Liz Cheney criticizes Tucker Carlson in viral post

Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney is harshly criticizing former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for interviewing a podcaster who claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was seeking “peace.”

Carlson conducted a more than two-hour interview with podcaster Darryl Cooper, whom she described in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday as “the most significant popular historian working in the United States today.”

In the interview, Cooper called British Prime Minister Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II for refusing to accept “peace proposals” from Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and argued that Churchill was “primarily responsible” for the escalation of the war.

Cheney, who was kicked out of the Republican leadership and eventually left Congress after condemning former President Donald Trump for his actions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, condemned Carlson on Tuesday for providing a platform for Cooper.

“It’s actually pro-Nazi propaganda, including the claim that ‘Churchill was the villain of World War II’ and ‘Hitler didn’t want to fight,'” Cheney said. wrote in response to Carlson’s video post. “No serious or honorable person would support or condone this garbage.”

Newsweek reached out to the Tucker Carlson Network via email Tuesday evening for comment.

Cooper also claimed in his interview with Carlson that six million Jews were “dead” in the Holocaust simply because Nazi Germany “was not prepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war.” He argued that due to food shortages, the Nazis decided it would be “more humane to just kill them quickly.”

While Cooper stressed that portraying Churchill as the “main villain” did not mean that he thought the Nazis were the “good guys” of World War II, he continued to attack the British president, accusing him of “absolute terrorism” against Germany and baselessly claiming that the Holocaust was the unintended result of poor planning.

Carlson and Cooper received some praise for the interview, including from X owner Elon Musk, who shared again the video on Tuesday morning and described it as “very interesting” and “worth watching”.

Cheney was far from the only one to criticize Carlson and Cooper for apparently trying to downplay the horrors of Nazi Germany by promoting a historically questionable portrayal of World War II. Several other conservatives were among those who also condemned the former Fox host and his guest on Tuesday.

“I didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become a mouthpiece for Nazi apologetics, but that’s what he is,” wrote conservative commentator and talk show host Erick Erickson on X.

“Tucker Carlson just hosted a Nazi apologist to explain why Hitler wasn’t so bad and that Winston Churchill was the real ‘bad guy,'” the Republicans Against Trump account wrote. “This is a reminder that Tucker Carlson got a major speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and speaks regularly with Donald Trump. Vote accordingly.”

“This is nothing but the old Hitler apologetics (‘He didn’t want to expand the war,’ ‘They didn’t know what to do with the POWs, so he put them in camps,’ etc.),” ​​wrote conservative columnist and Compact magazine editor Sohrab Ahmari. “Remarkably, there is no history behind it. This ‘popular historian’ is just making conclusions. Shameful.”