WASHINGTON — When President Trump doesn’t like someone, he knows how to show it. In just the last few days, he’s described Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a traitor, mocked Rep. Thomas Massie’s second marriage after his first wife died and demanded that comedian Seth Meyers get fired from his late-night television show.
But he had nothing bad to say about two people roiling his party: white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, where he declined to challenge his guest’s bigoted beliefs or a remark about problems with “organized Jewry in America.”
Asked about the controversy that has been rippling through Republican circles for weeks, Trump did not criticize Fuentes and praised Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years.”
The president’s answer echoes his longstanding reluctance to disavow — and sometimes, his willingness to embrace — right-wing figures who have inched their way from the political fringe to the Republican mainstream.
“We are disappointed in President Trump,” said Morton Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, adding that he should “rethink and retract” his comments.
The threat of antisemitism, which has percolated across the political spectrum, will likely be a recurring political issue in the coming year, as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of Congress in the midterms. Although Trump has targeted left-wing campus activism as a hive of anti-Jewish sentiment, Fuentes’ influence is a test of whether conservatives are willing to accommodate bigots as part of their political coalition.
A top conservative group faces antisemitism controversy
The turmoil has already engulfed the Heritage Foundation, a leading think tank whose president Kevin Roberts initially refused to distance himself from Carlson. A member of Heritage’s board of trustees, Robert George, announced his resignation Monday, which followed a recent decision by an antisemitism task force to sever its ties with the organization.
Although Roberts has apologized, George said “we reached an impasse” because he didn’t fully retract his original support for Carlson.
“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,’” George wrote on Facebook, quoting the Declaration of Independence.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, an evangelical conservative activist and film producer, joined Heritage’s antisemitism task force in June but stepped away when Roberts refused to resign.
“If we aren’t solid on condemning antisemitism, shame on us,” she said Monday.
Cardoza-Moore praised Trump’s record on supporting Israel but said he fell short on Sunday while talking about Carlson and Fuentes.
“We can all agree — and I wish — that he would have gone further,” she said.
It’s unclear what kind of pressure Trump will face despite his previous dalliance with Fuentes, who had dinner with the past-and-future president at his Mar-a-Lago club in between his two terms.
“I don’t think President Trump during his first or second term could be acting more strongly to prevent antisemitism,” said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He noted Trump’s first-term relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and, more recently, the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.
This is not the first time Trump has shied away from criticizing fringe elements on the right. During his first campaign for president, Trump initially declined to disavow support from white nationalist David Duke, saying, “I just don’t know anything about him.”
He claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” during racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. While running for reelection, he told the extremist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
Trump’s unwillingness to condemn either Fuentes or Carlson has the potential to prolong a rift within the Republican Party. On Sunday, as he prepared to fly back to Washington from a weekend in Florida, Trump praised Carlson and said “you can’t tell him who to interview.”
“If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”
Fuentes liked what he heard, posting “Thank you Mr. President!” on social media.
Trump’s remarks run counter to a wave of objections that have flowed from key Republicans. The issue will be the focus of a planned gathering of pro-Israel conservative leaders on Tuesday in Washington called “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right.”
The event features U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America.
Perkins said the event has been discussed for some time. “But with recent comments by folks like Tucker, there was an urgency to go ahead and hold the conference,” he said.
The recent annual summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas was similarly focused on condemning antisemitism within the party, a shift from the original plans to celebrate the ceasefire in Gaza and the return of Hamas-held hostages.
Brooks said at the time, “We are at this point in what I consider sort of the early stages of an undeclared civil war within the Republican Party, as it relates to Israel, and antisemitism and the Jewish community.”
“And it’s really going to be our challenge going forward to combat that before it has a chance to grow and metastasize in the Republican Party,” Brooks said.
During one part of the conference, college students waved red signs that read, “Tucker is not MAGA.”
Trump addressed the summit by prerecorded video, using his time to promote his administration’s support for Israel. He did not mention the controversy that had dominated the conference.
