Vance Stands By Friendship With Tucker Carlson After Commentator Calls For Trump’s Impeachment

WASHINGTON D.C (VINnews) — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday refused to break with Tucker Carlson after the former Fox News host called for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, telling reporters that political disagreements should not determine who remains a friend.

Asked about unease over his long relationship with Carlson and whether he was ducking the controversy, Vance said he was “not avoiding addressing anything.”

“Everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends,” Vance said. “I think it’s very obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with. He said some things about the President of the United States that I think are just wrong.”

He then drew a brighter line around personal loyalty than around Carlson’s record.

“I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them. I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go,” Vance said. “What a travesty it is that in the United States of America we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be.”

The remarks came after Carlson argued that any president who “actively considers first use of nuclear weapons” should be removed from office “immediately,” comments made amid the administration’s confrontation with Iran. Carlson, once a key booster of Vance’s rise, has spent months attacking Trump’s foreign policy and suggesting the war serves Israeli rather than American interests.

Vance’s answer will do little to reassure Jewish Republicans and pro-Israel conservatives who have watched Carlson platform antisemites, promote Qatar as a more natural U.S. partner than Israel, and recycle talking points long used to smear the Jewish state. Carlson helped sell Trump on Vance as running mate in 2024. He has remained close enough that critics still describe Vance as Carlson’s political product.

That closeness is the problem. Friendship is not a shield when the friend is mainstreaming people and ideas that treat Jews as a collective suspect class and treat Israel as the source of America’s wars. Vance has been willing to condemn Nick Fuentes by name. He has been far more cautious about Carlson, the figure who actually gave Fuentes a larger stage.

At this week’s Republican Jewish Coalition gathering, Vance again declined to criticize Carlson directly when asked about podcasters who have platformed antisemites. He instead spoke in general terms about “blood libel” and said the Christian gospel is “the solution” to antisemitism — language critics said tracked Carlson’s own framing more than it confronted it.

Vance is entitled to keep personal friends. He is not entitled to pretend that association is cost-free. A vice president who may seek the presidency in 2028 cannot treat Carlson’s record as a private disagreement while Jewish communities face rising antisemitism and while Carlson questions America’s alliance with Israel.

Loyalty to a friend is not the same as loyalty to the country, or to the truth. If Vance believes Carlson is “just wrong” about the president, he should say so without the lecture about friendship. Until he does, the association will keep defining him more clearly than his denials.