Heritage Foundation leader apologizes for backing Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist

The leader of the conservative thinktank behind Project 2025 apologized for supporting a white nationalist amid turmoil on the right over the mainstreaming of extremist ideology, but is resisting calls to resign.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, previously defended the former Fox host Tucker Carlson for having Hitler fan Nick Fuentes on his podcast without pushing back on his white supremacist views.

In leaked footage of a Heritage town hall from Wednesday, staffers largely said Roberts’s decision to align the thinktank with Fuentes was a mistake. “I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” he told Heritage staff.

He also claimed he “didn’t know much” about Fuentes before he recorded a video and posted it on X in which he defended Carlson as a “close friend of the Heritage Foundation”. He said that a chief of staff, who has since resigned, wrote the video’s script.

Some called for him to step down. Roberts, who holds a PhD in history and spearheaded the rightwing manifesto Project 2025, has moved the foundation into more of a Trumpian stance since he joined in 2021.

He has said he will not resign his position, writing on X: “I’m staying. I’m all in.”

The Washington Post reports that “at least” five members of an antisemitism taskforce at the organization have resigned in protest. One staffer in the internal meeting called the issue her “final straw”.

Roberts previously called those speaking out against Carlson a “venomous coalition”, a loaded phrase he subsequently said was a “terrible choice of words” that caused “justified concern” among those who worry about rising antisemitism.

Fuentes – who used to be ostracized by the mainstream right for his views, including support of Hitler and claims that Jews run the country – said on Carlson’s podcast that “organized Jewry” held outsize influence and said he was a fan of Joseph Stalin. Fuentes’s appearance on Carlson’s podcast has roiled the right, with many seeing the interview as a further invitation of extremist views into mainstream conservatism.

Roberts said that, while supporting Carlson, he disagreed with and even “abhors” Fuentes’s views. .

Roberts then wrote a detailed post on X explaining the depths of Fuentes’s extremist views.

“Fuentes made grotesque analogies to try to cast doubt on the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and has said ‘I think the Holocaust is exaggerated. I don’t hate Hitler,’” Roberts wrote. “Fuentes called for the death penalty for ‘perfidious Jews’ and other non-Christians, stating that ‘when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty.’

“Everyone has the responsibility to speak up against the scourge of antisemitism, no matter the messenger. Heritage and I will do so, even when my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging,” he said in a video posted on X.

During the Q&A portion of Wednesday’s town hall, a longtime Heritage staffer identified by the Washington Free Beacon as Robert Rector recalled the conservative writer William F Buckley Jr’s boundaries for the conservative movement: expunge all antisemitism and “expel the lunatics”.

“And we have them back now,” Rector said. “The issue here is Tucker Carlson … Tucker’s show is like stepping into a lunatic asylum.”

A full video of the internal town hall was leaked to the press. Some at Heritage have said the culture of infighting and leaking to media has eroded people’s ability to have difficult conversations.

Roberts has sought to cast the turmoil as a needed conversation: “Movements like ours are not weakened by adversity. We are sharpened by it. Let’s take what we’ve learned. Let’s recommit and, by all means, let’s go win.”