During a livestreamed conversation with white supremacist Nick Fuentes last week, the CEO of the Daily Wire, a major right-wing media outlet, praised the prominent fascist influencer and offered only mild criticism about some of his political views — a stark difference from how he has spoken about Fuentes in the past.

On March 25, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing joined Fuentes on X Spaces (formerly Twitter Spaces), a live audio chat room. Boreing told Fuentes he listens to Fuentes’ show “quite often” and that he thinks Fuentes is “very funny” and one of the “most talented” political influencers, even if he is “very concerned” about some of what Fuentes says.

Later in the discussion, Boreing said he’d be “thrilled” to have Fuentes on one of the Daily Wire’s shows to debate the media company’s popular pundits, some of whom have millions of viewers.

The Daily Wire declined to comment on Boreing’s appearance with Fuentes on X Spaces.

The cordial tone of the conversation was a drastic departure from how Boreing has typically addressed Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and has called for the execution of non-Christians, including “perfidious Jews.”

In recent years the Daily Wire CEO has called Fuentes “a wicked little s**t with evil ideas″ and a “trolling little racist bastard.” He has also encouraged people not to give Fuentes attention at all.

“Supporting free speech does not require one to engage with racists,” Boreing wrote on X in 2022. “It only requires one to support a racist’s right to engage. Fuentes should have access to the means of communication. Decent people should refuse to communicate with him.”

Experts say the X Spaces event served to further mainstream Fuentes and his noxious ideas, as well as demonstrate how the firewall between relatively mainstream conservatives and outright fascists is disappearing.

“The far right has a decades-long history of using mainstream outlets to launder the more extreme versions of their beliefs, to insert them into the range of what counts as acceptable political discourse,” Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College who studies right-wing media, told HuffPost.

The discussion last Monday was hosted by Lauren Chen, a BlazeTV personality who serves as an ambassador to Turning Points USA, a conservative youth organization closely affiliated with the Republican Party. Chen is a booster of Fuentes, and she’d invited guests to debate whether one of Fuentes’ signature phrases — “Christ is King” — can be antisemitic.

Fuentes and his followers have used “Christ is King” as a signifier for antisemitism, chanting it at rallies and using it as a bludgeon in the political discourse — asking people if they believe “Christ is King,” and then dismissing them as heretics or “demonic” if they say no. It’s a rhetorical trap for Christians who might believe in the scriptural assertion that Christ is King but who don’t subscribe to Fuentes’ bigoted worldview.

At its core, Fuentes uses “Christ is King” as a form of trolling, one not dissimilar from previous white supremacist sloganeering campaigns, including 2017’s “It’s okay to be white.” That phrase, which was developed on the extremism-plagued message board 4chan, might sound innocuous to the untrained ear, but in context is an assertion of racism and white nationalism.

The phrase “Christ is King” was in the news before Chen’s X Spaces discussion because Boreing had announced a few days prior that the Daily Wire was parting ways with one of its most famous hosts, Candace Owens, after Owens made a series of antisemitic remarks. She claimed her show that “secret Jewish gangs” control Hollywood and do “horrific things.” She had also liked a tweet accusing a rabbi of being “drunk on Christian blood,” a reference to an age-old antisemitic conspiracy theory. And she publicly sparred with her Daily Wire colleague Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, including responding to a tweet of Shapiro’s by stating “Christ is King.”

About a dozen far-right figures joined the X Spaces discussion, many of whom were angry over Owens’ firing. The conversation, which some 7,000 people listened to live, was steeped in antisemitism, with one participant stating that Jews “had Christ killed” and that “free speech is under attack” by the “Jewish lobby.” Other participants pressed Boreing on the specifics of Owens’ departure from the Daily Wire; Boreing refused to address personnel matters at the company, citing legal reasons.

Fuentes complained to Boreing that Shapiro — by far one of the Daily Wire’s most popular hosts — refuses to say the words “Christ is King.”

“I think it’s notable that Ben Shapiro has never uttered those words,” Fuentes said. He added that people who refuse to say “Christ is King” should not have “leadership in America” and ultimately should “forfeit their ability to lead” — essentially an argument for excluding Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians from public office.

“I’ll say this, Nick, that I listen to your show quite often,” Boreing responded. “I think you’re one of the most talented people out there. And I’m very concerned about some of the things that you’re saying. I think that you’re a very gifted communicator and so it’s hard for me to imagine that you consistently miscommunicate some of these things.”

At another point in the conversation, Boreing said he disagreed with the decision by X, which is owned by Elon Musk, to suspend Fuentes from the platform. (Fuentes joined the X Spaces discussion from a new, pseudonymous account that X later suspended.)

“I disagree with Nick quite profoundly and have a lot of concerns about what his movement stands for, but if I owned a broad platform that presented itself as being the public square of the country,” Boreing said, he wouldn’t ban “any opinion that doesn’t actually call for violence.”

