Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) thinks that right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson is “turning into Ilhan Omar,” as the senator expressed concern that the broadcaster is influencing a generation of young conservatives with his anti-Israel rhetoric.

“I will say I am concerned about rising antisemitism on the right,” Cruz said on Wednesday at a program at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “In the last six months, what we’ve seen on the right has been deeply disturbing.”

A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Cruz had gone to Heritage to talk about his legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches as terrorist organizations, which would trigger a series of U.S. government sanctions.

During the question and answer period at the end of the hour-long program, the topic turned to Jew-hatred and anti-Israel rhetoric on the right.

Cruz singled out Carlson, a former Fox News Channel host, as a leading source of such comments.

“Tucker Carlson is turning into Ilhan Omar. This is bizarre. This is ridiculous,” Cruz said.

The senator has engaged in several public debates with Carlson, who has interviewed two professors on his program who claimed that Adolf Hitler was not the genocidal murderer who began World War II and who was responsible for the Holocaust.

“There are very few ironclad rules of politics, but here’s one. Hitler was always, always bad,” Cruz said to cheers and applause.

Carlson also questioned on his program whether Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was composed of Islamic extremists. “I don’t know if that’s true, by the way,” he said. “Seems more like a political organization.” (JNS sought comment from Carlson.)

Cruz said his fellow elected Republicans have shied away from condemning such rhetoric.

“We need to speak out and oppose it,” Cruz said. “At the end of the day, the folks who are saying this are probably not persuadable, but I’m worried about the young people. I’m worried about the 19- and 20-year-old college kids, who are listening to this and cheering on this anti-Israel sentiment, this antisemitic sentiment.”

Cruz said that Democrats refused to speak out against Jew-hatred and anti-Israel rhetoric on their side, which has allowed it to spread.

Carlson has embraced the “great replacement theory,” which claims that Jews are bringing unauthorized immigrants of color into the country to vote illegally and replace white Christians at the ballot box. The Anti-Defamation League calls Carlson a “key promoter” of “the racist, antisemitic and xenophobic conspiracy.”

Similar rhetoric was cited by Robert Bowers when he carried out the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history, killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. And it’s reportedly what the neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 meant when they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

Carlson received some of the loudest applause of any speaker during his prime-time appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. During the fall campaign, then-GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance joined him at an event in Pennsylvania.

A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Cruz has introduced similar legislation about the Muslim Brotherhood in previous Congresses. He said that he ran into opposition because some branches of the brotherhood are not “demonstrably violent.”

This time, the bill would single out those branches that have engaged in terrorism, such as Hamas, and then sanction the whole brotherhood for supporting them, he said.

“We are taking a bottom-up approach,’’ Cruz said. “We start by identifying all the branches that the Muslim Brotherhood supports that are terrorist organizations right now and that commit terrorism right now, and then we designate the whole brotherhood for supporting those indisputably terrorist organizations.”

The bill has nine co-sponsors, all Republicans, but Cruz said he is talking with some of his Democratic colleagues and looking for ways to get the bill up for a vote.

“I am going looking for avenues to force a vote and put them on record,” he said.

He said he also plans to work with the White House to get the measure passed. “We are going to be actively making the case to the administration that we will be moving in the Senate,” he said.

The House version, sponsored by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), has attracted 15 co-sponsors from both parties, including pro-Israel stalwarts like Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.).