Nick Fuentes, the well-known White nationalist and Holocaust denier, has ignited a civil war within the Republican Party — and inside considered one of Washington’s most prominent conservative think tanks.
A bitter cut up has erupted on the political proper after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson hosted Fuentes on his podcast for an overwhelmingly pleasant dialog. Some conservatives, together with Dinesh D’Souza and Ben Shapiro, have condemned Carlson for elevating a fringe determine who has expressed an affinity for Adolf Hitler and often traffics in racist, sexist and antisemitic tropes.
Much of the pushback has targeted on their sharp criticism of Israel throughout the present and their mockery of Christians who’ve made assist for the Jewish state a prime precedence.
But Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson, a shut ally who addressed the group’s annual gathering in April. Roberts argued that criticizing Carlson and shunning Fuentes undermines the campaign towards censorship and so-called cancel tradition.
“Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” Roberts mentioned in a prolonged direct-to-camera statement that has since garnered greater than 24 million views on social media.
The backlash has been swift towards Roberts, triggering a wave of unrest within Heritage and elevating questions on the way forward for an establishment that has for many years been a pillar of the conservative motion.
In interviews with present and former workers, and in inside messages amongst senior workers reviewed by NCS, a number of individuals described deep frustration and lack of confidence in Roberts’ management at Heritage.
“It’s an absolute shitshow, he’s lost control of the organization,” one senior workers member advised NCS. “It is open rebellion, it is disgust … 85% are totally disgusted.”
In the chat messages reviewed by NCS, senior Heritage workers described a office consumed by dissent — “flailing and in damage control,” as one wrote. Others expressed frustration and disappointment. “It just makes me sad and mad,” wrote one prime degree staffer. One senior staffer reposted a colleague’s remark, “This crap is really hurting Heritage,” and added, “as it should.”
A supply who supplied transcripts of the chat requested that their identify not be used for concern of retaliation.
Several present and former Heritage workers, who didn’t need their names used for concern of retribution, advised NCS the episode has accelerated donor unease and inside turnover, with some workers describing morale as the lowest in years. Others mentioned the backlash underscores a broader identification disaster within Heritage, saying there was rigidity between its conventional coverage specialists and the newer cadre of political operatives introduced in beneath Roberts, who assumed the helm in 2021.
Attempts by NCS to achieve Fuentes and Carlson for remark weren’t profitable. But on his podcast, Fuentes has mentioned dysfunction is central to his plan for pulling the GOP towards his worldview.
“We want disruption, we want chaos, we want infighting,” he mentioned in September.
Founded in 1973, Heritage has lengthy been a driving pressure aiding Republican policymaking — from previous Republican administrations’ conservative tax agendas to President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments.
Under Roberts, it has pushed a harder-line message, positioning the group at the heart of Project 2025 — a sweeping coverage blueprint for a potential Republican administration that included requires restructuring the federal authorities and curbing federal workforce protections. The plan proved controversial sufficient that even Trump publicly distanced himself from a few of its proposals.
The Fuentes controversy has solely deepened inside divisions over that path.
“Many staff are outraged,” a former prime staffer who labored beneath Roberts additionally advised NCS. “I’ve spoken with numerous (staff).”
“I’m disgusted by this and don’t understand how this premeditated and orchestrated response could come out of one of the biggest think tanks in the world,” one other wrote in the textual content trade.
Some of the messages had been first reported on Monday by the New York Post.
Neither Roberts nor the Heritage Foundation responded to NCS’s requests for remark.
One main donor, whose group contributes greater than half a million {dollars} yearly to the Heritage Foundation, advised NCS they’ve misplaced religion in Roberts’ management. “I’m waiting to see how things play out, but if Kevin remains as president we will not be giving to Heritage,” mentioned the donor, who requested their identify not be used because of privateness considerations.
The episode additionally comes simply weeks after similar divisions emerged on the proper over a trove of textual content messages from younger Republican operatives printed by Politico, which included somebody saying “I love Hitler,” with others contributing Holocaust jokes and racial slurs.
