Tucker Carlson closed the first night of AmericaFest 2025 with a somewhat humorous rebuttal to Ben Shapiro’s comments from earlier in the night before defining America First.
Carlson started his remarks with a joke about missing the first part of the program, which included Ben Shapiro’s sharp criticisms of Carlson.
“I hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful,” Carlson said. “I just want to say, I don’t think I did. Um, no, I’m just kidding. I watched it. I laughed. I laughed that kind of bitter, sardonic laugh that emerges from you when an upside-down world arrives, when your dog starts doing your taxes and you’re like, ‘Wait, it’s not supposed to work this way.’ To hear calls for like deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event – I’m like, what?”
Carlson criticized efforts to deplatform others.
“Even to use the word platform as a verb, which it’s not, it’s a noun,” he said. “Don’t steal my nouns. ‘Why haven’t you denounced somebody else?’ The whole like, red guard, cultural revolution thing that we so hated and feared on the Left, that we did everything we could to usher in a new time where you could have an actual debate. I mean, this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk’s public life. And, I think that, um, I think that he died for it. I really believe that.”
Tucker also acknowledged the pressure Charlie was put under because of he extended an invitation to Carlson for AmFest.
“Charlie stood firm in his often stated and deeply held belief that people should be able to debate and that if you have something valid to say, if you’re telling the truth, you ought to be able to explain it calmly and in detail to people who don’t agree with you and that you shouldn’t immediately resort to ‘Shut up racist.’ You shouldn’t immediately go to motive.
Carlson called out Shapiro for attacking a college student who asked about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel six decades ago. Shapiro questioned the student’s motive for even asking the question.
“Everyone listening should know that listening to you implicates them,” Carlson said. “And that they someday may be asked to denounce you and that friendship is not a reason to defend someone. Love is no defense. I kind of thought we’d reached the end of that. And, as far as I’m concerned, we have. And I’m not going to play by those rules. I’m not going to engage in that. If someone doesn’t like what I think, it’s fine with me as long as I get to express it. That’s my view.”
Carlson said Charlie’s core principle in his public life was the right of every person to express what they believe. And that principle, Carlson said, is rooted in Charlie’s Christian faith.
“We believe people should be able to say what they think because they have souls,” Carlson said. “They’re human beings created by God. They are not slaves. They are not animals. They are not objects. You cannot tell another human being to shut up, even ‘Shut up, racist,’ because you don’t own him. He is an independent, autonomous person created by God as an individual.”
Tucker then took on the notion that he is an “anti-semite.”
“Let me just affirm one final time – not only am I not an anti-semite, and would say so if I was, I’m not an anti-semite for a very specific reason. Not because it’s unpopular or my donors don’t like it – I don’t have any donors. I’m not an anti-semite because anti-semitism is immoral in my religion. It is immoral to hate people for how they were born, period.”
Carlson said that principle is universal, however, and applies to every person on Earth.
You may not, you are prohibited by my religion, which is Christianity, from hating people for how they were born because God created them with His spark, in His image, because they have souls,” he said. “You can disagree with them. You can hate their ideas. You may even find yourself, and I do, I’ll confess it, hating them for a moment. But you can’t hate everyone who’s like them. You can’t punish people for crimes they didn’t commit. That’s the basis of our justice system. That’s the basis of Christian ethics. That’s why we have what are called human rights. They apply to every human. Not just your group, not just my group, but every group, every human.”
Carlson said anti-semitism is just as wrong and immoral as hating any other group of people.
“That would include other groups in the United States that are hated and have been under attack for decades,” he said. “And that would include white men who did nothing to become white men. They were born that way. And just because you have a beef with a white man, let’s just say Donald Trump, doesn’t mean doesn’t mean you get to punish all the rest of the white men in the country.”
Yet American leaders in Congress, in the Biden Administration, on college campuses and in major U.S. corporations have engaged in a “systematic effort to hurt white men because they are white men,” Carlson said.
“That is racism,” he said. “That is precisely as bad as anti-semitism, but it is much more widespread and has been, so far, much more damaging. If you said nothing about that, or if you encouraged it by, say, cheering on BLM, which was an anti-white hate group, and said so, then you have no moral standing to lecture me about bias. Period.”
He went on to say that there are no permanent enemies. He said there is always a possibility people can recognize they have more in common than divides us.
“There is no such thing as blood guilt,” he said. “And collective punishment in this country, in the Middle East, anywhere on the planet is totally immoral. And if you want to know what makes America exceptional, it’s that idea.”
He called on the Anti-Defamation League to come out against white hate and to say outloud that “hate against whites is every bit as bad as hate against Jews.”
“It’s a universal principle or it’s not a principle,” Carlson said. “It’s just a preference. It’s just identity politics and we’ve had enough of that.”
