The president of the Heritage Foundation is defending Tucker Carlson amid growing outrage over the former Fox News host’s friendly interview with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, doubling down in a defiant video message that frames the controversy as a test of conservative loyalty.

Kevin Roberts, who leads the influential right-wing think tank, dismissed demands that Heritage sever ties with Carlson, declaring that “Christians can criticize Israel without being antisemitic” and insisting that “Jew hatred should be condemned.” But Roberts quickly pivoted to a broader defense of Carlson and a warning against what he called “the globalist class” pushing conservatives to take political cues from abroad.

“When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so. But conservatives should feel no obligation to support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” Roberts said.

The Heritage chief portrayed the backlash against Carlson as part of a coordinated effort to silence dissent within the conservative movement. “Our role is not canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians—and we won’t start doing that now,” he said. Roberts vowed that the foundation “will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition sowing division.”

While Roberts acknowledged that he “disagrees with and even abhors things that Nick Fuentes says,” he rejected calls to ostracize the avowed antisemite, arguing that “cancel culture” undermines free speech.

The comments mark a striking moment for the Heritage Foundation, long a cornerstone of mainstream conservative policy circles, now openly embracing figures and rhetoric once considered far outside the Republican establishment. Roberts’s remarks underscore the widening fault lines on the American right—where the line between criticism of Israel and tolerance for extremism is increasingly blurred.

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