Conservative podcasting titan Tucker Carlson said he and his staff were detained in Israel on Wednesday following an interview with Donald Trump’s ambassador to the country.

The former Fox News host flew into Tel Aviv for a sit-down with Mike Huckabee, who challenged Carlson to speak to him directly following an online spat about the country’s treatment of Christians.

Carlson, who also frequently criticizes Israel for its military actions in Gaza, took Huckabee up on his offer.

But as critics and pro-Israel activists began piling on Carlson for purportedly not leaving the airport during his brief visit, he revealed that he was met with hostility in the Middle Eastern country.

Carlson exclusively told the Daily Mail that shortly after the interview, Israeli officials confiscated his passport and hauled one of his colleagues off to an interrogation room.

‘Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about,’ Carlson told the Daily Mail. 

‘It was bizarre. We’re now out of the country.’ 

Prior to the interview, Carlson posted a photo on X of himself and his business partner, Neil Patel, in front of Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday with the caption: ‘Greetings from Israel.’

Tucker Carlson says he and his staff were detained at Ben Gurion airport and interrogated by Israeli officials on Wednesday following an interview with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee

Carlson frequently criticizes Israel for its military actions in Gaza and treatment of Christians

Huckabee, who has known Carlson for over three decades and previously worked with him at Fox News, invited Carlson to Israel for a discussion over their differences

‘Too bad Tucker stayed in the airport in the face of so many invitations to see so many wonderful places. A huge and obviously intentional missed opportunity,’ taunted David Friedman, the former US ambassador to Israel during Trump’s first term.

Two sources familiar with the matter, however, told the Daily Mail that the Israeli government initially did not want to allow Carlson into the country, prompting a delicate negotiation involving the State Department.

In the end, the Israeli government decided not to bar Carlson from entering the country in order to avoid a ‘diplomatic incident,’ according to a Channel 13 report.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Israel denied that Carlson was detained and claimed he ‘received the same passport control questions that countless visitors to Israel, including Ambassador Huckabee and other diplomats, receive as part of normal entrance and exit from Israel.’

‘It is not accurate that Israel only was going to let Tucker into the country for the interview,’ the representative added. 

‘The only engagement the Embassy had with Israel about his visit was to coordinate his private plane landing as part of facilitating a seamless visit. It was Tucker who chose to only come into the country for a few hours and depart. And Tucker received the same positive treatment of any visitors to Israel.’

The Daily Mail has contacted the White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office for comment. 

Carlson accused Huckabee last week on his YouTube show of not ensuring proper protections for Christians in Israel.

Huckabee, who has known Carlson for more than three decades and previously worked with him at Fox News, responded by inviting him to Israel for a discussion.

‘Instead of talking about me, why don’t you come talk to me?’ Huckabee wrote on X. Carlson replied by welcoming the invitation, before noting that they were working on setting up the interview.

Israel’s popularity remains at an all-time low in the GOP among young Republican voters and Trump supporters. 

The Carlson-Huckabee event was reportedly an attempt by the Trump administration to prevent debates surrounding Israel from breaking the GOP’s conservative coalition ahead of the midterms. 

Carlson is a longtime supporter of Trump and ally of Vice President JD Vance

Carlson and his business partner Neil Patel at Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday

Trump urged Carlson and others within the GOP to ease off internal fights with Republicans over Israel, according to former Fox News anchor Melissa Francis. 

‘Everybody’s looking for a way to turn down the temperature,’ Francis told the  Jerusalem Post. ‘President Trump is telling everyone, including Tucker, “Let’s take this down.”‘

Carlson is a longtime ally of Vice President JD Vance and speaks with Trump on a range of issues, including foreign policy. 

Last month, Carlson visited the White House twice and met with Trump in the Oval Office on at least one known occasion.

WASHINGTON — With the last remaining Israeli hostage finally returned home, the real work of rebuilding Gaza is now beginning, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee exclusively told The Post.

“It’s just now really starting to take hold. Things will start moving much more rapidly now that the hostages are back,” he said. “Quite frankly, the Israelis were in no mood to start building a new life for people in Gaza until Hamas was finally held responsible for the last of the hostages.”

Israel on Jan. 26 recovered Israeli police officer Ran Gvili’s body, which Hamas had taken to Gaza after killing him on Oct. 7, 2023. With that final return, Huckabee said, Gaza is entering a new and daunting phase: the slow, incremental resurrection of a territory left in “absolute ruins” after years of war.

