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Catherine Rampell Rebuts Tucker Carlson’s Retelling of Palm Beach Club Fight

Rampell calls his account a coded defense of clubs that barred Jews.

Overview

  • Tucker Carlson, in a recent livestream with his brother, recounted that Rampell once said her father sued Palm Beach’s Bath & Tennis Club and called campaigns against exclusive clubs “repulsive.”
  • Rampell countered on The Bulwark podcast that her father never sued and instead ran a 1990s newspaper campaign after her preschool-age brother was excluded because the club did not allow Jews as guests.
  • Contemporaneous reporting supports her account, including a 1993 Palm Beach Daily News quote from Richard Rampell explaining the push after his child faced discrimination.
  • Carlson described Rampell as a “girl,” “not smart,” and a “liberal neocon,” and critics said his language and a lead-in discussion of WASPs functioned as coded defenses of exclusionary practices.
  • The dispute has stayed a media clash with no new legal action, focusing attention on the line between private clubs’ freedom of association and public-pressure efforts to confront discriminatory membership rules.