REVEALED: JD Vance Confronted In Closed-Door Q&A About MAGA Allies Who ‘Platform Anti-Semites’

Vice President JD Vance spoke on Monday night in a closed-door, off-the-record Q&A with the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.

Republican Jewish Coalition National Chairman Norm Coleman, a former U.S. Senator from Minnesota, interviewed Vance and asked about a wide range of topics, including his close ties to various right-wing and MAGA influencers who have grabbed headlines in recent months for both platforming and promoting anti-Semitism.

Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio wrote about Vance addressing the RJC, saying he was about “to enter the GOP lion’s den.” “Less than a year ago, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering was a rallying cry to quash right-wing antisemitism, with Tucker Carlson framed as public enemy No. 1,” Desiderio wrote in his curtain-raiser for the event.

The Daily Wire later obtained a full recording of the closed event and published it on their website. While the Q&A was overwhelmingly friendly, Desiderio was certainly right that Vance was asked to address his close, longstanding relationship with Tucker Carlson — who has become one of the country’s leading critics of Israel and the Trump administration.

Below is the exchange between Coleman and Vance on the topic:

NORM COLEMAN: So Jew hatred has been a big topic of conversation. I just want to have one more kind of touch on that issue, and then we’re going to talk about some other things. Great. Great. But, you know, you mentioned Fuentes, podcasters. A few names: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, Nick Fuentes. They have platformed anti-semites. How do you, how do you draw a line in terms of… because they’re powerful. Those podcasters, they they touch a lot of voices. How do you draw the line in terms of of whether you fight with the platforms that you appear on and you podcast? How do you, how do you do that today?

JD VANCE: Yeah. I mean, look, and I recognize that not everyone in this room is going to agree with me on this, but I, I take two basic approaches to it. One one area where I really do draw the line is on people who engage in what I call this blood libel attitude. And like I recognize a lot of people in this room might disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan has said, but I, I think just to hone in on Fuentes and Rogan, I think these are two very, very different categories of people, both with their within their reach, but also within the ideas that are in their in their actual head.

I’m biased, I like Joe Rogan, and, and, but I think it’s a mistake to sort of say we’re going to write Joe Rogan off because he said something that we don’t like. I think the best approach is to actually go in there, and talk to him, and make the arguments as best as you can. We did an interesting thing, Norm. We actually tried to understand the podcast universe and how it affected mid-term elections. We care a lot, of course, about Mike’s race, but also a lot of other races across the country. And we actually looked at, you know, what Mike Rogers… excuse me, what what Joe Rogan… What is his audience among the people that we want to vote for Mike Rogers? And what we found is that if you look at all the other podcasters, their reach was 5 to 10% of what we would call persuadable voters, those voters in the middle who really are gettable. With Rogan, it’s something like 35 to 40%.

And so I, I think that there, one, I do not think that Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes are the same, just substantively, but as a political matter, I think that we have got to be willing to go everywhere and bring our message anywhere and to any person. And, and that means sometimes going into a podcast where you’re going to talk… last time I was on Joe Rogan, we talked about UFOs for like an hour, right? But you got to meet people where they are and make the arguments as best as you can, and that is I think ultimately how you win the political debate. It’s not by shunning people, and that’s the approach that I try to take. Talk to as many people as possible, but obviously I’m not going to go talk to a guy who’s attacked my wife or who’s said that Hitler was a good guy. But outside of of some pretty bright lines, I try to talk to as many people as I can. Thanks.

Read the full interview transcript here.

The post REVEALED: JD Vance Confronted In Closed-Door Q&A About MAGA Allies Who ‘Platform Anti-Semites’ first appeared on Mediaite.