Tucker Carlson’s Newest Blood Libel: Reviving the Antisemitic Lie That “Jews Engineered COVID”

The Lie:

Tucker Carlson claimed on a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show that COVID-19 was “engineered to spare Jews.”

The Truth:

This claim is entirely false and revives a centuries-old antisemitic blood libel. There is no scientific evidence that COVID-19 was designed to spare Jews or any ethnic or religious group.

Background:

On The Tucker Carlson Show (Oct 21–22 2025), Carlson hosted author Andrew Huff, who claimed it was “scientifically true” that COVID affected Jewish people differently.
Carlson added that Huff was referring to “Sephardic and Ashkenazi” Jews, implying genetic design.
The claim traces back to a misreported 2023 New York Post story about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which Kennedy publicly denied (NY Post, Oct 21 2025; Yahoo News, Oct 22 2025).

Truth Explained:

No peer-reviewed research or credible dataset has ever found that Jewish ancestry provides genetic protection from COVID-19 (NY Post, Oct 21 2025).
Israel was not spared by COVID: in late September 2020 its seven-day rolling average reached 3.5 daily deaths per million residents — higher than the U.S. that week (Times of Israel, Sept 29 2020, link).
Huff named no scientific source, and Carlson failed to correct him (Yahoo News, Oct 22 2025).
Conservative writers and commentators across the political spectrum condemned Carlson’s promotion of this falsehood as reckless and antisemitic (NY Post, Oct 21 2025).
Just in the last two months, Carlson has repeatedly amplified antisemitic narratives:
- Sept 22 2025: At Charlie Kirk’s funeral, he described “men eating hummus in a lamp-lit room plotting to silence truth-tellers,” a remark widely condemned as antisemitic (The Hill, Sept 22 2025).
- Oct 21–22 2025: He repeated the false claim that COVID-19 was engineered to spare Jews (NY Post, Oct 21 2025).
- Oct 29 2025: He hosted white nationalist Nick Fuentes, agreeing that “our relationship with Israel hurts us,” while Fuentes attacked “these Zionist Jews” (Jerusalem Post, Oct 29 2025).

Quotes:

“Covid-19 was created by the CCP, but rather than ridicule the CCP, Tucker has managed to blame the Jews somehow.” — Eyal Yakoby (NY Post, Oct 21 2025)
“Tucker Carlson used Charlie Kirk’s funeral to spread antisemitic blood libels.” — Mark Dubowitz, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (The Hill, Sept 22 2025)

Takeaway:

Tucker Carlson’s claim that Jews were “spared” from COVID is a modern blood libel — baseless, dangerous, and part of a clear pattern of antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric on his platform.

Sources: