JD Vance rejects claim that antisemitism is growing inside the GOP, breaking his silence on the topic

JTA – United States Vice-President JD Vance said on Thursday, 4 December, that he didn’t believe antisemitism was surging inside the Republican Party, pushing back on prominent conservatives who have raised alarm about hostility toward Jews among young right-wing activists. 

“I do think it’s important to call this stuff out when I see it. Also, when I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding,” Vance told NBC News in an interview marking his first year in office. 

Vance said antisemitism was wrong, stating that “judging anybody based on their skin colour or immutable characteristics, is fundamentally anti-American and anti-Christian”. Vance himself is a convert to Catholicism who recently said he hoped his Hindu wife chose to become a Christian in the future. 

“In any bunch of apples, you have bad people. But my attitude on this is we should be firm in saying antisemitism and racism is wrong,” Vance said. “It’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.” 

These remarks amount to Vance’s most direct response to Senator Ted Cruz and other prominent figures on the right who have in recent weeks warned of rising antisemitism among conservatives especially after Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally, hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast. 

Vance’s comments land amid a larger, unresolved debate inside Republican circles over how seriously to treat the rise of explicitly antisemitic figures such as Fuentes, whose online “groyper” movement has attracted a following among young GOP (Grand Old Party) staffers and activists. Jewish conservatives, and other right-leaning commentators have expressed alarm at Fuentes’ influence, estimating that significant numbers of junior Republican staffers consume his content. Fuentes has described “organised Jewry” as a threat to American unity. 

Vance’s silence on antisemitism was a prominent topic of conversation at a recent confab for Jewish conservatives, where speakers questioned his close association with Carlson. 

President Donald Trump recently defended Carlson after the podcast host interviewed Fuentes, saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” Carlson campaigned for Trump in 2024 and remains influential within the administration. Trump himself met with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he didn’t know who Fuentes was. 

Vance has taken a similarly restrained approach. He defended Carlson’s son, Buckley, from accusations of antisemitism without addressing Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. In October, he was criticised for responding to a college student’s question about Jews and Israel without acknowledging its antisemitic framing.