Head of US right-wing think tank defends Tucker Carlson after talk show with antisemite
Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts disavows antisemitism, calls out ‘globalist class’ and ‘their mouthpieces in Washington’; Carlson this week hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes
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The president of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank, defended right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and said the group would not cut ties with him days after Carlson hosted an interview with antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.
Kevin Roberts also said in a video on the social network X that “antisemitism should be condemned,” but that Christians should reject calls to not criticize Israel. He said that those condemning Carlson, a former Fox News host who now has an online talk show, are a “venomous coalition” of “bad actors,” and that conservatives should further refrain from “canceling” Fuentes.
“We will always defend truth, we will always defend America and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” Roberts said. “That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and, as I have said before, always will be, a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
He warned Carlson’s critics: “Their attempt to cancel him will fail.”
Roberts added that calls urging conservatives to reflexively support Israel come from a “globalist class” with influence in Washington, using language some say plays into antisemitic stereotypes.
“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,” he 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.”
There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.
I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025
The video was a striking show of support from the influential conservative organization, which previously put out “Project Esther,” a right-wing plan to counter antisemitism after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. The Heritage Foundation was also behind Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term in office that has been closely adhered to on a policy level, and that has farmed many of Trump’s closest associates.
Fuentes has mounted an outside bid for influence within the larger right-wing movement, emphasizing his overt antisemitism. His chummy conversation on Tuesday with Carlson, who agreed with the provocateur on many issues including Israel, was seen as a further mainstreaming of antisemitic views within the right. This is not the first time Carlson has welcomed a Holocaust denier to his popular talk show.
Roberts, however, said Fuentes should not be sidelined but engaged.
“I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says,” Roberts said, without elaborating. “But canceling him is not the answer, either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.”
Framing Carlson’s critics as dissatisfied social media users, Roberts continued, “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. We don’t take direction from comments on X.”
Following his remarks on only supporting Israel when it suits the United States, Roberts quoted a statement to that effect made by Vice President JD Vance in Mississippi on Wednesday evening. Vance made the comment during a question-and-answer session on a college campus where he, too, faced criticism for failing to condemn a question laced with antisemitism.
“What I am not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we’re American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first,” Vance said in the statement quoted by Roberts.
A range of conservative commentators, both Jewish and not, slammed Roberts’s comments.
“The Heritage Foundation is afraid of Tucker Carlson and his audience,” wrote New York Times columnist David French. “The fringe is now the mainstream, and one of the most powerful institutions in the American right is bending the knee.”
“‘Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic’ is an insulting response to: Tucker Carlson gushing over a Hitler admirer and assuring the neo-Nazi of how much he, too, despises Israel and the Christians who support it,” posted Eliot Kaufman, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
One person thankful for Roberts’s remarks was Fuentes himself.
“Thank you for your courage in standing up for open discourse and defending Tucker against the Israel First Woke Right,” he wrote to Roberts on X.
The Times of Israel Community.