“If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and their mission is to combat and defeat ‘global Jewry’, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — who has sparred with Carlson earlier than — mentioned final weekend throughout remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering.
The rising affect of Fuentes, particularly following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, exposes a broader rift inside the Republican Party over whether or not to distance the GOP from the sort of rhetoric he represents.
In addition to Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has additionally come out towards Carlson’s method to Fuentes in latest days. So has Laura Loomer, the far-right provocateur near Trump, who warned that the GOP was “imploding” over Fuentes and engaged in a “power struggle” to “try to hijack and redefine what MAGA is and should be post-Trump.”
While Loomer and Fuentes have publicly feuded in latest days over who had extra sway with the president and his followers, she was unsparing in whom she blamed for the previous week.
“Tucker Carlson is a poison pill to the GOP,” she advised NCS in a textual content message. “And he will cost the GOP elections in 2026 and 2028.”
Fuentes has advised the previous week has signaled his rising affect in at this time’s Republican Party — particularly with younger males, a key pressure in Trump’s electoral coalition final fall.
After being solid to the edges of the conservative motion and getting banned from social media over offensive statements, Fuentes and his devoted listeners — whom he calls “groypers” — are making their presence felt, he mentioned. Fuentes’ X account, reinstated by Elon Musk, now has 1 million followers.
“We are thoroughly in the groyper war,” Fuentes mentioned on his internet present final week as the combat unfolded. “The civil war for the GOP.”
Last fall, Fuentes mentioned he didn’t vote for Trump as a result of the Republican nominee didn’t go far sufficient to push an America First agenda that’s extra in-line together with his White nationalist views. Fuentes has mentioned he desires to return to the Middle Ages and a time when ladies couldn’t vote and contraceptives and fornication had been banned. He celebrated Afghanistan falling beneath management of the Taliban as a result of they’d “ban abortion, vaccines and gay marriage.” In his interview with Carlson, Fuentes expressed admiration for former Soviet chief Joseph Stalin, a brutal dictator whose tyrannical reign resulted in tens of millions of deaths from hunger and imprisonment in labor camps.
At Heritage, the fallout continues. On Monday, Heritage Chief of Staff Ryan Neuhaus resigned, days after he reposted a touch upon X urging inside critics of Heritage’s protection of Carlson to depart the group.
On Tuesday, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the nation’s oldest pro-Israel advocacy group, introduced it was withdrawing from the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther on Antisemitism, an initiative launched in 2024 to fight antisemitism. In a assertion supplied to NCS, ZOA mentioned it might finish its participation until Roberts publicly apologizes, retracts his reward for Carlson, and “condemns and permanently ends his affiliation with Carlson.”
On Wednesday, at an all-staff assembly, Roberts acknowledged mishandling the controversy. According to an audio recording obtained by NCS, Roberts advised Heritage workers, “I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution, and I’m sorry, period, full stop.”
Roberts additionally mentioned throughout the assembly that he had no intention of resigning.
Current and former staffers are additionally accusing Roberts of political opportunism, pointing to previous statements they mentioned contradict his present alignment with figures like Carlson.
In tweets posted after the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol and later deleted, Roberts appeared to take goal at Trump and praised then-Vice President Mike Pence and Texas Rep. Chip Roy for his or her criticism of the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
“Storming the Capitol will do more to quash the need for real election reform than anything the Left has done and will do to prevent it. This is stupid, and real leaders would condemn immediately,” Roberts wrote in a since-deleted submit.
In one other tweet, he praised Roy, a Texas Republican who condemned Trump’s false claims of election fraud on the House ground saying, “the president should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be.”
“Times like these, however challenging, have, in American history, always — ALWAYS — produced the statesmen of our age. Amid this tumult, @chiproytx and @Mike_Pence are two of those men. From a grateful nation, thank you! #StandUpForAmerica,” he wrote in the purged tweet, linking to a video of Roy’s remarks.