Tucker Carlson Receives a World War II Education

Since leaving Fox News, Tucker Carlson’s talents as a debater have atrophied, likely due to a lack of exercise.

As an independent journalist, Carlson tends to interview people who share his conspiratorial worldview. In these lengthy conversations, Carlson will nod along as his guests proffer bizarre theories about how things really work, interjecting to amplify, but rarely to contradict, the latest conspiracy theory du jour.

All those friendly interviews with like-minded guests have left Carlson unprepared to deal with serious pushback from someone who knows his subject and is constitutionally incapable of being riled up by the veteran broadcaster’s routine.

Carlson met such a person in his most recent guest, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former member of Parliament who advocates building up the British military as a means of deterring further Russian aggression.

What began as a conversation about whether Britain should prepare for a possible conflict with Russia ultimately devolved into Carlson arguing that he “never understood” why Britain fought in World War II in the first place. Rees-Mogg’s country is worse off culturally and economically for having fought the war, Carlson asserts, refusing to alter course when confronted with Rees-Mogg’s evidence to the contrary.

Carlson lays out a theory of WWII that relies on the false premise that war with Hitler could easily have been avoided had allied leaders wished to do so. He implies that Hitler was simply correcting the wrongs done to Germany at the conclusion of World War I and had no design to occupy Great Britain.

“I’m certainly not here defending Hitler,” Carlson said before going on to argue that “the idea that Hitler just randomly rolled into Poland is a lie.”

“The truth is that Germany had big parts carved out of it, including parts of Prussia.” He further argues that the U.K. had “nothing to do with” the Treaty of Versailles, which assigned the previously German provinces of Posen and Western Prussia to Poland. However, the U.K. played a key role in convening and negotiating the treaty. And despite Carlson’s suggestion that Hitler was interested only in overturning the Versailles Treaty, Hitler did not stop at Posen and the Danzig Corridor, but went on to occupy the entirety of Western Poland in September 1939.

Pressed on what would have become of the U.K. had it not to gone to war with Germany, Rees-Mogg points out that his country’s entire cultural inheritance, including its language, would have been trampled.

“We’d be speaking German,” Rees-Mogg says.

That outcome, Carlson suggests, occurred anyway by other means, namely mass migration.

“Who cares?” Carlson said. “There are a lot of people in Britain who can’t speak English. So it would be nice to have at least a European language spoken in your country.”

Educated in a milieu that prizes debate, Rees-Mogg ably deconstructs Carlson’s arguments and lays down a marker to show his audience where Carlson’s rhetorical moves were leading him.

“You’re verging on defending Hitler,” Rees-Mogg says. “I think this is not really what you want to be doing.”

Carlson replies: “Yeah, I guess I’m just a secret Nazi. I’m actually not a secret Nazi . . . and hardly a public Nazi.”

“I’m reassured,” Rees-Mogg deadpans in a subtly devastating blow.

The U.K. has its problems, as Rees-Mogg conceded, but hosting U.S. troops is not one of them. Carlson, however, seemed convinced that the U.S. posed a great threat to British sovereignty. Rees-Mogg responded by making the simple point that the U.K. and the U.S. have shared security interests, which are secured by having American troops on British soil.

But the arguments over WWII and its legacy were really a proxy for the debate over whether and to what degree the West should be supporting Ukraine in defending itself from Russian aggression.

Carlson, who has interviewed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and spoken favorably about Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, told Rees-Mogg he “never cared” that Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 because Ukraine “is the most corrupt country in the world.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Carlson’s latest interview shows he “needs help. Serious help.”

“When it seemed impossible for Toxic Tucker to descend deeper into the sewer here he goes opining that U.K. should have let Nazis take over,” he posted on X. “Forget that Hitler murdered 11 million people? I thought Tucker was against killing?”

Last year, NR published a lengthy essay on Carlson’s “dark turn.”

After his firing from Fox News in 2023, Carlson established his self-named podcast and later hosted white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper.

When Cooper appeared on the show, he argued that Winston Churchill, not Hitler, was the “chief villain” of World War II.

Weeks later, Carlson invited on Fuentes, who has called Hitler “awesome,” “right,” and “f***ing cool.”

Carlson behaved so deferentially in his interview with Putin in 2024 that the Russian dictator himself said he “did not get full satisfaction” from the interview.

“To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions,” Putin said. “I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.”

Headline Fail of the Week

The BBC took down an article on “How the bare nails trend became a class issue” after it received backlash online.

The since-removed piece explained how leaving fingernails unpainted could perpetuate “White supremacist” beauty standards and potentially stigmatize black, Latino, and Asian communities that popularized heavily designed nails.

“That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities,” beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo told the BBC.

“They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.”

The story was ultimately removed and was replaced with an editor’s note saying the article “has been removed pending editorial review.” However, the original page now returns a 404 error message.

Media Misses

• New York magazine’s new men’s style issue features a female, Elliot Page. A shirtless Page was featured on one of the issue’s multiple covers and was quoted in a piece called “The Boys in the Baths.” “I went to a bathhouse recently,” Page told the mag. “I’ve only in the past couple of years been like, ‘Yeah, that sounds nice, to like go somewhere and sit around in your body like that.’ I do sing in the shower sometimes,” Page said. “The same songs and lyrics will get stuck in my head, and I don’t know why. Like ‘Do you believe in life after love?’ That’s one I’ll belt out. Or ‘The Sound of Music’: I’ve never seen the movie, which seems crazy, but for some reason I find myself belting out that song in the shower. I can’t explain it.”
• CNN’s Jake Tapper apparently fails to see the hypocrisy in his recent claims that the “cocoon of tribalism is no doubt cozy for those of brittle spirit . . . I think it’s pretty clear that certain leaders and certain folks in ideological media and the algorithms on our phone are giving out cheap endorphin hits by introducing you to people to hate. Whether politicians or podcasts, these people are doing so they can make money and accrue power. Hate is easy. Hate is lazy. It’s comfort food for the weak. But they’re selling to us — they’re selling it to us because it works.”

There’s truly nothing sillier for Jake Tapper to lecture about than “the cocoon of tribalism.” Anti-Trump tribalism is the hourly CNN formula. Tapper thinks he can denounce “certain folks in ideological media” for spewing hate as if CNN isn’t “ideological media” or spewing hate. https://t.co/w5HLhCyjHU

— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 5, 2026