Argentina’s President Milei Visits Rebbe’s Ohel After Carlson Temple Conspiracy

Argentina’s President Javier Milei visited the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens, New York, on Sunday, arriving with senior officials and a security entourage as part of his visit to the United States.

Milei prayed at the gravesite of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson before joining a small group that included Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky of Merkos 302 and Rabbi Simon Jacobson for a conversation at one of the Lubavitch houses across the street.

The visit comes days after commentator Tucker Carlson referenced Milei while promoting a conspiracy theory linking the current war with Iran to a supposed religious agenda tied to the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash.

In an episode that spread widely online, Carlson aired a clip of Milei speaking at the Kotel in Jerusalem. In the footage, the Argentine leader expressed hope that the prophecy of the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash will ultimately be fulfilled and described it as a blessing to stand at the site while voicing strong support for Israel.

Milei has long expressed a personal connection to the Rebbe and frequently visits the Ohel when traveling to New York. During his presidential campaign in 2023, he made a brief trip to the site shortly before securing a landslide victory in Argentina’s elections.

In one of his first interviews after winning the presidency, Milei surprised the interviewer when asked where he planned to travel first abroad. “To the United States, to the Ohel, and from there to Israel,” he said.

The Argentine leader has also spoken publicly about the Rebbe’s teachings in interviews and television appearances. In one Argentine television interview, he described how the Rebbe’s Shabbos farbrengens (Chassidic gatherings of teaching, song, and spiritual inspiration) were later transcribed and discussed meeting one of the Rebbe’s top students.

Milei maintains close ties with Argentina’s Chabad leadership, including the country’s head shliach Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt, and has repeatedly spoken about the influence of Jewish thought and tradition in his worldview.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, born in 1902 in Nikolaev, Ukraine, led the Chabad-Lubavitch movement beginning in 1950 and oversaw its transformation into a global network of Jewish institutions and outreach centers.

Since his passing in 1994, his gravesite in the Montefiore Cemetery in Queens has become a major place of pilgrimage, visited each year by tens of thousands of people seeking spiritual inspiration or prayer.

Milei’s stop at the Ohel marked the opening of his latest visit to the United States. During the trip he is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Yeshiva University, participate in The Algemeiner’s J100 Gala in New York, and open Argentina Week 2026 alongside business and diplomatic leaders.

The Argentine president has visited the Ohel five times in recent years and is known to stop there when in New York to pray and seek blessings for himself and for Argentina.