Tucker Carlson found himself grappling with frustration when a MAGA-supporting college student provocatively alleged that his late father had ties to the CIA during a Turning Point USA event on Tuesday. The ex-Fox News anchor, now a prominent podcaster, was speaking at Indiana University to a packed crowd as part of the ‘American Comeback Tour’ in honor of Charlie Kirk. During the event, Carlson addressed questions from both liberal and conservative attendees on hot-button issues such as abortion and Donald Trump.

The Q&A session took a tense turn when a student’s comment cast a pall over the otherwise energetic discussion. The student made a bold assertion about Richard Carlson, Tucker’s father, suggesting a connection to the CIA. “I don’t see much difference in foreign policy between the Biden administration and the Trump one,” the student remarked to Carlson. “We’re still funneling an enormous amount of money to places like Israel and Ukraine.”

The student continued, “Trump promised resolutions in a day, and here we are, how many months later? Eight months or something like that. Your dad was in the CIA, so I wonder, does our government even want wars to end? Do they desire conflicts to cease?” Carlson attempted to refocus on the core issue, expressing agreement with several of the student’s foreign policy points, but he also delivered a pointed response, leaving a palpable tension in the air.

‘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.