“We could argue about whether or not Nick has called for violence in some of the things that he said,” Boreing went on. “I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt in this moment ... at least for the sake of this argument. Nick should still be on X and be able to express his opinions.”

Boreing also addressed some of Fuentes’ most extreme comments.

“To the extent that you’ve said things like ‘when we come to power, we’re going to kill the perfidious Jews,’ it’s very hard then not to keep that as context in mind when you say that you’re not antisemitic,” Boreing said. “And I understand that you’re a very funny guy. You make very subtle arguments and you tell a lot of jokes. It’s very hard after a certain amount of time, though, to believe that all of those jokes are jokes. … I’m very concerned about a lot of the things that you say now. I think you take a very radical position. I hope when you say Christ is King that you mean it.”

Describing Fuentes’ arguments as “subtle” might sound strange to those familiar with his rhetoric. Fuentes is the leader of the America First, or “groyper,” movement, an explicitly white supremacist political project. Fuentes rallied with neo-Nazis at the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; he used a megaphone to cheer on rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and he has amassed a large, youthful following through the online show he produces, on which he spouts profoundly racist, antisemitic, misogynistic and homophobic remarks while calling for a fascist dictatorship and for his movement’s enemies to be imprisoned and killed.

Boreing’s Daily Wire, a Nashville-based media conglomerate, has a massive audience, producing some of the most popular shows and podcasts in the country. On the Spaces call, Boreing claimed the company made $220 million in revenue last year, and boasts over 1 million paid subscribers.

Although considered more mainstream than Fuentes, the Daily Wire also traffics in vile bigotry. Host Michael Knowles, while speaking at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, called for the “eradication of transgenderism.” Another host, Matt Walsh, one of the country’s foremost anti-trans voices, has also embraced the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, arguing last month that immigrants entering the U.S. “come from decaying, dying, dead, nonexistent civilizations without the skills to build a civilization.”

Most of the hosts on the Daily Wire, save for Shapiro, profess a type of Christian fundamentalism or Christian nationalism that is popular among younger white nationalists.

Shane Burley, co-author of the forthcoming book “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide To Fighting Antisemitism,” told HuffPost he thinks Boreing appeared on the X Spaces discussion with Fuentes because he correctly assessed that “the people who listen to Matt Walsh, and the people who listen to Candace Owens, are the same people who listen to Nick Fuentes.”

Burley said Boreing is likely looking to “inculcate a whole new generation of folks into the Daily Wire,” understanding that the “entire youth sector of the Republican Party has been taken over by this nativist populist” movement represented, in part, by Fuentes and his groypers.

“He’s looking for a way to capture that young energy,” Burley said.

Fuentes, meanwhile, has been open about his mission to exploit simmering right-wing criticism of Israel’s ongoing genocidal siege of Gaza in order to attract more converts to explicit antisemitism. This appears to be partly behind his fixation with Shapiro, an ardent supporter of Israel who Fuentes has trolled relentlessly throughout the years. (Shapiro, who has expressed a litany of extreme right-wing and bigoted views, is a frequent target of antisemitic attacks online.)

“As much as anti-Zionism is becoming a new perspective among the edges of right-wing politics, it is because Fuentes has helped to make it a comfortable expression of right-wing, nationalist values,” Burley wrote recently on his website, the Maiseh Review. “While antisemitism has remained a consistent part of the American Right, from the eschatology of Evangelicals to the conspiracism of the ultra-conservative base, explicit antisemitism has been verboten, in part because of the American political allegiance to Israel.”

Fuentes appears to be trying to break that consensus, and scored a victory when Owens tweeted “Christ is King” at Shapiro.

Burley says Boreing “absolutely helped mainstream” Fuentes by appearing in a live, cordial discussion with him, even if he claims to denounce some of Fuentes’ politics — and Boreing is just the latest influential public figure to give Fuentes a boost. In 2020, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, arguably one of the most famous musicians in the world and now notorious for praising Hitler, tapped Fuentes as a campaign adviser to his brief presidential campaign. In early 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke at a conference organized by Fuentes. And later that year, former President Donald Trump hosted Ye and Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where the three talked about politics. (Trump later claimed not to know who Fuentes was, but then refused to rebuke him.)

“Boreing made exactly the decision that Fuentes wants, and it will help the groypers immeasurably,” Burley said. “It actually helps insulate Fuentes from accusations of antisemitism, which are obviously well-documented and accurate.”

And he might do it again. At the end of the March 25 appearance on X Spaces, a participant asked Boreing whether he’d allow Fuentes to appear on the Daily Wire.

“The public just got a debate between me and Nick Fuentes tonight. I feel like we’ve taken a huge step,” Boreing said. “I’ve said all along throughout the evening that I don’t speak for Ben Shapiro or any of my hosts, but I would be absolutely thrilled to have Ben speak to Nick or anyone on my team who wants to speak to Nick to speak to Nick or anyone else.”