Vice President JD Vance is rejecting claims that antisemitism is gaining traction inside the Republican Party, pushing back on a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers and commentators who say the movement has a festering problem it refuses to confront.

In an interview with NBC News marking his first year in office, Vance said he simply doesn’t see what figures like Sen. Ted Cruz have been warning about.

“When I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding,” Vance said. While calling antisemitism “wrong” and “fundamentally anti-American and anti-Christian,” he insisted the problem is limited to a few bad actors. “In any bunch of apples, you have bad people,” he added. “I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.”

The remarks are Vance’s most direct response yet to Cruz and other prominent conservatives who have spent weeks urging the party to confront hostility toward Jews within its own ranks. Their anxiety grew after Tucker Carlson — a close ally of both Trump and Vance — hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast, a move that alarmed Jewish conservatives and GOP strategists who say Fuentes’ influence among young right-wing activists and staffers is far greater than party leaders publicly acknowledge.

Fuentes, whose “groyper” movement traffics in explicitly antisemitic rhetoric, has described “organized Jewry” as a threat to American cohesion. Several Jewish conservatives recently warned at a private gathering that Vance’s approach — particularly his unwillingness to criticize Carlson’s decision to give Fuentes a platform — suggests the administration is underestimating the problem.

Trump has dismissed the concerns, defending Carlson and saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” The president himself met with Fuentes and antisemitic rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he did not know Fuentes, a dynamic that still haunts GOP leaders seeking to distance themselves from extremist elements.

Vance has followed a similar pattern. He defended Carlson’s son from accusations of antisemitism earlier this year but has made no comment on Carlson’s Fuentes interview. And his October exchange with a college student — in which he answered a question about Jews and Israel without addressing the antisemitic framing — sparked fresh criticism that he was unwilling to challenge bigotry from within his own base.

Yet even as he pushed back on concerns about the right, Vance volunteered unexpected praise for several progressive figures: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Vance called Mamdani “fascinating,” citing his focus on affordability issues in New York — despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of American Jews view Mamdani as anti-Israel and antisemitic, according to a recent poll. “Obviously, I’m not a communist,” Vance said, “but… he’s at least listening to people.”

“Most politicians — it’s a very low bar — don’t even listen to people,” he added. “I would put Mamdani, Bernie, and Ro Khanna in the category of those who, at least sometimes, they are.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)