Vance Downplays US Antisemitism, Claims That ‘Consensus On Israel Is Eroding’

NEW YORK (VINnews) — US Vice President JD Vance claimed in an interview that only a small percentage of Americans are antisemitic, and that their views are a “real backlash” to American foreign policy, with a need for debate over Israel.

“Because 99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish,” Vance says in the interview with Unherd.

“What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy. I think we already had that conversation and not try to shut it down. Most Americans aren’t antisemitic. They’re never going to be antisemitic, and I think we should focus on the real debate,” he says.

“Now, I happen to believe that Israel is an important ally, that there are certain things that we’re certainly going to work together on,” he says.

“But we’re also going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel, and that’s OK. And we should be able to say, ‘We agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue,’” Vance says.

“Having that conversation is, I think, much less comfortable for a lot of people, because they want to focus on Nick Fuentes instead of on: why is Nick Fuentes gaining popularity or gaining notoriety?” says Vance, referring to the antisemitic podcaster.

Vance says that judging people “whether they’re Jewish or white or anything else” is “disgusting.”

“I think that Nick Fuentes, his influence within Donald Trump’s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the Right, is vastly overstated, and frankly, it’s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel,” he says.

Speaking at the Turning Point USA conference yesterday, Vance, who is being backed by senior Republicans for a 2028 presidential run, declined to condemn the antisemitism that is roiling the Republican Party and the conference itself, stressing that “we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

On its face, this sounds reasonable. Debate about US aid, alliances, and overseas military engagement is legitimate and necessary. But for Israelis, the subtext is unmistakable: antisemitism is being reframed as policy disagreement, and the burden of proof is shifting away from those spreading antisemitic ideas and toward those objecting to them.

This distinction matters because the current American debate is not taking place in a vacuum. Vance made his comments amid a very public fight within the MAGA movement over the normalization of figures who traffic in explicit antisemitism, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conspiracy-peddling influencers like Candace Owens. When Vance declines to draw clear red lines, arguing instead against “purity tests,” it signals tolerance for an ecosystem in which antisemitism is increasingly treated as just another controversial opinion.

For Israel, this is not an abstract concern. For decades, bipartisan American support for Israel rested on a moral consensus that antisemitism is not merely another viewpoint, and that attacks on Jews, whether rhetorical or physical, demand firm condemnation. Vance’s comments suggest that this consensus is eroding, particularly on the American right, where “America First” rhetoric is being used to recast hostility toward Israel as principled skepticism rather than prejudice.

That shift was on full display at the conference. Prominent conservative voices openly accused pro-Israel figures of dual loyalty, blamed Israel for political violence without evidence, and portrayed Jewish influence as corrosive to American interests. Yet Vance’s response was to minimize the problem and emphasize unity over exclusion. For Israelis, the message is troubling: the priority is preserving a political coalition, even if that means accommodating people who openly flirt with antisemitic tropes.

The danger here is not that Republicans will suddenly “hate Jews,” as Vance put it. It is that antisemitism is being laundered through the language of foreign policy realism and free speech, making it harder to call out and easier to dismiss. When hostility toward Israel becomes indistinguishable from mainstream debate, Jewish communities pay the price first.