Tucker Carlson, who has made false accusations against Israel’s treatment of Christians among his many lies about Jews and Israel, flew to Israel on Wednesday for an interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee inside Ben Gurion Airport, and left swiftly. He did not visit a single house of worship. He did not meet with a single Christian community leader. He did not walk through the Christian quarters of the Old City, or travel to the Galilee, where Christian communities have lived continuously for millennia.

He did not leave the airport.

For a man who spent an entire podcast episode telling his American audience that their coreligionists in Israel are being persecuted, oppressed, and driven from their homes by the State of Israel – with American tax dollars footing the bill – the decision to conduct a drive-through visit without once meeting the communities he claimed to champion raised the ire of many.

In early February, Carlson published an episode filmed near the Jordan River titled “Christian Persecution.” The episode featured interviews with the Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem and a Jordanian businessman, and built toward a sweeping indictment: that Israel systematically mistreats its non-Jewish minority populations, that American viewers are unknowingly funding this mistreatment through US foreign aid, and that Ambassador Mike Huckabee – a prominent figure in American evangelical circles and a close ally of President Trump – is personally complicit and “should be ashamed.”

The episode landed hard in certain corners of American conservative media, where Carlson has spent recent years positioning himself as a critic of US support for Israel and a self-styled defender of persecuted Middle Eastern minorities.

Ambassador Huckabee, a former governor and former presidential candidate, was not inclined to let the attack stand unanswered. On February 5th, he responded on X with a direct challenge: “Hey @TuckerCarlson instead of talking ABOUT me, why don’t you come talk TO me?”

Carlson, who has previously platformed Holocaust deniers and gave a softball interview to Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, accepted.

Before examining what happened in that airport terminal, it is worth noting what Carlson told his audience, and how much of it holds up to scrutiny.

His central factual claim was that the Christian  population he was discussing is “far fewer in absolute numbers” in Israel than when the state was founded in 1948. This is not a matter of interpretation or political framing. It is simply false.

Data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, published as recently as late December 2025, tells a different story entirely. In 1949, approximately 34,000 members of this community lived within Israel’s borders. Today that number stands at roughly 185,000 – an increase of more than five-fold over the state’s history. Israel is, by the numbers, home to one of the only growing communities of this kind anywhere in the Middle East. In neighboring countries across the region, these communities have been devastated; driven out by war, persecution, and ethnic cleansing carried out by hostile Muslim regimes and terror organizations. In Israel, they have grown.

This population does represent a smaller share of Israel’s total population today than in 1948 – dropping from around 10% to under 2% – but that shift reflects the dramatic growth of Israel’s Jewish and Arab Muslim populations, not any decline in the community itself. It is a statistic that sounds alarming but was twisted out of context by Carlson.

Carlson also claimed the US is funding “the cultural and religious life of the region” through its aid to Israel, a statement he never substantiated and which conflates military assistance – directed overwhelmingly toward defense cooperation – with something it is not.

Perhaps most revealingly, Carlson’s own interview subject undercut the episode’s thesis in real time. When Carlson told viewers that “what Ambassador Huckabee is doing is shameful and he’s going to have to answer for it,” the Archbishop himself stepped in to say: “I don’t want to blame Huckabee for this.” On the incidents of Jewish extremists harassing clergy in Jerusalem, the Archbishop himself described the perpetrators as “fringe groups” and “radicals,” a characterization that fit poorly with the sweeping indictment Carlson was constructing around it.

The episode, notably, included no Israeli response whatsoever.

The airport visit becomes still more striking when set against what Carlson chose not to do.

According to reports, leaders of the very communities Carlson spent an episode claiming to advocate for reached out and offered to meet with him personally. They offered to arrange special tours of significant historic sites across the country. They wanted to show him their communities, their institutions, their lives.

Tucker Carlson did not respond.

He flew into Ben Gurion Airport, filmed an interview with Ambassador Huckabee inside the terminal complex, and was back in the air by 3 p.m. The community leaders who had extended a hand of welcome to the man who claimed to speak for their cause were not afforded so much as a phone call in return.

The visit comes at a moment of unusual turbulence within American conservatism over the question of Israel. What was once a near-unanimous position in Republican politics — strong support for the US-Israel alliance — has become an increasingly sharp internal debate, driven in no small part by Carlson’s media platform and the wing of the right he speaks for.

The tension has apparently reached the highest levels. According to Melissa Francis, a former television news anchor who has been active in pro-Israel advocacy since October 7th and who was recently interviewed at the Jerusalem Post studios, President Donald Trump has personally urged Carlson to ease up.

“President Trump told Tucker Carlson to ‘turn down the temperature’ on the GOP rift over Israel,” Francis told the Jerusalem Post.