Megerian and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. contributed to this report.
Trump’s comments about Fuentes and Carlson could prolong a Republican rift over antisemitism
WASHINGTON — When President Trump doesn’t like someone, he knows how to show it. In just the last few days, he’s described Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a traitor, mocked Rep. Thomas Massie’s second marriage after his first wife died and demanded that comedian Seth Meyers get fired from his late-night television show.
But he had nothing bad to say about two people roiling his party: white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, where he declined to challenge his guest’s bigoted beliefs or a remark about problems with “organized Jewry in America.”
Asked about the controversy that has been rippling through Republican circles for weeks, Trump did not criticize Fuentes and praised Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years.”
The president’s answer echoes his longstanding reluctance to disavow — and sometimes, his willingness to embrace — right-wing figures who have inched their way from the political fringe to the Republican mainstream.
“We are disappointed in President Trump,” said Morton Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, adding that he should “rethink and retract” his comments.
The threat of antisemitism, which has percolated across the political spectrum, will likely be a recurring political issue in the coming year, as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of Congress in the midterms. Although Trump has targeted left-wing campus activism as a hive of anti-Jewish sentiment, Fuentes’ influence is a test of whether conservatives are willing to accommodate bigots as part of their political coalition.
A top conservative group faces antisemitism controversy
The turmoil has already engulfed the Heritage Foundation, a leading think tank whose president Kevin Roberts initially refused to distance himself from Carlson. A member of Heritage’s board of trustees, Robert George, announced his resignation Monday, which followed a recent decision by an antisemitism task force to sever its ties with the organization.
Although Roberts has apologized, George said “we reached an impasse” because he didn’t fully retract his original support for Carlson.
“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,’” George wrote on Facebook, quoting the Declaration of Independence.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, an evangelical conservative activist and film producer, joined Heritage’s antisemitism task force in June but stepped away when Roberts refused to resign.
“If we aren’t solid on condemning antisemitism, shame on us,” she said Monday.
Cardoza-Moore praised Trump’s record on supporting Israel but said he fell short on Sunday while talking about Carlson and Fuentes.
“We can all agree — and I wish — that he would have gone further,” she said.
It’s unclear what kind of pressure Trump will face despite his previous dalliance with Fuentes, who had dinner with the past-and-future president at his Mar-a-Lago club in between his two terms.
“I don’t think President Trump during his first or second term could be acting more strongly to prevent antisemitism,” said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He noted Trump’s first-term relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and, more recently, the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.
This is not the first time Trump has shied away from criticizing fringe elements on the right. During his first campaign for president, Trump initially declined to disavow support from white nationalist David Duke, saying, “I just don’t know anything about him.”
He claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” during racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. While running for reelection, he told the extremist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
Trump’s unwillingness to condemn either Fuentes or Carlson has the potential to prolong a rift within the Republican Party. On Sunday, as he prepared to fly back to Washington from a weekend in Florida, Trump praised Carlson and said “you can’t tell him who to interview.”
“If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”
Fuentes liked what he heard, posting “Thank you Mr. President!” on social media.
Trump’s remarks run counter to a wave of objections that have flowed from key Republicans. The issue will be the focus of a planned gathering of pro-Israel conservative leaders on Tuesday in Washington called “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right.”
The event features U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America.
Perkins said the event has been discussed for some time. “But with recent comments by folks like Tucker, there was an urgency to go ahead and hold the conference,” he said.
The recent annual summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas was similarly focused on condemning antisemitism within the party, a shift from the original plans to celebrate the ceasefire in Gaza and the return of Hamas-held hostages.
Brooks said at the time, “We are at this point in what I consider sort of the early stages of an undeclared civil war within the Republican Party, as it relates to Israel, and antisemitism and the Jewish community.”
“And it’s really going to be our challenge going forward to combat that before it has a chance to grow and metastasize in the Republican Party,” Brooks said.
During one part of the conference, college students waved red signs that read, “Tucker is not MAGA.”