“This isn’t going to be an event; it’s going to be a process,” he said. “People will begin to move out of areas that are really dangerous — the red zones — into the green zones. Housing is being constructed. Utilities will be restored.”

Materials and now flowing into the territory with the first steps involving the installation of pre-fabricated homes “so people can start a new life and maybe have a future in Gaza,” he said.

“People will be able to access not just housing, but utilities that work — rebuilding a society pretty much from the rubble of a war that never should have lasted this long,” he said.

“Rebuilding from scratch”

Huckabee cautioned that the rebuild won’t be an overnight fix; the extent of the destruction could stretch out the timeline — especially depending on global commitment and funding.

“We’re talking years,” Huckabee said. “It could be two, three years. It could be 10 years. A lot of it depends on how many nations actually step up.”

Oversight of Gaza’s reconstruction will fall to a technocratic governing committee tasked with the gritty, real-world work of restoring Gaza’s infrastructure.

“This is the heavy lifting,” Huckabee said. “Electricity. Water. Sewer. Roads. Cell towers. Internet. These are not political appointees looking for an office and a badge — these are people with real skills who know how to make things work.”

Most of the technocrats, he said, will come from Arab and Muslim states in the region, chosen for technical expertise rather than politics.

“If you’re rebuilding a society from scratch, you need people who actually know how to run things,” Huckabee said. “You need people who can build sewer systems, water systems, power grids, communications networks.”

The committee falls under President Trump’s international “Board of Peace,” which Huckabee said is focused more on the funding and enforcement of standards. To date, the board’s members include 25 member states — but European Union countries have so far refused to sign on.

“I find it interesting that some of the nations that criticized Israel the most — saying they weren’t doing enough humanitarian work — you’d be hard pressed to find them doing the heavy lifting right now,” Huckabee said. “A lot of them have talked. They haven’t walked.”

A central responsibility of the group will be ensuring Hamas or other extremist networks do not infiltrate the reconstruction effort — whether through aid groups, contractors, or payrolls.

“You’ve got to make sure the people getting paychecks and doing the rebuilding don’t have ties to terrorists,” he said. “Israel has been through too much to be careless about that.”

Beyond rebuilding streets and buildings, Huckabee said Gaza must undergo a deeper transformation — including a complete overhaul of an education system he said has fueled hatred for decades.

“Education will be restored to something that no longer incites children to hate Jews or want to kill them,” he said. “That’s been part of the curriculum in Gaza for over 20 years. That’s got to stop. And it’s going to stop.”

A brighter future

Looking ahead, Huckabee pointed to Jared Kushner’s ambitious vision of transforming Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline into a thriving economic and tourism hub — a future he said investors are beginning to take more seriously as stability improves.

“People have scoffed at that vision,” Huckabee said. “But we’re in a very different place than we were a month ago. A year from now, we’re going to be in a much better place.”

He argued Gaza’s collapse was not inevitable — saying it could have become a Middle Eastern success story decades ago if not for Hamas’ grip on power.

“Gaza could have been Singapore,” Huckabee said. “Instead, they turned it into Haiti.”

To underscore the scale of Hamas’ militarization, he described Gaza as small in size but hollowed out by terror infrastructure beneath the surface.

“All of Gaza is about the size of Las Vegas,” Huckabee said. “And underneath it is a tunnel system larger than the London Underground — more than 500 miles — not to get kids to school or people to hospitals, but to shelter terror activity and hide hostages.”

Much of that underground tunnel system was destroyed in the war — along with most everything that sat above it outside of Gaza City, making the rebuild process exceedingly daunting.

“We’re rebuilding a society pretty much from the rubble of a war that never should have lasted this long,” Huckabee said, placing full responsibility for the war’s length on Hamas dragging out the conflict.

“I hope people never forget why this lasted this long,” he said. “It lasted this long because Hamas refused to let the hostages go. They held on and held on — killing people, torturing people, raping hostages, starving hostages.”

But with the war’s end and hostages now home, Huckabee said Gaza’s rebuild is finally moving in the right direction.

“It’s a gargantuan undertaking,” he said. “But we are in a better place than we were a week ago, two weeks ago, a month ago — and it’s moving forward.”