SAT . Fierce backlash within GOP after Tucker Carlson gives White nationalist Nick Fuentes a platform

Nick Fuentes, the well-known White nationalist and Holocaust denier, has ignited a civil war within the Republican Party — and inside one of Washington’s most prominent conservative think tanks.

A bitter split has erupted on the political right after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson hosted Fuentes on his podcast for an overwhelmingly friendly conversation. Some conservatives, including Dinesh D’Souza and Ben Shapiro, have condemned Carlson for elevating a fringe figure who has expressed an affinity for Adolf Hitler and regularly traffics in racist, sexist and antisemitic tropes.

Much of the pushback has focused on their sharp criticism of Israel during the show and their mockery of Christians who have made support for the Jewish state a top priority.

But Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson, a close ally who addressed the organization’s annual gathering in April. Roberts argued that criticizing Carlson and shunning Fuentes undermines the crusade against censorship and so-called cancel culture.

“Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” Roberts said in a lengthy direct-to-camera statement that has since garnered more than 24 million views on social media.

The backlash has been swift against Roberts, triggering a wave of unrest within Heritage and raising questions about the future of an institution that has for decades been a pillar of the conservative movement.

In interviews with current and former staff, and in internal messages among senior employees reviewed by CNN, multiple people described deep frustration and loss of confidence in Roberts’ leadership at Heritage.

“It’s an absolute shitshow, he’s lost control of the organization,” one senior staff member told CNN. “It is open rebellion, it is disgust … 85% are totally disgusted.”

In the chat messages reviewed by CNN, senior Heritage staff described a workplace 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 top level staffer. One senior staffer reposted a colleague’s comment, “This crap is really hurting Heritage,” and added, “as it should.”

A source who provided transcripts of the chat asked that their name not be used for fear of retaliation.

Several current and former Heritage employees, who did not want their names used for fear of retribution, told CNN the episode has accelerated donor unease and internal turnover, with some staff describing morale as the lowest in years. Others said the backlash underscores a broader identity crisis within Heritage, saying there was tension between its traditional policy experts and the newer cadre of political operatives brought in under Roberts, who assumed the helm in 2021.

Attempts by CNN to reach Fuentes and Carlson for comment were not successful. But on his podcast, Fuentes has said disorder is central to his plan for pulling the GOP toward his worldview.

“We want disruption, we want chaos, we want infighting,” he said in September.

Founded in 1973, Heritage has long been a driving force aiding Republican policymaking — from past Republicanadministrations’conservative tax agendas to President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments.

Under Roberts, it has pushed a harder-line message, positioning the organization at the center of Project 2025 — a sweeping policy blueprint for a potential Republican administration that included calls for restructuring the federal government and curtailing federal workforce protections. The plan proved controversial enough that even Trump publicly distanced himself from some of its proposals.

The Fuentes controversy has only deepened internal divisions over that direction.

“Many staff are outraged,” a former top staffer who worked under Roberts also told CNN. “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,” another wrote in the text exchange.

Some of the messages were first reported on Monday by the New York Post.

Neither Roberts nor the Heritage Foundation responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

One major donor, whose organization contributes more than half a million dollars annually to the Heritage Foundation, told CNN they have lost faith in Roberts’ leadership. “I’m waiting to see how things play out, but if Kevin remains as president we will not be giving to Heritage,” said the donor, who asked their name not be used due to privacy concerns.

The episode also comes just weeks after similar divisions emerged on the right over a trove of text messages from young Republican operatives published by Politico, which included someone 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 before — said last weekend during remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering.

The growing influence of Fuentes, especially following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, exposes a broader rift inside the Republican Party over whether to distance the GOP from the kind of rhetoric he represents.

In addition to Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has also come out against Carlson’s approach to Fuentes in recent days. So has Laura Loomer, the far-right provocateur close to 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 recent days over who had more sway with the president and his followers, she was unsparing in whom she blamed for the past week.

“Tucker Carlson is a poison pill to the GOP,” she told CNN in a text message. “And he will cost the GOP elections in 2026 and 2028.”

Fuentes has suggested the past week has signaled his growing influence in today’s Republican Party — especially with young men, a key force in Trump’s electoral coalition last fall.

After being cast to the edges of the conservative movement and getting banned from social media over offensive statements, Fuentes and his devoted listeners — whom he calls “groypers” — are making their presence felt, he said. Fuentes’ X account, reinstated by Elon Musk, now has 1 million followers.

“We are thoroughly in the groyper war,” Fuentes said on his web show last week as the fight unfolded. “The civil war for the GOP.”

Last fall, Fuentes said he did not vote for Trump because the Republican nominee did not go far enough to push an America First agenda that’s more in-line with his White nationalist views. Fuentes has said he wants to go back to the Middle Ages and a time when women couldn’t vote and contraceptives and fornication were banned. He celebrated Afghanistan falling under control of the Taliban because they would “ban abortion, vaccines and gay marriage.” In his interview with Carlson, Fuentes expressed admiration for former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a brutal dictator whose tyrannical reign resulted in millions of deaths from starvation and imprisonment in labor camps.

At Heritage, the fallout continues. On Monday, Heritage Chief of Staff Ryan Neuhaus resigned, days after he reposted a comment on X urging internal critics of Heritage’s defense of Carlson to leave the organization.

On Tuesday, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the country’s oldest pro-Israel advocacy group, announced it was withdrawing from the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther on Antisemitism, an initiative launched in 2024 to combat antisemitism. In a statement provided to CNN, ZOA said it would end its participation unless Roberts publicly apologizes, retracts his praise for Carlson, and “condemns and permanently ends his affiliation with Carlson.”

On Wednesday, at an all-staff meeting, Roberts acknowledged mishandling the controversy. According to an audio recording obtained by CNN, Roberts told Heritage employees, “I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution, and I’m sorry, period, full stop.”

Roberts also said during the meeting that he had no intention of resigning.

Current and former staffers are also accusing Roberts of political opportunism, pointing to past statements they said contradict his current alignment with figures like Carlson.

In tweets posted after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and later deleted, Roberts appeared to take aim at Trump and praised then-Vice President Mike Pence and Texas Rep. Chip Roy for their 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 post.

In another tweet, he praised Roy, a Texas Republican who condemned Trump’s false claims of election fraud on the House floor 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.