By Joan Swirsky
January 22, 2026
Once upon a time, there was a good-looking, articulate, young boy named David Duke who attended a conservative elementary school in New Orleans. In Junior High, as an eighth-grade project, he was irresistibly attracted to the subject of segregation. He then attended a military school in Georgia and “by the time he graduated was already a member in good standing of the Ku Klux Klan”––ultimately becoming a grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Duke as Grand Wizard, c. 1974.
In his self-published 1988 autobiography, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding, Duke stated: “We [Whites] desire to live in our own neighborhoods, go to our own schools, work in our own cities and towns, and ultimately live as one extended family in our own nation. We shall end the racial genocide of integration. We shall work for the eventual establishment of a separate homeland for African Americans, so each race will be free to pursue its own destiny without racial conflicts and ill will.”
But Duke was an equal-opportunity hater, sharing his contempt for Blacks with–– ta da! –– Jews!
“The Jews are trying to destroy all other cultures––as a survival mechanism–– the only Nazi country in the world is Israel,” he once explained to his many followers.
While numerous elected officials and civil-rights leaders routinely condemned Duke’s aggressive, in-your-face racism, he nevertheless enjoyed remarkably widespread support, similar to but not the same wildfire effect as today’s anti-Semitism.
The support he did receive emboldened him to run for public office. While he ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Louisiana state legislature in 1970s and ‘80s, and for the1988 Democratic presidential nomination, after he became a Republican he finally won a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives.
To this day, Duke continues to endorse candidates, including Tulsi Gabbard for president in 2019 and Donald Trump for President in 2024––both of whom thoroughly repudiated both Duke and his endorsement.
In 2024, Duke lauded anti-Israel activists. He also praised Nick Fuentes––the Holocaust-denying, Nazi sympathizing podcaster––calling him a comrade in the fight for “our people” against “Jewish supremacism.”
This is the same Nick Fuentes who enjoyed a fawningly friendly interview with Tucker Carlson…the same Tucker Carlson who VP Vance finds it impossible to repudiate, in spite of Carlson’s escalating vilification and calumny toward both Jews and Israel, as just one of countless examples is his recent interview with Ian Carroll, a conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed, among other smears, that “Israel did 9/11.”
True, VP Vance’s friendship with Carlson goes back decades. He acknowledges that Carlson featured him on his Fox TV show dozens of times and petitioned President Trump personally at Mar-a-Lago to make Vance his VP.
But all that was well before Fox fired Carlson in 2023, and also before Carlson became a modern-day version of Father Charles Coughlin, obsessed with Jews to the point of pathology and using all of his energies to spew the hatred that lives within––indeed, enlivens––his mind and heart 24/7.
A final word about Duke…. when it came to expressing his deep animus toward Blacks and Jews, he never waffled, never hesitated, never obfuscated, and never accumulated the kind of splinters that VP Vance has clearly amassed from his refusal to condemn the rank racism spewing from his friend Carlson and others and his insistence on sitting and staying put and not moving a millimeter off of that proverbial splinter-spiked fence.
NOT GOING UNNOTICED
In his response recently to conservative radio host Scott Jennings, Vance dismissed the idea that conservatives should actively guard their ranks against antisemitism, framing his answer in the most politically correct terms. “I think we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s antisemitism, anti-Black hatred, anti-white hatred,” he said. The only things missing from his response were three little words: Jewish, Israel, Zionist.
According to writer Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, “Among Jewish conservatives, frustration is mounting over Vance’s reluctance to condemn these figures. Daniel Flesch, a Heritage policy analyst, criticized the vice president for equating antisemitism with other forms of prejudice, calling it ‘effectively the equivalent of @TheDemocrats’ ‘…and Islamophobia’ response.’ Flesch stressed that antisemitism requires specific attention, separate from other social grievances.”
Evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, issued a scathing statement in response to Vance’s interview. “Tucker appears to have Vance in a trance,” she said. “It’s time for JD Vance to take a moral, Christian stand on antisemitism. There is no place for double talk on this matter.”
Cardoza-Moore continued, clearly alluding to VP Vance’s obdurate refusal to condemn––and sever relationships with––Tucker Carlson, who a prominent Jewish Group just named “Anti-Semite of the Year,” as well as Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and others in their malignant orbit.
“You don’t get to condemn hatred, while befriending the haters,” she stated. “This is not about canceling people; it’s about advocating for the Judeo-Christian values upon which our Republic was founded.”
According to writer, attorney, former IDF officer and former NYPD officer Micha Danzig, “In moments of political stress, the most revealing test of leadership is not rhetoric but refusal: what a leader will not tolerate, what he or she will not excuse, and what they will not leave unnamed.
That is why Vice President J.D. Vance’s persistent failure to confront antisemitism on the populist right must be treated as a primary concern, not a side issue.”
And according to conservative commentator Evan Sayet: “Vance had an opportunity at just the essential moment to oppose the hate and the lies of Owens, Carlson, Bannon, etc., but in Vance’s case, he flew cover for them, he turned on those who did dare to speak out.”
WHAT????
All of a sudden, out of the blue a few days ago, who shows up at the White House to attend President Trump’s meeting with oil executives where he planned to discuss how to acquire the largest oil reserves in the world in Venezuela?
None other than Tucker Carlson! He who spent the previous week vilifying the president and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their smashingly successful operation in Venezuela, deposing the drug-pushing dictator Nicolas Madura after 13 years of a tyrannical reign, which saw one of the richest countries in the world devolve into a third-world country under socialism/communism.
Who invited him? Initially, Tucker Carlson’s business partner, Neil Patel, stated that the president himself had invited Carlson to this important, high-level meeting. But within minutes, conservative activist Laura Loomer debunked that lie. And it didn’t take long for Loomer to report that, indeed, @NeilPatelTDC just confirmed with the White House that this is false. President Trump isn’t the person who invited Tucker Carlson to the White House.
“This is outrageous,” Loomer said. “Tucker Carlson is a virulent Jew hater and Islamic mouthpiece, and he has no business being in the Oval Office. Truly disgusting. What a hypocrite Tucker truly has become.”
So, who extended the invitation? Who even has an ongoing and apparently close relationship with Carlson? Ummm… is it a wild guess to say VP Vance?
Is this why President Trump, just the other day, felt compelled to state in no uncertain terms: “There is no room for antisemites in the MAGA movement…We don’t need them, we don’t like them.”
And isn’t it significant that in the same interview, the president refused to say who would be the best candidate to replace him?
Talk about a none-too-subtle swipe at you-know-who!
That would be VP Vance, who I have now labeled the dork! Dork has many definitions, but to me it is a do-nothing dweeb, very good at posturing, but not so good at pretending he is someone he is not, i.e., an unbiased, America-First, Make-America-Great-Again, rock-ribbed American patriot.
Instead, going strictly on his statements and his actions––what other measures of the man are there? ––he is a stealth figure too disturbingly aligned with the in-your-face racists among us, too timid to repudiate their racism, too weak in character to stand firmly with our most trusted ally, Israel, and, frankly, too dorky to even be considered for the august and most important position on earth, the President of the United States.
We had the Duke, now we have the Dork… both colossal losers!
© 2026 Joan Swirsky – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Joan Swirsky: joanswirsky@gmail.com
Website: http://www.joanswirsky.com
