Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts was pilloried – by his fellow conservatives – for defending podcast host Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, a far-right influencer known for his anti-Israel and antisemitic commentary.
Mr. Roberts posted a video Thursday in response to what he described as “speculation” that the foundation is “distancing itself” from Mr. Carlson over his Monday podcast with Mr. Fuentes, who has said the Holocaust was “exaggerated,” declared “I love Hitler,” and suggested that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel was “staged.”
“We will always defend truth. We will always defend America, and we’ll always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” Mr. Roberts said. “That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains — and as I have said before, always will be — a close friend of The Heritage Foundation.”
Mr. Roberts insisted that the “venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. 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,” he said. “I disagree with — and even abhor — things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either.”
His comments exposed a festering rift on the right between the pro-Israel Republican Party and conservative mainstream, and a small but potent band of influencers such as Mr. Carlson accused of seeking to “normalize” anti-Israel and even antisemitic viewpoints.
Pushing back on Mr. Roberts’ statement were Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican.
“Now is a time for choosing. Now is the time for courage,” Mr. Cruz said in a Friday speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Summit in Las Vegas.
“If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” he told the crowd.
Other prominent conservatives joining the blowback included Will Chamberlain, Dinesh D’Souza, Mark Dubowitz, Erick Erickson, Richard Goldberg, Eric Metaxas, Jim Geraghty, William Jacobson, Joel Pollak and Carol Swain, as well as the Babylon Bee’s Joel Berry and Seth Dillon.
“This is a hostage video,” Mr. Metaxas, a Christian author and radio host, said on social media. “I love @KevinRobertsTX and cannot imagine why he made it. Tucker should be ASHAMED of platforming a truly evil figure like Nick Fuentes. ASHAMED. And he should be told that by anyone who cares about him.”
Mr. Berry, the Bee’s managing editor, warned that “Fuentes and Tucker are destroying the Right and greatly hurting our ability to defeat the Left.”
This whole video is a giant strawman.
— Han Shawnity  (@HanShawnity) October 30, 2025
Nobody ever made the argument that we need to reflexively support Israel even if it goes against our own interests. I certainly don’t believe that.
That’s not why we don’t like Tucker Carlson.
We don’t like him because he’s pushing… https://t.co/4szy89smBG
The Roberts video provided an opening for Democrats seeking to mend fences with Jewish voters as the progressive left sides with the Palestinian narrative in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer called Mr. Roberts’ statement “deeply disturbing.”
“While not surprising coming from the home of Project 2025, this statement from the Heritage Foundation is deeply disturbing, an embrace of antisemitism and white supremacist conspiracy theories, all while trafficking antisemitic conspiracy theories of ’globalist’ powers that control US policy,” said Mr. Schumer on social media.
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said his organization has worked with Heritage over the years, but “obviously there’s going to be a reassessment of our relationship with Heritage in light of this.”
“Watching the statements from Kevin Roberts today, as somebody who has been involved and supportive of the Heritage Foundation since I came to Washington in 1987, I am appalled, offended and disgusted that he and Heritage would stand with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes as somehow being acceptable spokespeople within the conservative movement,” Mr. Brooks told Jewish Insider.
I’d like to take this opportunity to praise my many @Heritage colleagues who work tirelessly every day to support America & Israel, to defend both Christians & Jews, and to combat the vile enemies facing America, Israel, Christians & Jews. Your work speaks louder than this video. https://t.co/zZ9sM7UIQg
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) October 30, 2025
Mr. Roberts’ statement came after Heritage was criticized by Carlson fans for removing references to the former Fox News Channel host from the foundation’s donations page, as flagged Wednesday on social media by Jason Hart.
The video also came after Vice President J.D. Vance drew notice for his less-than-fulsome defense of Israel in response to a question about the “notion that we might owe Israel something” at a Turning Point USA forum Wednesday at the University of Mississippi.
Mr. Vance stressed that “when the President of the United States says ’America first,’ that means that he pursues the interest of Americans first. That is our entire foreign policy.”
“Israel, sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes, they don’t have similar interests to the United States.”
The vice president has previously disavowed Mr. Fuentes, calling him a “total loser” in 2024.
Mr. Carlson was a revered and even beloved figure during his years as a Fox News host, but since his firing in 2023, he has stoked uneasiness on the right for hosting figures pushing World War II fringe revisionist views, such as podcaster Darryl Cooper, who has called Winston Churchill the “chief villain of World War II.”
“What happened to Tucker?” asked Mr. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor, in an August article on the Legal Insurrection blog.
During the Monday podcast, Mr. Carlson criticized Republicans such as Mr. Cruz, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and political strategist Karl Rove, calling them “Christian Zionists” and saying they suffer from “this brain virus.”
“I can just say for myself that I dislike them more than anybody because, like what, because it’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian,” Mr. Carlson said.
Mr. Jacobson declared: “Tucker is allowed to spew his crap, and we are allowed to criticize him for it,” adding that “Kevin Roberts is a disgrace.”
“He has soiled The Heritage Foundation. He has helped Tucker and Fuentes advance their goal of destroying the MAGA movement — which was a large multi-religious, multi-racial achievement rare for Republicans,” Mr. Jacobson said on Legal Insurrection.
In his video, Mr. Roberts said “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or their mouthpieces in Washington.”
Taking umbrage with his framing was Mr. Erickson, who said that “to have the president of the Heritage Foundation attack Tucker Carlson’s critics as a ’globalist class’ and then tear down straw men without grappling with the problem is actually a real problem.”
“Kevin Roberts could have said nothing at all,” said Mr. Erickson, who hosts a nationally syndicated radio show. “But he chose to speak and wave away any criticism about what Carlson is doing.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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