{"id":92372,"date":"2026-04-24T06:01:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=92372"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:01:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:01:33","slug":"tucker-carlson-calls-campaign-to-shame-a-country-club-for-barring-a-jewish-toddler-repulsive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/tucker-carlson-calls-campaign-to-shame-a-country-club-for-barring-a-jewish-toddler-repulsive\/","title":{"rendered":"Tucker Carlson calls campaign to shame a country club for barring a Jewish toddler \u2018repulsive\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By RON KAMPEAS<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 Catherine Rampell, the economist and pundit, likes telling the story about how her father once launched a public campaign against a Palm Beach country club when it banned his 4-year-old son from attending a birthday party because he is Jewish.<\/p>\n

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Catherine Rampell and Tim Miller discuss Tucker Carlson’s conversation about Rampell on The Bulwark podcast, April 22, 2026. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Now, Tucker Carlson has turned the anecdote into a sinister and \u201crepulsive\u201d tale of a crusade against folks who just want to hang out together.<\/p>\n

Carlson substantially misrepresented Rampell\u2019s anecdote, turning it into what Rampell on Wednesday said was \u201ca coded story in defense of antisemitic and racist country clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlson, the far-right firebrand who sits at the center of the Republican Party\u2019s schism over antisemitism, on Tuesday interviewed his brother Buckley on his streaming show about their shared disaffection for President Donald Trump over launching the Iran war. Tucker Carlson was until recently close to Trump, and Buckley Carlson was a speechwriter for the president.<\/p>\n

The brothers in the podcast discussed Trump\u2019s purported distaste for WASPs, shorthand for White Anglo Saxon Protestants who are descended from immigrants who arrived in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Trump\u2019s grandfather was German-born, and his mother was Scottish.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very fixated on the WASP thing, and does talk about it a lot,\u201d Tucker Carlson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s another group in America that\u2019s kind of fixated on the WASPs too,\u201d his brother responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve noticed that,\u201d Tucker said. And his brother continued: \u201cWith equal fervor and hostility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Buckley Carlson, left, and Tucker Carlson speak on Tucker Carlson’s streaming show, April 21, 2026. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That led into a discussion of \u201cstatus anxiety\u201d driving social change, which Tucker Carlson says \u201ceveryone lies about.\u201d That\u2019s when Carlson recalled meeting Rampell at Fox News about a decade ago, when he was a host at the network and she was a guest commentator.<\/p>\n

Referring to Rampell, who graduated with honors from Princeton University and who was then about 30, as a \u201cgirl\u201d and a \u201cliberal neocon person\u201d who was \u201cnot smart,\u201d he recalled asking her about her upbringing. She told him she grew up in Palm Beach, the wealthy Florida enclave where Carlson has also spent a lot of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd she\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, we moved there, and my dad sued the Bath and Tennis club for discrimination because they wouldn\u2019t let him in,\u2019\u201d Tucker Carlson recounted.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, that\u2019s repulsive to me,\u201d he continued. \u201cA club should have, you should have the right to hang out with whoever you want to hang out, on whatever basis you want to make that decision. She was, like, bragging about it, and I was like, the hatred behind that, the desire to destroy something is so evident. This girl\u2019s a hater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rampell, who scould only vaguely recall the encounter, set the record straight on Wednesday on the Bulwark podcast. Rampell works for the Bulwark, a centrist political outlet, as well as for the liberal cable news channel MSNOW.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father didn\u2019t sue country clubs,\u201d she said. \u201cTucker is actually right that freedom of association is allowed under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Rampell\u2019s father, Richard, a CPA, was moved in 1990 to launch a publicity campaign against clubs in the area that excluded on the basis of race, religion or gender, after his toddler son was told he would not be invited to a preschool classmate\u2019s birthday party.<\/p>\n

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“Sojourning at the exclusive Palm Beach Bath and Tennis Club in Florida are L to R; Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte of New York and Newport, and Mr. Paris Singer of London and the Riviera. All socially prominent,” Feb. 16, 1927. (Bettman via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe learned this, or my family learned this, because my brother was in preschool at the time, and he was not invited to a birthday party, and was subsequently found out that the reason he was not invited is that the country club that Tucker is referring to, the Bath and Tennis club, did not allow Jews in its doors, even 4-year-old Jews, as it turns out,\u201d Rampell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen your own child becomes a victim, it awakens emotions you never knew you had,\u201d Richard Rampell told the Palm Beach Daily News on May 16, 1993.<\/p>\n

Carlson did not say \u201cJews\u201d when he discussed the topic on his livestream. But Rampell said she detected plenty of codes, including his exchange with his brother about a group \u201cfixated\u201d on WASPs, and the ostensible oxymoron he uses to describe Rampell a \u201cliberal neocon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll understand what that\u2019s a euphemism for,\u201d Rampell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeoconservative\u201d or \u201cneocon\u201d are sometimes used as anti-Jewish pejoratives, on the left and the right. Rampell\u2019s writing and commentary do not reflect the views of actual neoconservatives, who champion shrinking the welfare state as well as a robustly interventionist foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Rampell noted that Carlson is no stranger to euphemisms for Jews, recalling that in his eulogy for the slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk last year, Tucker referred to the killers of Jesus as \u201ca bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump in 1993 sought assistance in turning the Palm Beach estate he had purchased, Mar-a-Lago, into a country club. One lawyer he consulted with advised Trump to emphasize that the new club would be open to all comers \u2013 it would not restrict Jews or Blacks or others.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got an island with a lot of Jewish residents who have no club to go to,\u201d said the lawyer, Paul Rampell \u2014 Catherine\u2019s uncle, and her father\u2019s partner in campaigning against country club bigotry.<\/p>\n

Trump agreed and hired the lawyer, who helped him secure permission to launch the club.<\/p>\n

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