Top Republican Jewish donors are beginning to confront a growing antisemitism problem in their party, but have yet to find consensus on how to respond.
In the weeks since a podcast chat between Tucker Carlson and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes ignited an intraparty battle over whether the GOP should challenge antisemitic influencers, some top donors hope to duck their heads while others feel politically homeless in a party some deem to have a growing “Nazi problem.”
And yet others are gearing up to oppose Republican primary candidates who espouse antisemitism, especially after Fuentes, following his newfound attention, announced in November he is relaunching a 501(c)(4) with an eye to the 2026 midterms. He says he hopes to “infiltrate politics” and “guide people and help them understand who to vote for.” He is especially interested, he said, in exposing “the Israel First lobby, the Make Israel Great Again movement.”
“There's no black-and-white here, but I do think that I do see forces lining up to push back against this agenda,” said Eytan Laor, a Republican bundler and founder of the American Principles PAC of elected officials and pro-Israel donors. Social media, he added, has been the main vehicle for figures who have entertained antisemitic or anti-Israel sentiments. “It's incredible how much influence, how far they've been able to penetrate, just with Tucker and Candace [Owens],” another conservative influencer who has downplayed the Holocaust and called Israel a “cult nation.”
The discomfort among top pro-Israel donors, who steer the Republican Party’s fundraising apparatus, signals the complexity of this political moment for conservative U.S. Jews. Many of them feel the Democratic Party allowed antisemitism to seep into its mainstream in recent years. Now, they fear the same could happen to the GOP.
These fissures have been on full display since Carlson, a fixture of the conservative movement, hosted Fuentes on his podcast on October 27. Fuentes praised Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and claimed the “big challenge” to unifying the country was “organized Jewry.” Carlson, a former Fox News host who retains a large following, said Republican Israel supporters suffer from a “brain virus.”
The episode sent shockwaves through the party, drawing denunciations from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, a longtime Fuentes antagonist. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts initially defended the podcast, leading to internal turmoil at the think tank and external condemnations. President Donald Trump, when asked about the episode, said Carlson had the right to interview Fuentes and that “people have to decide.”
Those same shockwaves were felt among donors.
One major Jewish Republican donor, granted anonymity to speak openly, contrasted Carlson’s contentious interview with Cruz earlier this year with his more recent episode featuring Fuentes. “Tucker Carlson has Ted Cruz on, who supports Israel, and he just rips into him for a long time. It was quite savage,” the donor said. “He has Nick Fuentes on, and it is a lap dance.”
“Anti-Israel, antisemitic — that gets conflated. A lot of them hide behind anti-Israel, and it's very hard to prove because you truly should be allowed to be critical of Israel. I'm Justice Potter on this: I know it when I see it. They're not just anti-Israel,” the donor added. “I think they hide behind free speech, they hide behind isolationism. I think there's a fair amount of just classic antisemitism going on.”
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said his organization will focus on targeting any Fuentes-backed candidates. “We just have to ensure that none of those people get through the wire and get elected, because that's how, as we saw on the Democratic side, they're able to infiltrate and take over the party,” Brooks said.
Brooks, along with other Republicans, suggested that antisemitism is still relegated to the outskirts of the GOP. In interviews at the RJC’s annual leadership summit last month, Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.), the longest serving Republican Jew in Congress, and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), a staunchly pro-Israel freshman who calls himself the “Hebrew Hammer,” said antisemitism is only on the “fringes” of the Republican Party.
Graham, during an RJC speech, tended to agree and suggested any GOP candidate who embraced antisemitic rhetoric would be challenged but the party more broadly.
“You can sit in a basement with weird people and say weird things. It's a free country, right?” Graham said. “But if you ever run for office as a Republican, and you embrace this weird shit, we're going to beat your brains out.”
Gabriel Groisman, a GOP donor in Florida, said he and other top Jewish donors plan to “put all our efforts into making sure those people don't get into positions of power.”
“Once we see someone with those views announced to run, you'll definitely hear from me and my friends and everybody around us, [with] whatever bullhorn we have, using it to make sure they don't get elected,” said Groisman, an attorney and former mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida.
Other donors acknowledged the problem but are less certain on how to combat that rising tide.
“The need to triage and do your due diligence on, ‘Am I supporting an antisemitic whack job or not,’ is unfortunately larger,” the Jewish donor, granted anonymity, said.
Carlson’s interview with Fuentes came on the heels of other high-profile incidents of antisemitism on the political right. In October, a nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, withdrew his nomination after bragging of his “Nazi streak” in a text message; days earlier, POLITICO reported on a leaked group chat of Young Republicans who praised Hitler and joked about the Holocaust. The same week, a Nazi symbol was discovered hanging in a GOP congressional office.
The incidents come amid a potential political shift among U.S. Jews. In 2024, Trump improved on his 2020 performance in communities with high Jewish populations across the country, including in New York neighborhoods like Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, according to a Tablet Magazine analysis, a result the RJC called “historic.” A new Washington Post poll of Jewish Americans, conducted earlier this month, suggests the Democratic and Republican parties are now viewed as equally friendly to Jews. Five years ago, Democrats held a net-15-point cushion on the question; the share of U.S. Jews who said the Democratic Party is unfriendly to them skyrocketed in that time, from 10 percent in 2020 to 31 percent in 2025.
Trump touted his electoral gains among Jewish Republicans during a video message displayed during the RJC summit last month, saying he won the “highest percentage of Jewish vote of any Republican since 1988.”
The U.S. electorate is simultaneously shifting how it views Israel. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government, according to a September Pew Research Center Poll. That dissatisfaction has grown markedly since 2022, when a narrow plurality of those surveyed still held a positive view of Israel. The shift is acutely felt among young Republicans: In the last three years, the share of Republicans under the age of 50 with a negative view of Israel jumped from 35 percent to 50 percent, per another Pew poll conducted earlier this year.
As the Republican Party begins to reckon with a post-Trump future, that battle will likely play a central role in the 2028 presidential race, when potential heirs will seek the support of pro-Israel voters and donors. Ari Fleischer told reporters at the RJC summit last month that candidates’ response to antisemitism will “be one of these issues that's going to define” the Republican presidential primary.
“The number of candidates who will emerge to run for president will be significant on the Republican side, and that's going to begin in earnest in about one year,” Fleischer, a White House press secretary under former President George W. Bush and RJC board member, said. “J.D. [Vance] is going to have to earn it like everybody else, and be very curious to see what he has to say.”
Nick Muzin, a lobbyist and former staffer for Cruz and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), said there is a “lot of outreach” toward Vance from the Jewish donor class over his position on Israel.
“He's newer, he's younger, and he doesn't have as much of a track record on Israel,” Muzin said. “So there's a little less comfort with him, although obviously we are working hard to build those relationships.”
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