US Politics
Ted Cruz compares Tucker Carlson to Zohran Mamdani in bizarre rant: ‘Very dangerous’
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz bizarrely compared conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson to democratic socialist New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the latest installment of the feud between the two conservatives.
Cruz was on the Straight Shooter with Stephen A. Smith podcast Thursday — a day before Mamdani was set to visit with President Donald Trump at the White House — when the host said he was “very uncomfortable” about Carlson.
Smith referenced Carlson’s recent sit-down with the white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes — a controversial move which caused fractures within the right-wing media universe over the future direction of the MAGA movement.
In response, Cruz began by claiming that antisemitism had “all but taken over” the Democratic party before he switched to Carlson, whom he said has “gone down a very dark path,” and likened him to Mamdani.
“One of the things when you go down the road of antisemitism, it very quickly leads you to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism,” Cruz told Smith in the latest episode of the podcast.
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“And Mamdani is a good example of that, where he’s an Islamist, but he’s also a socialist. And you look at Tucker [Carlson]…Tucker’s going down that road too, in a way that I think is very dangerous.”
The GOP senator’s comments came as Mamdani was due to sit down with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to meet for the first time since he claimed victory in the New York mayoral election.
The Independent has contacted Mamdani’s representatives for comment.
Cruz and Carlson have been at loggerheads for years but it has amped up since the former Fox News host’s interview with Fuentes.
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They clashed in a heated two-hour sitdown earlier this year that saw the right-wing pundit rage at the “sleazy, feline way” that Cruz implied he was an antisemite.
Cruz, a self-described Christian Zionist, was one of the earliest and loudest conservative critics of Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, and has used the growing controversy to stake out a claim “as a traditional, pro-interventionist Republican” ahead of 2028. In doing so, he has also called out his GOP colleagues for not forcefully calling out Carlson.
“My colleagues, almost to a person, think what is happening is horrible, but a great many of them are frightened because he has one hell of a big megaphone,” Cruz said in a speech at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention earlier this month.
During an appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit, where the Fuentes interview overshadowed the whole convention, the Texas lawmaker accused Carlson of spreading “a poison that is profoundly dangerous” while blasting the ex-Fox host for not pushing back on Fuentes’ rhetoric.
Carlson told his critics to “buzz off” following the backlash.
Justin Baragona contributed reporting
