Ben Shapiro Unloads on Tucker Carlson Over ‘Bizarre’ and ‘Ugly’ Take on Israel-Hamas War: ‘Not a Conservative Position’

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro unloaded on former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on the Ben Shapiro Show on Tuesday, reacting to an episode of Carlson’s show released Monday night featuring retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor.

During that sit-down, Carlson and Macgregor suggested that U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas could lead to war with Iran, and possibly an even larger regional conflict. Carlson also mocked the idea that the U.S. would score “moral victories” in the conflict, while Macgregor accused the Israelis of committing war crimes.

Their conversation did not sit right with Shapiro.

“There are some people on the right who I think are being fully disingenuous and who are looking for an excuse to jump right on the same moral equivalency bandwagon as the left. I think there are certainly people like that. We’ve talked about them on the show before. I’m sure we’ll talk about them on the show again,” began Shapiro. ”

“But one of the moves that’s being made in order to stifle Israel’s response to this is to claim that if Israel does respond, as it has to respond, to root out Hamas entirely, and this will end in World War III,” he continued. “So yesterday, Tucker had on his program a general named Douglas MacGregor. MacGregor has in the past suggested that Jewish money is behind American support for Israel and all the rest. But MacGregor has military expertise and he is essentially now warning that Armageddon is coming and his proposed solution would be that Israel does nothing. Which, by the way, absolutely promotes the idea of Armageddon, because if Israel does nothing after 1,500 of its citizens are slaughtered and Hamas remains in place, the chances of a broad-scale multi-front attack on Israel that will require American intervention go up radically.”

After playing a clip of Carlson and Macgregor, Shapiro remarked:

MacGregor has also been an advocate of the United States basically leaving Ukraine to fry. But when MacGregor says things like “We are right on the verge of war,” the whole point is deterrence. Deterrence is a thing. You know what emboldens Iran? Weakness. This has been true for literally ever. But there’s been this equation that’s now happened on the right where if you stand up to a terror power, the idea is that it somehow puts America in a position that is weaker, which again, is a not right-wing position, that is not a conservative position. It’s never been a conservative position so far as I’m aware. Peace through strength has been a conservative position for as long as I’ve been alive, certainly. This idea that you are heightening the chances of a world war if America actually flexes its muscles sometimes, it’s a bizarre one when what we know is precisely the opposite. The reason this attack was launched by Israel in the first place is because the Biden administration was conciliatory toward Iran. That’s one of the reasons. The pullout from Afghanistan is another reason. So McGregor says this thing won’t stay contained, which would be mostly true if America weren’t there to keep a lid on it. The whole point of America having aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean is to say, keep it, keep a lid on it. Don’t open up a second front with Hezbollah, because that is going to tear the lid off.

Shapiro then played another clip of Carlson and Macgregor before carrying on his indictment of them.

“First of all, everyone has an interest in keeping this contained. Everyone. So but again, there’s this ugly thing that’s been happening, Tucker does it a lot, in which he suggests that if you disagree with him on the tactic to keep the thing contained — he and I want the same thing: No war with Iran, no American involvement in this region of the world that amounts to American boots on the ground, we all want the same thing here — but the idea is that if you think America should flex its muscles in order to push Hezbollah off the ball, for example, then this means that you actually want the war with Iran, which of course is really scurrilous. It is not true,” argued Shapiro.

“[Tucker] and I want the same thing: no war with Iran, no American involvement in this region of the world that amounts to American boots on the ground. We all want the same thing here. But the idea is that if you think America should flex its muscles to push Hezbollah off the… pic.twitter.com/7tmwWkWRug

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 24, 2023

This is not the first time Shapiro has rebuked Carlson on this matter. A few days after Hamas’ initial attack on Israel, Shapiro lambasted Carlson for “downplaying it” during a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy.

“It’s just a dumb, it’s a dumb game,” said Shapiro at the time.