As for the “MAGA Civil War,” Carlson said he doesn’t believe it is real. In fact, he said he believes it is fake. Instead, Carlson said people are jockeying for position in a post-Trump GOP. He believes the “MAGA Civil War” is being manufactured to try to stop J.D. Vance from becoming President in 2028.
The opposition wants to defeat America First ideology.
“Remember when they told us that’s a bigoted phrase,” Carlson asked. “And then they just decided to ignore it in favor of MAGA? But how do you Make America Great Again? By putting America first.”
America First, Carlson said, is a simple ideology to understand and is not complicated.
“The U.S. government, the largest organization in human history with the most well-funded military in history, ought to, in all the decisions it makes, put the interests of American citizens first,” Carlson said. “That’s it. The government ought to serve the people who pay for it, who elected them and in whose name the business of government is conducted.”
Carlson said if the American government is not operating on behalf of U.S. citizens then it is illegitimate.
“You actually have no right to rule. Period,” he said. “And if you disagree, tell me what the other legitimate justification is.”
Carlson said all he cares about now is that the people in charge of the country care about the country and love the people they lead.
“The President who truly loves his people will, over time, tend to make wiser decisions on their behalf,” he said. “But the leaders who don’t care at all, they’ll destroy your country. And that is absolutely what we’ve had.”
As for asking questions, Carlson said it is OK to ask questions.
“I thought that was like the whole reason we were against the Left,” he said. “They’re not going to force you to get up there and make ritual denunciations because this isn’t my religion, it’s politics.”
And politics, Carlson said, do not trump his love for others. He shared a story about being asked to denounce something his brother once said. And Carlson responded that if his brother went on a drug-related murder spree, he would not denounce him.
“What, are you for drug-related murder sprees,” Carlson quipped. “No, I’m for my brother. And nothing will ever make me not for my brother. Now, I’d probably tell him no more drug-related murder sprees for you. I’m not for that. But I will never denounce people I love to satisfy the mob.”
As people think through what the movement will be and where they should side, he told them it’s simple.
“You’re on the side of America First. And if they can’t tell you why it’s America First, you just won the argument because they don’t have one,” Carlson said. “(Saying) ‘Shut up Nazi’ is no different from ‘Shut up racist.’ It’s a little more annoying, actually.”
Christians must remember Jesus makes demands of them and holds standards for them that are very different from the world, which is controlled by Satan. He also reminded those that the followers of Jesus were killed by the world for following Him.
“You get up and give a speech about Jesus. You talk about Jesus. You try to live out His commands, you’re going to get attacked,” Carlson said. “Don’t whine. Here’s the trap – becoming hateful yourself. I sincerely believe that this is a spiritual battle. I’m not saying everyone who disagrees with me is on the side of evil; I don’t think that. I think I’m often wrong. I know that I am. But I do think that fundamentally this is light versus darkness. And darkness is characterized by rage and division and chaos and confusion. And light of God is characterized by the opposite of those things.
“There are attempts to make people hateful. One of the reasons people scream insults in your face is to provoke a reaction from you and make you hate them. They want you to hate them. They want you to become what they call you. Why? Because evil feeds on hate. So don’t participate in that.”
Carlson talked about the importance of being righteous, but not self-righteous. He said we should be on guard against people who try to leverage the Word of God and the Words of Jesus for political ends.
“That is one dangerous thing to do,” he said. “There are people, particularly Christian ministers, I have noticed, who are preaching a political message and pretending that it’s the gospel. So, let me just say, and I think my theology is right. I’m hardly a theologian. God is not on any country’s side. Certain countries can decide to be on God’s side. And that is true for people too. OK? God doesn’t have a partisan affiliation. He doesn’t have a nationality. And if someone is telling you otherwise, that is just not true. It is not true. And I would also call your attention to the very obvious prohibitions in the New Testament against killing the innocent. We are not as Christians allowed to kill the innocent. Period. We are not. And you see elaborate arguments on behalf of doing so or ignoring it. Oh, that always happens in war. Well, you’re right. (That’s) one of the reasons I’m not that into wars. But when it does happen unavoidably, we have to say that’s wrong. We have to say that. We have to acknowledge that was wrong. And I’m sorry for the extent to which I participated in it. Forgive me because killing people who committed no crime is immoral. It will always be immoral. And people who do it will be punished for it. And nations that endorse it will be punished for it. That’s a fact. And you are seeing now a very intense effort to convince you otherwise.
“‘Oh, it’s fine. They deserved it.’ Really? Do their children deserve it? If a man commits a crime, do we kill his kids? I don’t care if it’s in Minneapolis or Gaza City. No, we don’t. And if we do accidentally, we say, “I am so sorry that we murdered someone who did nothing wrong.” Because it is murder.”
