Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts gave a forceful defense of Tucker Carlson interviewing white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes, saying that “canceling” Fuentes “is not the answer.”
The former Fox News hosted Fuentes — who is known for his antisemetic far-right commentary and has been repeatedly disavowed by Republicans and figures on the right — on his podcast on Monday.
Roberts said that the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson over the interview are “sowing division,” and that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.”
“Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” Roberts said. “I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either.”
“When we disagree with a person’s ideas and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate, and we continue to see success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left,” Roberts said.
Figures on the right have worked for years to suppress Fuentes, given his repeated racist and antismetic commentary, even as his following has grown.
Carlson was widely criticized on the right not only for elevating Fuentes, but for not being aggressive in challenging him.
“The deeper problem is that Carlson didn’t actually challenge any of Fuentes’s noxious views that he has spelled out quite clearly over the years,” the editors of the conservative magazine National Review wrote in an editorial this week. “In his appearance, Fuentes stated that the ‘big challenge’ to unifying the country against tribal interests was ‘organized Jewry in America,’ and he expressed admiration for Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin. He did not receive any pushback from Carlson.”
Carlson on the podcast said that he wanted to understand Fuentes’s views, saying that while he also questioned the U.S. relationship with Israel, to say “well actually it’s the Jews” goes “against my Christian faith.”
After the interview, a post on X started circulating that said the Heritage Foundation had scrubbed a reference to Carlson from a donation page.
Roberts, in a post accompanying his video, said he wanted to put to rest speculation that Heritage was distancing itself from Carlson. Roberts and Carlson are personal friends, and he has featured Carlson at Heritage events in the past.
“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now,” Roberts said, adding that Heritage won’t “take direction from comments on X” or “take direction from members or donors.”
“We will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” Roberts said.
Roberts also weighed in on the bubbling debate on the right over Israel.
“Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic, and of course, antisemitism should be condemned,” Roberts said.
“When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology,” Roberts said. “But when it doesn’t, 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.”
