A civil war over the direction of the conservative movement and who should be considered part of it erupted after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a video Thursday defending Tucker Carlson for interviewing white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
The statement sparked backlash from Republican senators and a number of traditionally conservative organizations — and from staffers within the Heritage Foundation itself who say that Fuentes, who is known for antisemitic commentary, and his ideas are not worthy of debate.
“Nick Fuentes is a disgusting, anti-American, antisemitic loser. He is not a conservative, not America First, and not an ally of President Trump or any conservative organization,” one Heritage staffer, granted anonymity to share candid thoughts, told The Hill. “In his own words, Nick Fuentes is an ally of Stalin, Hitler, and the Taliban. That is not someone with ideas worthy of debate. Conservatives should pray he gets the help he needs, not give him even an inch of space in our movement.”
But Roberts had also gotten strong backup from the heads of other conservative groups and commentators with influence in the Trump administration, like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who argued it should not be controversial to debate U.S. aid to Israel and that attempts to “cancel” those with opposing views are not productive.
Following the uproar, Roberts posted another statement Friday more explicitly condemning the antisemitism from Fuentes and his followers, but not backing down from his defense of Carlson conducting the interview.
Roberts, who has made the leading conservative think tank more aligned with the MAGA base, posted a video statement Thursday asserting that the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson over the interview is “sowing division” and that the “attempt to cancel him will fail.”
Roberts went far beyond defending Carlson, who is a personal friend of the Heritage Foundation president and has spoken at Heritage in the past. He warned against attacking friends to the right rather than political adversaries on the left. He argued that “canceling” Fuentes “is not the answer,” despite him saying things Roberts abhors, and that his ideas should be challenged and debated.
The statement appalled a large portion of the political right, who have spent years trying to distance themselves from Fuentes and his “groyper” white nationalist followers and feared them being seen as part of the conservative coalition.
Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider on Thursday that there would be a “reassessment” of the organization’s relationship with the Heritage Foundation after the initial statement.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the former GOP leader in the Senate, pushed back on Roberts in a post on social platform X. “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” McConnell said. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is.”
Advancing American Freedom, another conservative think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, directly countered the statement from Roberts with a video statement from its president, Tim Chapman.
“Some in our movement are playing a dangerous game, trading the flame of conservative principle for the flames of populist outrage,” Chapman said, arguing that Carlson and Fuentes are “unleashing a whirlwind that threatens to destroy” what conservatives have built. Inviting “open anti-semites into our ranks,” he said, “will only fracture our movement.”
Backlash to Roberts’s statement also came from within the Heritage Foundation itself.
Heritage staffers appeared to respond to Roberts on X, as Mediaite reported, with one tax policy research fellow Presdon Brashers posting a meme that said “Nazis are bad.” Richard Stern, the director of the think tank’s economic policy institute and federal budget center, added: “Evidently, a truth that is never more than one generation away from being forgotten.” Daniel Fleish, senior policy analyst for Middle East and North Africa at Heritage, said he stood by his colleagues for stating that “obvious fact.”
Roberts made the initial statement in part to beat back speculation that Heritage was trying to distance itself from Carlson, he said in a post. After Carlson’s interview with Fuentes posted on Monday, a post on X started circulating that said the Heritage Foundation had scrubbed a reference to Carlson from a donation page. Roberts and Carlson are personal friends, and he has featured Carlson at Heritage events in the past.
On Friday following the significant backlash, Roberts elaborated on what he abhors about Fuentes’s views in another statement.
“Nick Fuentes’s antisemitism is not complicated, ironic, or misunderstood. It is explicit, dangerous, and demands our unified opposition as conservatives. Fuentes knows exactly what he is doing. He is fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence,” Roberts said.
“Our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place. Join us—not to cancel—but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail,” Roberts said.
While Roberts field a wave of backlash, he also got a good amount of backup from others on the MAGA right with connections to — and influence within — the Trump administration.
“I mean, what a state of the country when that’s controversial,” Bannon said on his WarRoom show on Friday. “That’s pretty basic. Dr. Roberts, pretty straight guy, pretty straightforward guy.”
Eric Teetsel, president of the Center for Renewing America think tank that was founded by now-Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, posted that Roberts had made an “excellent statement” and that he was “proud to stand with you and Heritage.”
Nick Solheim, CEO of the organization American Moment that has helped funnel young staffers into Trump Administration roles, responded to the video with support of Roberts as a “leader for this moment” — adding, “I’ve never been more excited about where our movement is headed.”
The statement has turned up the fire on bubbling tensions on the right over Israel policy and antisemitism. Many claiming the banner of “America First” are questioning U.S. support for Israel — with some, like Fuentes, expressing antisemetic views alongside questioning U.S. financial support. At the same time, the Trump administration has frequently invoked its battle against antisemitism in its crusade against elite universities.
Roberts in his initial video statement had said that “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” and that when it does not serve the interests of the U.S. “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who sat for an at times hostile interview with Carlson earlier this year, made pointed comments at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual summit in Las Vegas on Thursday.
“Now is a time for choosing. If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very cool and that their mission is to defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” the Texas Republican said during the Friday remarks.
Some former public officials were more subtle about weighing in on the debate, expressing support for Israel in wake of the statement from Roberts and Carlson’s interview with Fuentes.
Pence on Friday posted a video showcasing his support for Israel and footage of him visiting and supporting Israel, and a speech to Israel’s Knesset.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted on X on Friday: “I’ve been hearing a lot of noise about how supporting Israel puts America last. Supporting Israel is innately tied to America’s fundamental interests.”
Heritage in March released a report calling to wind down military aid to Israel as part of Israel as part of a strategy to “re-orient its relationship” with the country over the next two decades.
