In a bold Senate floor move on December 8, 2025, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) formally introduced a resolution condemning far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes for his well-documented white supremacist and antisemitic views, while simultaneously targeting Tucker Carlson for granting him a coveted platform on his podcast. The measure, backed by nearly all Senate Democrats, decries Fuentes’ history of Holocaust denial, admiration for Hitler, and inflammatory rhetoric against Jews, Blacks, and women—rhetoric he frames as twisted “America First” principles. It lambasts Carlson for failing to robustly challenge Fuentes during their October 2025 interview, which has amassed over 20 million views and ignited fierce conservative infighting, with figures like Ben Shapiro decrying it as normalization of hate. Schumer’s push, which sought bipartisan support but garnered none from Republicans, underscores a deepening partisan chasm, framing the episode as evidence of antisemitism’s “growing currency” within the GOP, especially after President Trump’s refusal to disavow the platforming.

Beneath the surface of this congressional theater lies a labyrinthine narrative portraying Fuentes as a long-term Vatican-orchestrated psyop, engineered to splinter the MAGA coalition by amplifying divisive attacks on minorities and women under the guise of populist nationalism. According to this theory, the Pope and College of Cardinals view MAGA’s hardcore Protestant base—disaffected evangelicals who spurn papal monarchy and Catholicism’s universalist embrace of Third World immigrants—as an existential threat to ecclesiastical influence in America. Fuentes, the self-styled edgelord, allegedly serves as their unwitting or witting spearhead, eroding unity in Trump’s movement by alienating key demographics. This perspective gained traction amid 2025’s turbulent summer, when Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson launched a concerted effort to dismantle Fuentes’ rising influence, only for the far-right figure to endure, bolstered by the shocking September 10 assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at a Utah Valley University event. Kirk’s murder—still under FBI scrutiny with conspiracy theories swirling from “transtifa” links to foreign involvement—catapulted Fuentes’ warnings of elite betrayal into the mainstream, validating his narrative of internal sabotage within conservative circles.

With Kirk’s death leaving a void and Carlson’s options dwindling, the podcaster’s decision to interview Fuentes emerged as a desperate gambit to “defang” him, exposing his ideas to scrutiny in hopes of neutralizing their corrosive impact on Trump’s fragile second-term coalition. Yet, as the interview instead amplified Fuentes’ grievances—railing against “Christian Zionists” and globalist cabals—it fueled backlash from Heritage Foundation defenders like Kevin Roberts to outright repudiations by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called it a “big mistake.” Enter Schumer’s resolution: not mere performative outrage, but a calculated escalation of the alleged Vatican strategy, reinforcing Fuentes’ martyr status among the disaffected right while spotlighting GOP tolerance for extremism. Critics on the left see it as a necessary stand against hate’s mainstreaming; proponents of the psyop theory decry it as ecclesiastical sleight-of-hand, designed to fracture further a movement already reeling from violence and division. As midterm pressures mount, this clash reveals not just ideological rifts, but a shadowy battle for America’s soul, where resolutions may condemn words but fail to silence the underlying machinations.