LAS VEGAS — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke out against Tucker Carlson for giving a friendly platform to Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi influencer, on his podcast this week, calling it “a wake-up call” for the Republican Party as it grapples with rising antisemitism within its ranks.

“How many times does he have to play footsie with this antisemitic view of the Jewish people and Israel until you figure out that’s what he believes?” Graham said of Carlson in an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit at the Venetian Resort. 

Graham said that “antisemitism has been with us, and it’ll always be with us, and the goal is to limit it, fight back and contain it.”

“I am confident that if anybody in the Republican world ran for office as a member of Congress, for the Senate or any major elected office and spouted this garbage, it would get creamed,” Graham told JI. “This is a niche market. It won’t sell to a wider audience.”

Carlson, a frequent critic of Graham, has faced backlash this week for failing to challenge Fuentes’ antisemitic views, including praising Adolf Hitler and engaging in Holocaust denialism. During the interview, Fuentes railed against “organized Jewry” while Carlson expressed his disdain for Christian Zionists including Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, saying he had been seized by a “brain virus.”

“To suggest that evangelical Christians are confused or got it wrong says more about the critic than it does evangelical Christians,” Graham countered. “The guy that’s doing the talking is a raving antisemite white nationalist, and if you want to hook your wagon to that, you’ll have a very short journey in the Republican Party.”

Graham said that Carlson and Fuentes “did us all a favor by being so brazen. It’s kind of a wake-up call.”

Even as Carlson, a close ally of Vice President JD Vance, remains influential in the GOP, Graham argued that “being anti-Israel in the modern Republican Party is a death sentence to political viability.”

“We’re not gonna put up with that crap. We’re not that kind of party,” he said.

The South Carolina senator also joined other senators in raising concerns about the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, who has faced widespread criticism for defending Carlson’s interview and for soft-pedaling Fuentes views in a video he posted to social media on Thursday. “That’s the decision made, and we’ll see how well it plays in the marketplace,” Graham, who is facing a primary challenge next year from a former Heritage Foundation staffer, reiterated. 

Amid the criticism Friday, Roberts posted a follow-up statement on X where he condemned Fuentes’ “vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history” but made no further comment about Carlson.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who spoke at the RJC summit on Thursday night, and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have spoken out against right-wing antisemitism after Carlson’s Fuentes interview.

Vance also drew scrutiny this week from conservative Jewish critics after he spoke at a campus Turning Point USA event and avoided  forcefully confronting students who had asked him questions about Israel that used antisemitic tropes, such as suggesting Jewish control of U.S. politics and claiming that Jews oppress Christians.

Graham said he believed that the students were “espousing stereotypes about the Jewish people and the Jewish state,” which he called “pretty unnerving.”

“I think JD handled it well,” he said, but added: “I wish he would have been more direct.”

“I would have been real direct and said, ‘Let me tell you, if you think our relationship with Israel is less than beneficial, you’re ignorant. Israel’s fighting our fight,” he said. “My goal is to keep the threats over there so they don’t come here,” he added. “My goal is not to fight alone, to have other people fighting with us. And you can’t have a better partner in the fight than Israel.”

Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced bipartisan legislation last week aimed at eliminating loopholes used by museums and other stakeholders to continue possessing Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover.

Introduced on Thursday, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act would expand on Cornyn’s 2016 legislation of the same name, which was passed at the time by unanimous consent, by ending the Dec. 31, 2026, sunset date on the original bill and strengthen the existing procedural protections to ensure that victims’ claims are not dismissed due to non-merit-based factors such as time constraints. 

“The artwork wrongfully ripped from Jewish hands during the Holocaust bears witness to a chapter in history when evil persisted and the worst of humanity was on full display. I’m proud to introduce this legislation to support the Jewish people and Holocaust survivors by helping them recover art confiscated by the Nazis that they are rightfully owed and give them the justice and restitution they deserve,” Cornyn said in a statement. 

“The theft of art by the Nazi regime was more than a pilfering of property — it was an act of inhumanity. Our bipartisan effort seeks to strengthen measures to bring long overdue justice to families whose cherished art was brazenly stolen by the Nazis,” Blumenthal said. 

Many families of Holocaust victims in the U.S. who have located artwork from deceased relatives and sued to recover those items face the deadline at the end of next year before the statute of limitations sets in. Thousands of stolen works of art remain unreturned to their rightful owners from the Nazi plunder, and there are scores of ongoing cases to resolve disputes over ownership of those items. 

“Unfortunately, many museums, governments, and institutions have contradicted Congress’ intent and obstructed justice by stonewalling legitimate claims, obscuring provenance, and employing aggressive legal tactics designed to exhaust and outlast Survivors and their families. Rather than embracing transparency and reconciliation, too many have chosen to entrench and litigate, effectively preserving possession of stolen works rather than returning them to their rightful owners,” a press release for the bill states.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Fetterman (D-PA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Katie Britt (R-AL) co-sponsored the bill, which was endorsed by a number of Jewish organizations including Agudath Israel of America, the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, StandWithUs and World Jewish Congress, among others. 

“This legislation helps to right a historic wrong committed during one of the darkest chapters in history. By eliminating unnecessary legal obstacles, the HEAR Act establishes a clear path to restitution for Holocaust survivors and their families, ensuring that art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis can finally be returned to their rightful owners,” Tillis said.

Fetterman said in a statement, “Eighty years after the Holocaust, we have a moral responsibility to do right by the victims of these atrocities and their families. I’m grateful to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle in introducing the HEAR Act to help return artwork stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owners.”