Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told leaders of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) at their annual summit in Las Vegas on Thursday night that the GOP faced a “time for choosing” in confronting growing antisemitism on the right.
“In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life,” Cruz told the gathering. “This is a poison, and I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and in our country.”
Traditionally, the Thursday evening event that kicks off the conference is restricted to top donors and senior leaders in the RJC.
But Cruz’s address was opened to the press in the hours before the gathering, after a day in which social media erupted in reaction to a video statement by Kevin Roberts, the leader of the Heritage Foundation, in which he defended commentator Tucker Carlson for interviewing antisemite Nick Fuentes.
While some applauded Roberts for opposing cancel culture, others were appalled that he appeared to deflect criticism of Fuentes’s anti-Jewish, white nationalist views by casting them as a debate on foreign policy.
In his remarks, Cruz — whom Tucker Carlson told Fuentes he “despises” because of his Christian Zionism — i.e. his support for Israel based partly on his Christian beliefs — said the GOP had to root out antisemitism.
Cruz noted that the Democratic Party had waited too long to act against the antisemitism that had emerged in its own ranks, emerging from radical critics of Israel, and that Republicans could not make the same mistake.
“It’s a handful of voices that are spreading this garbage,” Cruz told the RJC. “And it’s giving every one of us a time for choosing.”
The phrase “time for choosing” is familiar to conservatives as the title of a speech that Ronald Reagan gave in nominating Barry Goldwater for president at the Republican National Convention in 1964. Though Goldwater would go on to lose, the speech cemented Reagan’s reputation as a growing conservative political force. (It includes the famous line: “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”)
Cruz took on Carlson for platforming antisemites on his podcast.
“If you sit there and nod, adoringly, while someone tells you that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War Two; if you sit there and nod while someone says there’s a very good argument America should have intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War Two; if you sit there with someone who says that Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil.”
He added: “[When] the Democrat Party saw antisemitism rising on the left, they did nothing. And today, and I will tell you, that there are multiple Democrat colleagues of mine in the Senate who are horrified at what has happened to their party. But they feel powerless to do anything about it, and terrified to say even a word of disagreement.”
The RJC summit formally opens on Friday and will celebrate the organization’s 40th anniversary. It was founded in the 1980s to give politically conservative Jews a platform within the GOP.
Over the decades, the RJC has helped elect Republicans at the local, state, and federal level across the country, and played a pivotal role in electing President Donald Trump. It also reinforced the pro-Israel movement in the party.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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