CORRECTION, Oct. 13, 2023: Tucker Carlson co-founded The Daily Caller. An earlier version of this article named a different site.
The war in Israel has not only torpedoed peace talks and widened the gap between Middle-Eastern nations; it has also driven a wedge between individuals across the globe, including conservative Americans.
Case in point: Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson.
Normally, the two would be considered allies in the conservative cause. Shapiro is a co-founder of The Daily Wire, while Carlson co-founded The Daily Caller.
The two are usually found on the same side of the issues as they highlight and document the skirmishes in America’s culture wars.
But since Saturday’s brutal attack on Israel, which claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people — many of them civilian women and children — Shapiro, who is an Orthodox Jew, has had little patience for those who have called for any degree of restraint in Israel’s retaliation.
He came down hard on the host of “Tucker on X” after Carlson’s interview with Vivek Ramaswamy this week.
Carlson, known as a strong critic of America’s involvement in foreign wars, voiced his thoughts to Ramaswamy, indicating we have enough problems on our own shores without getting involved in yet another overseas fight.
.@benshapiro responds to @TuckerCarlson’s moral equivalency struggle session here. ? https://t.co/cxoOYp3mGT pic.twitter.com/uhENhg2wI9
— Defiant Baptist (@DefiantBaptist) October 11, 2023
Shapiro played a clip of Carlson talking with Ramaswamy about America’s drug crisis and comparing it to what happened in Israel.
“The scale of the outrage among Republican presidential candidates was so much more intense,” Carlson told his guest. “One of them even took to a bullhorn and started yelling about it. I get it — but no one would think to do that about the hundred thousand American young people murdered every year …”
Before rolling the clip, Shapiro pointed out that the video playing alongside Carlson showed Hamas kidnapping a woman.
“He’s showing video of their rape, as he’s talking about it,” Shapiro marveled.
“To go this far afield to link these issues — the only reason you’re doing this is you wish to downplay the atrocity that just happened in Israel,” Shapiro continued angrily.
“You’re not up-playing the atrocity of what’s happening on American streets. Those are two different types of atrocities.”
“People who are addicted to fentanyl, sticking needles in their arms and overdosing, is a moral blight,” Shapiro conceded.
However, he added, “It is a moral atrocity and a moral evil for people to kidnap women, rape them and drag them back to the Gaza border. Those are not the same thing, and Tucker knows that.
“This is a cheap way of telling you not to look: ‘Don’t look! Stop caring. Because, after all, what does it matter?'”
“Again, I don’t know who thinks that’s a sophisticated point of view, especially when nobody is calling America to go to war with Iran,” Shapiro said. “The entire purpose of having an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean is to avoid that.
“But here is Tucker, playing — I don’t even know the game he’s playing. It’s just a dumb game.”
The deaths of drug addicts from imported illegal substances “is not the same thing!” Shapiro declared. “I promise you, it is not the same thing as a terrorist breaking into your home and murdering your children in their beds in front of you, and dragging your wife off to be raped in Gaza. That is not the same thing!
“Pretending that it is, is a moral blight; it’s idiocy. It’s just moral stupidity at the highest level.
“Of course we should care about what happens with fentanyl. Of course we should care! We should close our border — have I been unclear about this? Of course America should have closed borders when it comes to this sort of stuff.
“I’m on the same side as Tucker on that. I just don’t understand why he’s not on my side when it comes to Hamas has to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
“In any case, this sort of moral sophistication is predicated on only one of a few possible hypotheses: The most dark and terrible is the possibility that people just don’t give a d*** when Jews get killed by terrorists.
“I’m not accusing Tucker of that … in fact, I’m not even accusing the AOC’s of the world of that …
“What I am accusing them of is a moral blindness that must be caused by a complete flattening of the cultural landscape … in which everybody thinks the same way that we do and that every problem can be solved in the same way, and it is of no consequence whether evil walks the earth.”
Shapiro went on social media to heap more scorn on those who are condemning Israel’s aggressive retaliation for Saturday’s attack.
Hamas murders Jewish babies in their beds.
Media: “It must be the occupation.”
Hamas digs up water pipes and uses them for rockets.
Media: “Water shortages are Israel’s fault.”
Hamas stations civilians in direct line of fire.
Media: “Why won’t Israel protect civilians?”— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 12, 2023
One conservative commenter noted the rift in a social media post.
Ben Shapiro fighting with Tucker Carlson fighting with Vivek Ramaswamy is the clearest sign we’ve arrived at late stage Republicanism pic.twitter.com/2LW4RDl0gu
— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) October 12, 2023
“Ben Shapiro fighting with Tucker Carlson fighting with Vivek Ramaswamy is the clearest sign we’ve arrived at late stage Republicanism,” he observed.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
