Tucker Carlson harshly criticized after interviewing controversial Nazi apologist

The journalist Tucker Carlson has come under heavy criticism after facilitating an interview on his podcast on X with Darryl Cooper, a controversial self-described "historian" who has been exposed on social media for being a "Nazi apologist."

During the interview, Cooper claimed that Winston Churchill, and not German dictator Adolf Hitler, was the real "villain" of World War II.

In another moment of the interview, the controversial historian suggested that the six million Jews killed by the Nazis were not actually exterminated in a systematized persecution, but died because the German Army was logistically unprepared to hold millions prisoner in concentration camps.

"I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War," Cooper said of the former British prime minister, who cautioned that his comment was provocative. "Now, he didn’t kill the most people, he didn’t commit the most atrocities, but I believe... that when you get into it and tell the story right and don’t leave anything out, you see that he was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did."

Cooper then claimed that Hitler was not on the side of "the good guys" either, but then relativized his bloody crimes by claiming that the German high command had all the POWs murdered because of his inability to handle them.

According to Cooper, Hitler's mistake was deciding to have Germany enter "a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners."

"They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps," Cooper said. "And millions of people ended up dead there."

In a separate thread on X, Cooper amplified his view of why he considered Churchill to be the main cause of the Second War,leaving aside all responsibility for Nazi Germany and, especially, Hitler, in the conflict.

In his publication, Cooper asserted that Hitler was, in fact, seeking "peace" and had proposed a solution to the West to achieve it: surrendering parts of Poland that were not very German and working with the other powers to end what he called "the Jewish problem."

"Hitler tried again, going on the radio to broadcast a call for peace directly to the British people. He would give back the parts of Poland that were not majority German, and would work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem. He was ignored," wrote Cooper, who has a long history of controversial and anti-Semitic comments.

For example, in an August 2023 post, Cooper claimed that "God is the villain in the Book of Job," a sacred text in the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament.

He has also made openly Nazi apologist comments.

For example, recently, apropos of the controversial anti-Christian Olympic Games ceremony, Cooper published a photo of Hitler in Paris to the left side of the Last Supper that was made by the organization of the Olympics. The self-styled historian wrote: "This may be putting it too crudely for some, but the picture on the left was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right."

Carlson's harsh criticism for giving a platform to a Nazi apologist

After the interview saw the light of day, the popularity of Cooper's podcast, 'Martyr Made,' skyrocketed. The episode, in a matter of hours, ranked at #2 on all Apple podcasts on Tuesday afternoon, behind only Carlson's. It eventually made it to the top spot.

In the wake of the interview, criticism rained down on Carlson, especially from conservative commentators who contradicted Cooper's comments and questioned the Fox News host for not rebutting his guest's arguments.

"Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are," conservative analyst Erick Erickson wrote on X. "“He’s neither the best nor the most honest. He’s a contrarian moral cretin who has turned his contrarianism into Nazi apologetics."

"This is just the same old Hitler apologetic," Sohrab Ahmari, founder of the conservative magazine Compact, wrote on X. "Remarkably, there isn’t any historiography behind it. This 'popular historian' just makes conclusory claims. Shameful."

"Tucker Carlson is promoting a guest who says Winston Churchill is the 'chief villain of World War 2' and makes excuses for Hitler and Nazi Germany. Some of the biggest voices on the Right are becoming just as intellectually and morally bankrupt as leftists," said writer Samuel Sey.

“I am trying to believe my ears, because on Tucker Carlson's respected podcast I just heard these immortal words: 'I read about Churchill, and he strikes me as a psychopath.' Who *on earth* is Darryl Cooper, and how did he get this platform?” questioned author Owen Strachan.

The outpouring of comments was so massive that even Elon Musk, who had publicly recommended the interview just minutes after it was published, deleted his post and subsequently amplified a community note that harshly questioned Cooper.