“Phony” Tucker Carlson tries to smear Israel after whistle-stop visit
Anti-Israel American commentator interviewed US ambassador at the airport, then complained of “harassment” by security.
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
Feb 19, 2026
Tucker Carlson finally came to Israel—sort of.
On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, the popular American commentator landed at Ben Gurion Airport, took a photo for social media, interviewed US Ambassador Mike Huckabee inside the airport’s VIP terminal, and then left the country without ever stepping outside the airport complex.
By evening, Carlson’s team was telling the Daily Mail a dramatic story: passports seized, an executive producer “hauled” into a room, and security staff demanding to know what the interview was about. The Daily Mail packaged it as a “detained” narrative.
Both Israel and the US Embassy said that was nonsense.
Israeli insisted there had been no detention, no interrogation, no delay—just routine questions, conducted privately in the VIP lounge to avoid doing it in public. The Israel Airports Authority said there was “no unusual incident” and “firmly” rejected Carlson’s version.
Huckabee—hardly a man known for timidity—backed the airport authority, noting that everyone entering or leaving Israel gets passports checked and security questions, including him even with diplomatic documentation.
So what was this? Journalism? Diplomacy? Or the kind of narrative performance that substitutes for both?
The airport interview that became the story
This episode didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was manufactured through a public dare.
In recent days, Carlson used his platform to accuse Ambassador Huckabee of failing to ensure proper treatment of Christians in Israel—one more iteration of Carlson’s now-regular posture: present himself as the brave truth-teller standing against an allegedly sinister pro-Israel establishment. Huckabee responded publicly: stop talking about me—come talk to me. Carlson accepted, and the interview was arranged.
But the “visit” was structured to accomplish something else: the optics of having been “in Israel” without the inconvenience of actually being in Israel.
Huckabee said he had invited Carlson to spend several days in Israel, touring the country and getting to know it. Instead, Carlson chose to stay inside the VIP area at Ben Gurion, then departed. Former US Ambassador David Friedman noted the obvious: Carlson had invitations, opportunities, and access to see the country—yet chose not to leave the airport. “A huge and obviously intentional missed opportunity,” Friedman wrote.
Carlson’s refusal to actually visit Israel even as he throws the Jewish state and its supporters under the bus raises question of basic credibility.
If you want to speak with authority about Israel—about its security reality, its internal tensions, its minorities, its holy sites, its borders, its threats—there is a minimum price of admission. You have to be here. You have to breathe the place, walk it, speak to people who don’t sound like your feed, and learn the difference between an argument and a trope.
Carlson didn’t. He did an airport interview and then tried to turn airport security protocol into a persecution narrative.
“Detained” vs. “routine”: the anatomy of a smear
Here’s what Carlson alleged, in substance: security staff took their passports, pulled his executive producer aside, and demanded to know what they discussed with Huckabee. “It was bizarre,” he said, adding, “We’re now out of the country.”
Here’s what the Israel Airports Authority said, in substance: they weren’t detained, delayed, or interrogated; they were asked routine questions consistent with standard procedures; and the conversation happened in a separate room within the VIP lounge to protect privacy and avoid doing it publicly.
And here’s what Huckabee said: this is what happens to everyone, everywhere—including him.
Notice what’s missing from Carlson’s account: any evidence that he was prevented from leaving, any legal action, any formal detention, any delay that changed his departure. The core claim is emotional, not factual: the encounter felt “bizarre,” therefore Israel is suspect.
This is the modern smear formula: take a normal security interaction in a country under constant threat, add loaded verbs (“hauled,” “dragged,” “detained”), and let the audience’s preloaded assumptions do the rest.
The broader context: Carlson’s post-October 7 posture
Carlson’s Israel posture over the last two years has increasingly relied on insinuation: Israel as manipulator, Israel as liar, Israel as the power behind American misfortunes.
When you repeatedly frame Israel as uniquely sinister, and then you do a blink-and-you-miss-it airport stop followed by a public complaint that you were “harassed,” you are not reporting. You are laundering a narrative: Israel is the kind of place that treats you badly for asking questions.
But what question was he punished for asking? None. The interview happened.
What did Israel suppress? Nothing. He left.
So the “smear” isn’t an event. It’s a posture.
Bennett’s bluntness—and the point beneath it
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett responded with contempt, calling Carlson “a phony” and mocking the airport theatrics: quick photo, no actual visit, then a made-up story of being harassed, then back onto the private jet.
Bennett’s point: Carlson was trying to cash in on proximity without paying the cost of presence.
Because the real tell is not that Carlson complained. It’s that he structured the whole trip so that “Israel” would be a backdrop for content, not a place to be encountered. The airport is the perfect stage for that: controlled, sterile, security-heavy—ideal for feeding an audience primed to believe the worst.
Narrative warfare loves “mini-incidents”
Israel’s enemies have always understood something many Western commentators still don’t: narrative is a battlespace.
Sometimes the “incident” is a real tragedy distorted into propaganda. Sometimes it’s a half-truth. And sometimes it’s this: a normal procedure reframed as oppression.
Carlson’s airport story is small. That’s why it’s useful. Small stories travel fast because they don’t require context, and they don’t collapse under scrutiny until after the emotional payload is delivered.
It’s important to call this out for what it is.
Israel didn’t “detain” Carlson. Israel treated him like a traveler in a country that has learned—painfully—what happens when you stop asking routine questions.
And if Tucker Carlson wants to criticize Israel as if he’s some seasoned observer of the place, he can start by doing something radical: step outside the airport.
