A Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Mess on the Right

A battle over anti-Semitism, Israel, free speech, and conservative direction

On Friday, I had the opportunity to have about a twenty minute conversation with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who was under assault for his web video expressing support for Tucker Carlson and pushback against members, donors, and other conservatives who were apparently calling for Heritage to disavow Carlson following his glow-up interview with Nick Fuentes.

A key clip of the conversation about platforming or mainstreaming Nick Fuentes is here.

Following my interview (as well as Dana Loesch, who he talked to for about half an hour), Roberts sent an all-staff email confirming that his chief of staff who had been blamed by some for this controversy was being reassigned — NRO reported:

In an email to the conservative think tank’s staff on Friday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts announced that Heritage’s executive vice president, Derrick Morgan, had been tapped to replace Ryan Neuhaus as chief of staff.

According to Roberts’ email, now Morgan will serve as acting chief of staff through the end of the year and Neuhaus will transition to a senior adviser role in the organization’s Simon Center, where he will work on housing and other issues.

This sounds like the think tank version of “I want him manning a radar tower in Alaska by the end of the day; just mail him his clothes.” But given the level of pressure from virtually every conservative media outlet and the explicit attack from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, it seemed like Roberts could be on the outs:

Amid criticism on Friday, Mr. Roberts scrambled to list Mr. Fuentes’s odiousness, but his initial contribution was to join in the Jew-baiting. His video framed the issue not as antisemitism, but as Christian freedom of conscience in the face of a hostile attempt to impose loyalty to Israel on Americans.

“My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always,” Mr. Roberts said. “Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class.” This was his theme, over and over, as if critics were demanding he hand over his faith and patriotism to Israel.

On Saturday I started hearing from sources on both sides of the Roberts issue that the Heritage board was going to meet to discuss this, and multiple people claimed that it was a situation where while no formal vote was held, it was clear Roberts had enough support to keep his job. Mary Vought, VP for Comms at Heritage, said there was no board meeting, formal or informal. Obviously Roberts is still in charge, so either way, he has survived this push to remove him.

The bigger problem is the larger context, which I’ve written about for The Spectator, of the very measurable decline of support for Israel among young Americans, including young conservatives. There is an active dispute among older and Millennial conservatives on how to confront this largely Zoomer phenomenon, and Roberts clearly has his own take on that question. (An interesting note via Joel Mowbray: Heritage was originally a major sponsor of Carlson’s podcast and network, but it appears that advertising stopped around the time of the Iran strike and the “America First” dispute with Trump. Make of that what you will.)

Unfortunately for pro Israel forces, this one sets up to benefit their anti-Israel opponents either way. Because on the one hand, if there’s a leadership change at Heritage, it’s a vindication of their message about institutional priorities and donor power… and if they don’t, they’ll claim it’s a sign of their strength.

I have seen nothing to suggest that anything the pro-Israel forces are doing currently is working, and now their antagonists are increasingly bold and unsubtle, including engaging with and working to mainstream outright crazed anti-Semites.

This is an effective strategy. It requires a higher level of awareness - defenses against revisionist history for example - than most casual viewers possess. And featuring truly nutty people increases the Overton Window, allowing space for their own less extreme-sounding views.

The result is a coalition of the right that, despite a truly unprecedented period of success this year under President Trump, seems brittle and ripe for multiple fractures in the near future. The signs were there, but it is truly astonishing how fast this became a reality.

Personally, I think this isn’t going away at all, and will probably make for an aggressive factional war in the 2028 primary. Speaking to RJC this week, Ted Cruz is openly calling out people for unwillingness to stand up on the issue because they’re “terrified of upsetting people with really big megaphones”. I continue to believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene or her equivalent will run, and Fuentes himself has already declared his intention to harass J.D. Vance on the trail. None of this is just going to go away, and the shift in leadership at Turning Point will play a role in it one way or another.

This is a giant mess, and no one seems to know how to clean it up. It could be worse, I guess.