![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/vance-1.avif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nVice President JD Vance speaks on the final day of Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference at the Phoenix Convention Center on Dec. 21, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Caylo Seals\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At the center of the controversy that has roiled the Republican Party is Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic and white nationalist livestreamer who set off a firestorm after he voiced his disdain for \u201cthese Zionist Jews\u201d in a friendly interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in October.<\/p>\n
Since then, Vance has failed to meet calls from Jewish conservatives to set a boundary against antisemitic voices within the Republican coalition.<\/p>\n
On Monday, in an interview with UnHerd, Vance downplayed the influence of Fuentes and instead argued that the focus on his presence in the GOP was crowding out a larger discussion about anti-Israel animus within the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that Nick Fuentes, his influence within Donald Trump\u2019s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the right, is vastly overstated, and frankly, it\u2019s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America\u2019s relationship with Israel,\u201d said Vance.<\/p>\n
Vance also dismissed claims about the prevalence of antisemitism across the political spectrum, saying that much of what is alleged to be antisemitism is in fact \u201ca real backlash\u201d against Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cNinety-nine percent of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish. What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy. I think we ought to have that conversation and not try to shut it down. Most Americans are not antisemitic, they\u2019re never going to be antisemitic, and I think we should focus on the real debate,\u201d said Vance.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Vance also dismissed claims that antisemitism is surging within the Republican Party and said that the \u201cthe single most significant thing you could do to eliminate anti-semitism\u201d was lowering immigration to the United States.<\/p>\n
A poll released this month by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, found that nearly four in 10 GOP voters believe that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen \u201cas historians describe.\u201d It also found that roughly equal shares of Democrats and Republicans, around one in five, hold anti-Jewish sentiments.<\/p>\n
Vance told UnHerd that while Israel is an important U.S. ally, a sentiment long held by the GOP, the party needed to widen its tent to include diverging opinions on the Jewish state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI happen to believe that Israel is an important ally, and that there are certain things that we\u2019re certainly going to work together on,\u201d Vance says. \u201cBut we\u2019re also going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel, and that\u2019s OK. And we should be able to say, \u2018We agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue.\u2019 Having that conversation is, I think, much less comfortable for a lot of people, because they want to focus on Nick Fuentes.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Vance also declined to condemn antisemitism on the right at Turning Point USA\u2019s annual convention, instead encouraging the party to widen its tent.<\/p>\n
The convention, titled AmericaFest, was roiled by debates over antisemitic figures within the party. Vance told attendees that he \u201cdidn\u2019t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,\u201d adding that that party has \u201cfar more important work to do than canceling each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I say that I\u2019m going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you \u2014 each and every one,\u201d said Vance. \u201cPresident Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the beginning of AmericaFest, Vance also earned a 2028 presidential endorsement from Turning Point\u2019s leader Erika Kirk, widow of its slain founder Charlie Kirk. The convention itself was also marked by internal Republican divisions over whether the party should lend its platform to figures espousing antisemitic rhetoric, including Fuentes.<\/p>\n
Franklin Foer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, titled his Monday op-ed \u201cJ. D. Vance Fails a Simple Moral Test,\u201d accusing Vance of welcoming antisemites into the Republican coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy failing to denounce anti-Semitism, Vance has emboldened its adherents to flaunt their prejudices more openly, to dehumanize Jews with greater abandon,\u201d wrote Foer. \u201cHe told the Turning Point audience that he doesn\u2019t want to \u2018impose any purity tests\u2019 when, in reality, he was granting license to those who celebrate the most murderous purity test of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonathan Tobin, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, also criticized Vance in an op-ed Monday for failing to utilize a \u201cchance to distinguish his national conservative vision from the views of Fuentes and Carlson.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy passing on a golden opportunity to draw a line in the sand between his ideas and those of right-wingers who share the left\u2019s hatred for Jews, he\u2019s telling us that he wants their votes,\u201d wrote Tobin.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n