Tucker Carlson found himself battling frustration when a MAGA-supporting college student made a contentious statement about his late father’s alleged ties to the CIA during a Turning Point USA event on Tuesday. The former Fox News presenter, now a prominent podcaster, addressed a packed theater at Indiana University as part of the ‘American Comeback Tour’ that celebrates Charlie Kirk. In front of a sell-out crowd, Carlson engaged with questions spanning hot-button issues like abortion and Donald Trump from both liberal and conservative attendees.

However, the Q&A segment took a turn when one student’s incendiary comment about Richard Carlson, Tucker’s father, stirred the room. The student expressed skepticism over the differences in foreign policy between the Biden and Trump administrations, stating, “We’re still funneling a [expletive] ton of money to countries like Israel and Ukraine.”

He continued, “Trump promised quick resolutions, but here we are months later,” before pivoting to a pointed question: “Your dad was in the CIA, so does our government even desire peace? Do they aim to end conflicts?” Carlson attempted to steer the conversation back to the main topic, acknowledging he shared some of the student’s perspectives on foreign policy, but he responded with a decisive rebuke that resonated through the room.

‘Leave my father of it,’ he fired at the kid, quickly trying to turn the tone more jocular as he added: ‘I’m gonna have to kick your [expletive], which I could do, by the way, if you bring him up again because he was a wonderful man, whatever he did for a living.’ ‘I really do hate that. But leaving that aside…and don’t test me, son.’

Richard Carlson, an award winning journalist, died earlier this year in March at the age of 84 at his home in Boca Grande, Florida. His son, Tucker, issued a public statement praising his father, who ran the Voice of America during the final years of the Cold War. There is no evidence that Tucker’s father was ever employed by the Central Intelligence Agency; although, Carlson has previously said in interviews that his father ‘worked in conjunction’ with the agency at some point in his career.

‘The last 25 years of his life were spent in work whose details were never completely clear to his family, but that was clearly interesting,’ Carlson wrote in a statement honoring his father. ‘He worked in dozens of countries and breakaway republics around the world, and was involved in countless intrigues.’

Carlson concluded, ‘He was the toughest human being anyone in his family ever knew, and also the kindest and most loyal.’ Tucker himself applied to the CIA after graduating Trinity College but was rejected. He credits his father for encouraging him to take a career in journalism. Carlson is a frequent critic of the CIA due to the agency’s history of pushing the U.S. into foreign conflicts and wars.