Theo Von talks Israel, Gaza and Hamas with JD Vance: ‘I’ve called it a genocide’
Von hosts the third-biggest podcast on Spotify and frequently criticizes Israel to his 4 million YouTube followers
Podcaster Theo Von hosted Vice President JD Vance on his show on June 7, 2025. (Screenshot)
(JTA) — When Vice President JD Vance rebuffed the idea that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza over the weekend, he wasn’t speaking to other world leaders or to representative of the Israeli or Palestinian people.
Instead, Vance was speaking to Theo Von, a comedian who has emerged as one of the most influential podcasters in the world.
Theo Von, whose full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III, nabbed Vance for an appearance on his podcast “This Past Weekend with Theo Von,” which has 4 million subscribers on YouTube and is currently the third-biggest podcast on Spotify.
Its episodes range from an hour to over two hours long and have featured a host of famous guests including President Donald Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Candace Owens and Mark Zuckerberg.
On Saturday’s episode with JD Vance, Von pressed the case that he has made previously on his show, that Israel’s war conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide — a position at odds with that of the U.S. government.
“It feels like a massacre and it feels like, you know, I’ve called it a genocide, other people, have different thoughts about it and that’s fine. Right? And I don’t need anybody to share the same thoughts or you to,” Von said. “But I think where it gets scary is that we give, you know, we’re complicit in it because we help fund, like, military stuff.”
He continued, echoing Vance’s past articulations of an isolationist vision for U.S. foreign policy, “Sometimes it feels like we look out for the interest of Israel before we look out for the interest of America.”
The comments elicited some of Vance’s most extensive public comments about the war in Gaza. Vance rejected the claim that Israel was committing a genocide, saying he didn’t believe Israel was “purposely trying to go in and murder every Palestinian.”
But he also said he was sympathetic to those who are alarmed about the crisis facing Palestinian civilians.
“If you have a soul, your heart should break when you see a little kid who’s suffering,” said Vance, referring to the “videos of these innocent Palestinian kids.”
In discussing the Trump administration’s plan for a “peaceful resolution” to the war in Gaza, Vance said that they were trying to “solve two problems.”
“You’ve got to give Israel confidence that Hamas is never going to attack them and kill a bunch of civilians. And then you’ve got to get as much aid and support into these innocent Palestinians as possible. Because in some ways they’re caught in the middle of this thing too,” Vance said.
“One thing that I, like, don’t love about the whole Israel-Palestinian debate is I think it kind of degrades our humanity a little bit,” Vance continued.
In the first three days that the podcast interview was available on YouTube, it garnered 1.7 million views and over 9,000 comments.
It was emblematic of how Von, a Louisiana native who began his career as a reality TV participant and stand-up comedian, has leaned more towards political commentary in many of his podcast episodes over the last year — earning an invitation to Donald Trump’s inauguration and drawing criticism from pro-Israel voices in the process.
Von is part of a growing ecosystem of everyman “manosphere” podcasters who host sprawling conversations with a wide array of guests and increasingly are seen as representing a crucial sector of the electorate. Von has appeared several times on the podcast hosted by Joe Rogan, currently the most-listened-to podcast on Spotify.
Rogan has drawn allegations of antisemitism, as when he hosted a Holocaust revisionist on his show last March and said in 2023 that it’s “ridiculous” to doubt that Jews like money. Last month, Rogan defended Kanye West’s latest song, titled “Heil Hitler.”
Last November, Von appeared on Rogan’s show and decried “left-leaning media, which is mostly Jewish.”
Last month, Von performed a comedy routine before U.S. and Qatari troops at a military base in Qatar ahead of a speech by Trump. Von had first connected with Trump on the campaign trail, hosting him on his podcast in August 2024.
Soon after, in a solo podcast episode titled “Big Guy,” Von referred to the war in Gaza as a “genocide” and said he wants to “be able to speak up about that.”
“It feels to me like it’s a genocide that’s happening while we’re alive here in front of our, in front of our lives,” said Von. “Sometimes I feel like I should say something, I’m not a geologist or geographer or anything like that, you know, so I don’t know a lot of the — some of it I do know though, like I know the basics of the issues over there.”
“But for me it’s just like how I feel, like you see all these photos of people just children, women, people, body parts, just people like putting their kids back together and I just can’t believe that we’re watching that and that more isn’t said about it,” Von continued.
The episode ignited criticism from pro-Israel influencers, some of whom alleged that he had been influenced by Qatar, which has funded Hamas and hosts its leaders.
“Theo Von said nothing when Jews were slaughtered, raped and taken hostage. He then visits Qatar and suddenly parrots talking points that Israel is committing a genocide,” the influencer Debra Lea tweeted after Von shared pictures of himself in traditional Qatari garb, tagging the country’s tourism board. “The math isn’t hard. 2+2= the check from Qatar cleared.”
But it was hardly the first time that Von had pressed the genocide case. He has accused Israel of genocide several times on his podcast, a claim that Israel has vehemently denied but has gained traction among some staunch supporters of Israel in recent months, as the Israeli government blocked aid to Gaza.
In an interview on Von’s podcast in August 2024 with Rabbi David Wolpe, who served on Harvard’s antisemitism advisory group before later resigning, the pair discussed Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza.
During the interview, Wolpe said, “When people say that there’s a genocide…,” to which Von interjected, “I’ve thought that.”
Wolpe finished his thought: “Two of the five fastest-growing populations in the world are the West Bank and Gaza. So if Israel’s are actually prosecuting a genocide, they’re doing a very bad job of it,” he said.
In October 2024 in a podcast interview with Gabor Maté, a Holocaust survivor and Hungarian-born Canadian physician and author, Von said, “It feels like a genocide is going on over there.”
“It’s heartbreaking. I mean, it feels like a genocide is going on over there and you don’t know what to do,” said Von. “I mean, you can pray, you can speak up about it. And I know that it is like a more political aspects of it. And we’ve had different people come on to talk about Israel and Palestine here, and it was very knowledgeable for a lot of our listeners.”
And in a solo episode of his podcast last December titled “Vigilante Christmas,” Von argued that the reason that the U.S. government was then seeking to ban the social media platform TikTok was to stop people from “sharing the truth about the genocide in Palestine.”
“I believe that they don’t want people sharing the truth about the genocide in Palestine and that’s why that they’re doing it,” he said. “I believe that that’s what it is, and TikTok is one of those places where people could still do that and they want to own it.”
The comments have drawn support from Von’s dedicated followers even as they have caused pro-Israel voices to take aim at him.
“Your emotions are being manipulated by jihadi terrorists who use mainstream media, social media, and their own disinformation campaigns to make you believe they’re victims of a war they themselves started and brought upon their own people,” tweeted Marina Medvin, an attorney and conservative political commentator, in response to a recent post by Von on X teasing an episode in which he discussed the “genocide” in Gaza.
