentioned Carlson or the Heritage Foundation in their own remarks, instead focusing largely on left-wing antisemitism.

“I can stand up here all day and take shots at the left,” Fine said in a ballroom at the Venetian Resort, standing in front of a long line of younger attendees who lined up before him with red posters declaring “Tucker is not MAGA,” a line he used in his speech.

“But I’m here for the kids down here, because it’s easy to talk about antisemitism on the left,” Fine continued. “I want to talk about the dark force rising on our side. Multiple speakers have talked about the rise of antisemitism on the right. But it is not enough to speak in platitudes or generalities about the fight. We must call evil by its name.”

The congressman said that Carlson’s “fall from grace has been one of the most extraordinary implosions in political history, and the rapidity of it has created real challenges for us all, because our friends don’t have our shared experience.”

“I can deal with this with my colleagues in the House,” he said. “See, they remember the Tucker of five years ago. They don’t live with antisemitism every day. They don’t think about it the way that we do, and it’s jarring for them to try to understand: How did this person become who he is today? But the challenge is, he’s inspired a movement of hate in our midst, and I’m not done calling people out.”

In his speech, Fine also said that he “was supposed to do an event with” the Heritage Foundation next week but had since changed his mind. “They don’t know what I’m about to tell you,” he told the crowd. “Right now we’re canceling it.”

“They have no future in my office, and I will be calling on all of my colleagues on the Republican side to do the same,” he said. “If those who support Tucker Carlson want to see a venomous coalition,” he said, referring to language from Roberts’ recent defense of Carlson, “all they need to do is go look in the mirror.”

In addition to Carlson and the Heritage Foundation, Fine turned his sights on two of his GOP colleagues, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), both outspoken critics of Israel who have faced accusations of using antisemitic rhetoric.

“Some days, I marvel at their stupidity, other days, at their evil,” he said. “It makes my stomach crawl that I have to sit in the same room with them.”

“Now we have to choose: Will we ignore these embarrassments to our party?” he asked in his concluding remarks. “When we pretend they don’t matter or that they don’t exist, we make the same mistakes that Democrats made so many years ago.” 

“Today in this room and at this time, we speak with one loud and convincing truth,” Fine said to cheers from the audience. “We will not let our party fall to this darkness.”