Vice President JD Vance responded on Thursday to critics of his close relationship with Tucker Carlson by dodging their actual concerns with Carlson’s promotion of antisemitism and smearing them as anti-American. His handwaving portrayal of the right-wing podcaster as merely a buddy elides Carlson’s actual role as one of the architects of the vice president’s political career.

Vance’s Carlson ties were back under the microscope this week after he dodged a question about the right-wing podcaster platforming antisemites during a Monday night Q&A at the summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Pressed on the point at a White House briefing on Thursday, Vance dissembled — while wrapping himself in the flag. He called Carlson a “friend,” said he disagreed with Carlson’s criticism of President Donald Trump — then pivoted, saying it was “a travesty” that “in the United States of America, we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be.”

“Tucker is a friend, despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things, and I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them,” the vice president said.

“I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go, and if you have a disagreement with somebody politically, even over a deeply-held issue, you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another,” he continued. “That’s how I try to live my life.”

This is wildly disingenuous.

No one cares if Vance and Carlson spend their days palling around at the podcaster’s Maine home, chomping on his nicotine pouches, wearing matching flannel shirts, and pretending to be woodsy.

The reason their relationship matters is that Carlson has been a key cog in Vance’s political machine who was essential to his electoral rise — while generating numerous firestorms over the years due to his promotion of white nationalist talking points and willingness to grant friendly interviews to notorious antisemites and Nazi apologists.

Vance used dozens of appearances on Carlson’s Fox show beginning in 2018 to shapeshift from an elite favorite who privately compared Trump to Hitler to a MAGA culture warrior in the host’s own image.

The then-Fox host endorsed Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign on-air. “Occasionally, you run into somebody who could actually change things,” he told viewers on the eve of the Ohio primary. “That would be J.D. Vance.”

Carlson repeatedly used his then-close relationship with Trump to bolster Vance’s career, successfully lobbying Trump to endorse Vance’s Senate campaign and then select him as his 2024 running mate. Carlson spoke at the Republican National Convention that year, then Vance joined him on his own political tour.

And while Vance preps for a 2028 presidential run that Carlson seems almost certain to support, the podcaster has been saying things like, “The defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated,” and attributing “the rage of the neocons” to “demonic influence.”

The public deserves a more complete accounting of precisely where the vice president’s “disagreements” with Carlson lie.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters