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Tucker Carlson’s recent onstage remarks at the Doha Forum and his announcement that he plans to buy property in Qatar have set off a feeding frenzy among his critics, but make no mistake — Carlson said what any free American should be able to say: he’ll live where he pleases and speak to whoever will listen. His comment that he had “never taken anything from your country” and that he was “tomorrow buying a place in Qatar” was as much a middle finger to the cancel-culture crowd as it was a personal decision. Whether you cheer or wince at the optics, no one should pretend this is anything other than an assertion of individual liberty.
Predictably, the usual posse of conservative gatekeepers and performative hawks erupted into outrage, with viral memes and sanctimonious denunciations flooding social feeds within hours of Carlson’s remark. Figures from inside the GOP to the online MAGA machinery tried to turn a private property matter into a moral indictment, proving once again that tribal loyalty matters more than principle for too many on the right. This isn’t about foreign policy nuance so much as it is about who gets to police a patriot’s choices under the guise of purity.
Ben Shapiro’s public takedown of Carlson at AmericaFest is the latest act in a long, ugly theater of intra-right virtue signaling, where the loudest moralists often aim their arrows inward. Shapiro flattened Carlson as a “fraud” and “grifters” who erode conservatism’s credibility, a spectacle meant to score cultural points with donors and elite audiences rather than strengthen the movement. Conservatives rightly disagree on tactics and priorities, but national infighting staged on big stages only hands the left another victory.
Let’s be blunt: freedom of association and freedom of speech are not conditional on someone else’s approval. Carlson’s willingness to travel, to question, and to buy property abroad is the sort of stubborn independence that built this country, not the committee-reviewed respectability politics that Shapiro and his cohort shepherd. If conservatives are reduced to policing where our people can spend their vacation money, we’ve already conceded the culture war. The more meaningful battle is over who actually defends free speech when the mob comes knocking.
Yes, Carlson has made controversial choices — putting figures like Nick Fuentes on a platform and engaging nations with complicated records have consequences, and Ben Shapiro has been right to call out lazy thinking when it genuinely endangers conservative credibility. Shapiro’s November criticism that Carlson was giving a “massive signal boost” to hateful ideas was not without merit, and conservatives should not pretend every platforming decision is above scrutiny. But criticism should be aimed at improving conservatism, not at humiliating and canceling allies on live television.
At the same time, smearing Carlson as a Qatari pawn or a traitor because he chose to buy a house is a play from the progressive playbook: drown the dissenter in ad-hominems until the argument is forgotten. Media outlets and pundits who accused Carlson of doing “propaganda work” for Qatar are engaging in the very same lazy guilt-by-association that they accuse others of — loud accusations with scarce public proof. If critics believe there is a quid pro quo, produce the evidence; otherwise stop substituting shrill noise for conservative strategy.
Conservatives should be building, not bickering: focusing on border security, economic revival, and protecting liberty at home wins votes and protects families. We can hold each other accountable without crucifying every personality who steps outside the narrow comfort zone of acceptable conservatism. If the right is to reclaim the country, it will require fighting the left, not warring with one another over where an American chooses to live and what guests he entertains.
