Fallout continued Monday at The Heritage Foundation over its leader’s video in support of Tucker Carlson’s podcast chat with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has said he loves Adolf Hitler.
A board member at the archconservative organization, Robert George, announced that he will be stepping down from his role, citing Heritage President Kevin Roberts’ failure to issue a “full retraction” of the video, in which Roberts denounced the “venomous coalition” criticizing Carlson and said “their attempts to cancel him will fail.”
Several other Heritage Foundation officials, including members of the organization’s antisemitism task force, have resigned from the foundation as well.
“Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse,” George wrote on Facebook, adding: “What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.”
To try to quell the outrage over his support for Carlson, Roberts hosted an all-hands meeting earlier this month with staffers, which appeared to do little to smooth over concerns or abate tension. Roberts faced fierce rebukes and mockery from some attendees, while others offered their expressions of support or made provocative suggestions about cooperation between Jews and Christians within the organization.
The continued departures of long-standing members suggests the meeting didn’t succeed in mending the rifts at the organization that helped to deliver the far-right playbook Project 2025.
President Donald Trump didn’t exactly help Roberts’ cause over the weekend, when he backed Carlson and suggested he was unbothered by the conversation with Fuentes, who’s a former Trump dinner guest (and someone Trump claimed he didn’t know at the time). “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump told reporters Sunday while acknowledging that Carlson has “said good things about me over the years.” “If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” the president added. “People have to decide.” In a post on X, Fuentes replied enthusiastically: “Thank you Mr. President!”
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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