The conservative movement’s uneasy dance with extremism reached a breaking point this week as The Wall Street Journal again sharply rebuked Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for his failure to unequivocally condemn Tucker Carlson’s promotion of antisemitic voices.
In a stinging editorial Sunday titled “The Education of the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts,” the Journal’s editorial board warned that Roberts’ strategic silences and moral evasions threaten not only Heritage’s credibility but the moral standing of the American right itself.
At the center of the uproar is Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, a far-right provocateur known for praising Hitler and denying the Holocaust.
When conservatives across the spectrum demanded accountability, Roberts instead released a video that defended Carlson and attacked his critics.
According to the Journal, the Heritage chief’s decision to “bear-hug” Carlson while portraying opponents as un-Christian and “loyal to a foreign government” amounted to joining “Mr. Carlson in the Jew-baiting.”
The fallout was immediate. Heritage staff, donors, and affiliated scholars recoiled from what appeared to be a tacit endorsement of antisemitic rhetoric under the guise of anti-“cancel culture” rhetoric.
Within days, Roberts dismissed his chief of staff — who had reportedly drafted the script — but the damage was done.
In subsequent comments, he insisted his mistake was merely one of tone.
“Not as many people as I thought were ready for a little bit of nuance,” Roberts initially said, before later conceding that “sometimes you can make a mistake with the best of intentions.”
The Journal was unsparing: Roberts’ invocation of nuance, it argued, “obscured the central motivation” that should have guided his actions — fighting antisemitism in all its forms.
Instead, his video “joined Mr. Carlson in the Jew-baiting,” by framing criticism of the host as an attempt to “suppress Christian criticism of Israel” and enforce “loyalty to a foreign government.”
That framing, the editors said, mirrored antisemitic tropes long used to question Jewish patriotism.
Inside Heritage, frustration boiled over.
The Journal described a tense staff meeting in which Roberts told colleagues, “I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution.”
He admitted he hadn’t vetted the video, didn’t know much about Fuentes, and “doesn’t consume a lot of news in general.”
Senior Fellow Amy Swearer responded that Roberts had shown a “stunning lack of both courage and judgment,” while Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez challenged him directly: “I made a forever promise to my wife. I didn’t make a forever promise to Tucker Carlson. What the heck is that?”
The Heritage Task Force on Antisemitism, co-chaired by Victoria Coates, has now severed ties with the foundation, saying Roberts undermined its work.
His remarks warning about “antisemitism on the far fringes of the right,” the Journal noted, were hollow when paired with his continued deference to Carlson, who “launders Jew-loathing to the mainstream.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial went beyond Roberts to indict a broader pattern of moral cowardice within the right.
“Strategic silences about this venom,” it wrote, “will increase the moral and political damage to the American right.”
The piece pointed to Vice President JD Vance, a longtime Carlson ally, as a test case for whether rising conservative leaders will confront or excuse antisemitism in their ranks.
Carlson, who has repeatedly hosted figures espousing anti-Jewish and anti-American conspiracies, calls such appearances “truth-telling.”
The Journal countered that this was “no truth at all — only the laundering of hatred under the banner of free speech.”
By refusing to draw a clear moral line, Roberts and others risk legitimizing this rhetoric at the heart of the conservative establishment, the editorial warned.
“Builders of the conservative movement knew that tolerating hate would destroy it from within,” the board wrote, invoking a legacy of Cold War-era leaders who purged extremists from the right rather than courting them for attention.
In a belated attempt to repair the damage, Roberts released another video late Wednesday, finally mentioning Carlson by name.
“Everyone has the responsibility to speak up against the scourge of antisemitism, no matter the messenger,” he said. “Heritage and I will do so, even when my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging.”
But, so far, Roberts has not challenged Carlson’s many lies and false claims on his podcasts about Jews, including claims that the Jews “killed Jesus,” claiming Israel “controls” U.S. policy, Prime Minister Netanyahu tells President Trump what to do, given airtime to conspiracy theories blaming Jews for 9/11 and an assorted menagerie of unbelievable claims.
Roberts has also been silent on the fact the Heritage Foundation has been a major financial sponsor of Carlson’s podcasts.
In a separate report last week in the Wall Street Journal — The Crack-Up at the Heritage Foundation Is a Warning Sign for MAGA World — the paper warned of the broader implications of Roberts’ actions.
In their story, the Journal reported that earlier this year “Heritage’s board received a detailed, anonymous complaint against Roberts’s management style from a staffer. A copy of the letter was reviewed by the Journal at the time. Roberts should be dismissed, the letter said, ‘for destroying Heritage’s cherished legacy in record time.’ It is ‘no longer a think tank. It is now a public relations organization that few in Washington respect.'”
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