Tucker Carlson is facing widespread backlash after he gave airtime to a baseless and antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming Jewish people were genetically immune to COVID-19.

During Monday’s episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, the former Fox News host echoed and expanded on an earlier claim by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that COVID-19 was “tailored” to harm certain ethnic groups more than others. Carlson’s guest, author and self-styled whistleblower Andrew Huff, told Carlson the claim was “scientifically true,” referencing a “finding” that people of Jewish ancestry were affected differently by the virus.

“There was a finding in a scientific publication that two different populations … of people of Jewish ancestry — depending on which line they’re from — one was more heavily impacted than the others,” Huff said. Carlson replied, “You mean Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.”

The claim that Jewish people were immune to COVID-19 — a theory first spread by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2023 and discredited by scientists worldwide — has its roots in a long history of antisemitic myths that falsely cast Jews as both the cause and the cure for global calamities. Historians note that similar rumors fueled deadly pogroms in medieval Europe, where Jews were accused of poisoning wells during outbreaks of plague.

Public health experts have repeatedly emphasized that no scientific evidence supports the idea of COVID-19 being genetically “targeted” toward or against any ethnic group.

The exchange triggered immediate outrage across the political spectrum, with Jewish groups accusing Carlson of legitimizing age-old antisemitic tropes — and even conservative commentators blasting him for reviving conspiracy theories once used to justify persecution and violence against Jews.

The Anti-Defamation League called Carlson’s remarks “dangerous and disgraceful,” warning that framing Jews as genetically distinct or biologically protected from disease “feeds directly into centuries-old antisemitic myths that fueled massacres and pogroms.”

Arynne Wexler, a right-wing commentator, drew the historical parallel even more sharply. “Europeans blamed the Jews for the Black Death,” she wrote on X. “That led to massacres. We’re talking thousands of Jews slaughtered, burned alive, entire communities annihilated. Tucker isn’t creative — he’s recycling blood libel.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) mocked the notion that “the Jews were running the Wuhan Institute for Virology,” calling it absurd. RedState columnist Bonchie dismissed Carlson’s segment as “clownish,” writing that “anyone still peddling the idea that COVID was engineered to spare Jews should be laughed out of public life.”

The controversy marks the latest in a string of incidents in which Carlson has been accused of promoting antisemitic or extremist ideas. Just last month, Israeli outlets and U.S. Jewish groups condemned Carlson for promoting conspiracies surrounding the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)