The Heritage Foundation sought to contain the damage after its president precipitated a crisis on the right by defending Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with a young far-right influencer known for his inflammatory takes on Israel, race and women.
The conservative foundation denied reports that the Heritage Board of Trustees called an emergency meeting after President Kevin Roberts triggered a backlash with his Thursday video denouncing what he called the “venomous coalition” attacking Mr. Carlson over his dialogue with Nick Fuentes.
“Online rumors about a recent meeting of the Heritage Board of Trustees are completely baseless,” Mary Vought, Heritage vice president of strategic communications, said in a Sunday statement.
“There has been no board meeting and ’sources’ saying otherwise should not be taken seriously,” she said.
At the same time, the foundation confirmed a National Review report that Ryan Neuhaus, Mr. Roberts’ chief of staff, has been reassigned and replaced by Derrick Morgan, Heritage executive vice president.
Mr. Neuhaus had retweeted an X post that said staffers offended by the Roberts video should resign.
Conservatives erupted after Mr. Roberts put the foundation’s prestige behind the Oct. 27 interview, accusing him of stoking a schism on the right by inviting antisemitic fringe theories into the conservative fold.
The fallout included calls on social media for Mr. Roberts to resign or be removed by the board, including from Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes, a former Heritage staffer.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, resigned Sunday from the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is housed at Heritage, saying Mr. Roberts’ decision to defend Mr. Carlson over his interview “makes continued participation impossible.”
Princeton University professor Robert P. George, a member of Heritage’s board of trustees, challenged the idea that conservatives should seek to expand their ranks by having “no enemies to the right,” even if that includes people like Mr. Fuentes.
“The white supremacists, the antisemites, the eugenicists, the bigots, must not be welcomed into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Is this a call for ‘cancellation’? No. It’s a reminder that we conservatives stand for something — or should stand for something. We have core principles that are not negotiable,” he explained.
Heritage Trustee @McCormickProf: ’I will not—I cannot—accept the idea that we have ’no enemies to the right’’ https://t.co/M5OrnqBeDz
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) November 2, 2025
In last week’s interview, Mr. Fuentes said he has mounted what he called an “attack” from the outside on the conservative establishment, including the Republican Party.
He took a jab at “organized Jewry” and called himself a “fan” of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Mr. Carlson sparred with Mr. Fuentes on a few of his comments about Jewish loyalties and women, but didn’t probe the “Stalin” remark.
Mr. Carlson also said himself there’s nobody he dislikes more than “Christian Zionists,” a group that he said includes Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and GOP strategist Karl Rove.
Heritage removed references to Mr. Carlson on its donations page shortly after the interview, according to internet-watchers on X, after which Mr. Roberts posted the video blasting the “globalist class” and arguing against “canceling” Mr. Carlson or Mr. Fuentes.
Multiple Heritage staffers took issue with Mr. Roberts’ statements, including Preston Brashers, a tax policy research fellow, who posted a “Nazis are Bad” meme on X and video clips showing Mr. Fuentes calling Hitler “cool” and “awesome.”
“There are some who just don’t know what Fuentes is all about – including people who watched Tucker’s 2 hour pattycake session with him. This is a small sampling of the cesspool,” Mr. Brashers wrote in a Friday post on X. “The problem isn’t so much that Tucker did the interview but how he did it.”
Mr. Roberts said he has not sought resignations from staffers who have blasted his defense of Mr. Carlson, telling conservative host Ben Domenech on a Friday podcast that “that’s not how we do things at Heritage.”
Unlike other think-tanks, the foundation has a “one voice” policy that ensures “Heritage employees always publicly advocate for a single, unified position,” meaning that Mr. Roberts’ stance is imputed to the entire institution.
The incident has threatened Heritage’s relationships with other conservative organizations.
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said his group 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.”
A day after posting his first video, Mr. Roberts posted a second statement condemning Mr. Fuentes for his “vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history.”
“We are disgusted by his musings about rape, women, child marriage, and abusing his potential wife,” Mr. Roberts said. “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.’”
At the same time, he argued against canceling Mr. Fuentes, who hosts a show on Rumble and has 1 million followers on X, many of whom are young men.
“If actually we’re going to appeal to his audience of millions of disaffected young men, the answer tactically is not to cancel him or to cancel Tucker,” Mr. Roberts said in a Friday interview with host Dana Loesch on Radio America.
“You can disagree with what he’s saying, but what history has shown and especially recent history, given the power of media and especially social media, is that when you cancel those media figures and you’re not engaging with the truly nefarious and sinister things that they’re saying, their audience grows,” Mr. Roberts said.
Kevin Roberts denounced those who criticized Tucker as “venemous” and “sowing division.”
Dana Loesch asks him if saying you hate Christian Zionists isn’t also venomous and sowing division.
He appears to malfunction in response. pic.twitter.com/HTaEcZ81i8
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) October 31, 2025
Ms. Loesch wasn’t throwing softballs. She asked him if he thought “cancellation” was the same as “criticism.”
Mr. Roberts replied no, saying that “canceling” someone includes deplatforming and “eliminating them from the conservative movement.”
Is Mr. Fuentes on the side of the conservative movement? “Not on the side of Heritage,” Mr. Roberts said.
Ms. Loesch said that “what you call cancellation, I saw as people trying to have some accountability.”
She added that hosts aren’t required to give a platform to everyone, but that when they do bring on figures outside the mainstream, they have a responsibility to ask tough questions.
“If you’re trying to access a group of disaffected young people, and you’re going to bring on basically their avatar, don’t you think there’s a duty to push back a lot harder than what was seen?” Ms. Loesch asked. “I don’t agree with platforming like that.”