Trump addressed the summit by prerecorded video, using his time to promote his administration’s support for Israel. He did not mention the controversy that had dominated the conference.
Megerian and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. contributed to this report.
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Contributor: Some Trumpists object to MAGA’s white power element. Why now?
The uproar over Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has sparked yet another round of MAGA civil war talk.
Full disclosure: I previously worked for Carlson at the Daily Caller, so I’ve had a front-row seat for this ongoing battle for a long time now.
In case you missed the latest: Carlson invited Fuentes onto his podcast. What followed wasn’t an interview so much as a warm bubble bath of mutual validation — the kind of “conversation” that helps launder extremist ideas.
Enter Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — once the intellectual vanguard of conservatism, now something closer to an emotional support group for people who think President Reagan was too soft. Responding to whispers that Heritage might distance itself from Carlson, Roberts rushed out a video to reassure the faithful: Heritage will have no enemies to its right.
Roberts disagreed with Fuentes (good for him) but insisted Heritage didn’t become the top conservative think tank by “canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians.” He also called Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition” who “serve someone else’s agenda” — which echoes one of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book.
And then something surprising happened: People inside Heritage actually pushed back (a brave move, given Heritage’s Orwellian “one voice” policy). Some even resigned.
The broader right-wing commentariat weighed in, too. Ben Shapiro called Carlson an “intellectual coward.” Ted Cruz made some noise. The Wall Street Journal editorial board huffed. And talk radio host Mark Levin criticized Fuentes and Carlson during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. For a brief moment, it looked like accountability was actually trending.
But … why this moment? Why now?
Keep in mind: Then-former President Trump dined with Fuentes in 2022 and wrongly claimed immigrants were eating pets in 2024. As president, he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in 2020. And of course he launched his political career by questioning President Obama’s birth certificate. I could go on.
Despite all of this, Trump’s grip on the conservative movement only grew firmer.
Meanwhile, right-wing antisemitism has metastasized on Trump’s watch — despite his support for Israel.
Charlottesville, anyone?
The “alt-right” has shed its “alt.” They’re just “right” now.
This is especially observable when it comes to young conservatives who came of age during the Trump era. Indeed, one Heritage staffer told the New York Post that “a growing number” of Heritage interns “actually agree” with Fuentes.
And here’s the irony: The same conservative media figures now sounding the alarm helped build the machine.
Take Levin. Fuentes recently admitted that it was Levin’s radio show that first radicalized him. “He planted the seed, at least,” Fuentes told Carlson.
Likewise, aside from endorsing Trump in 2024, Shapiro made conspiracy theorist Candace Owens famous when his Daily Wire hired her to host a podcast on its platform after she became buddies with Kanye West and after she suggested the only problem with Adolf Hitler was that “he had dreams outside of Germany.”
So if these more mainstream Trumpers are horrified now, it’s probably because they helped create monsters — and those monsters are now coming to devour their creators, as monsters always do.
Rest assured, though, this rot is not limited solely to antisemitism. In recent months, MAGA figures such as Vivek Ramaswamy, FBI Director Kash Patel and even Vice President JD Vance (who is married to an Indian American woman) have all been targets of racist abuse online.
It’s important to note that none of these folks are considered “Never Trump” or Reagan conservatives. They are Trump allies. The revolution devours itself. (First they came for the Never Trumpers.…)
Again, this is far from the first skirmish in the MAGA civil war. But all of these internecine fights obscure the root cause of the problem: Trump. And yet, the orange emperor himself? Off-limits.
The fever won’t break while Trump’s still around, serving as a magnet for the worst people and cultivating the toxic ecosystem that made all of this right-wing racism possible, if not inevitable.
So by all means, conservatives: Condemn Carlson, denounce Fuentes and scold Heritage for failing to police the right and only punching left.
But as long as you avert your eyes from Trumpism, your righteous outrage is just theater — the political equivalent of aggressively mopping the floor while the pipes keep bursting.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The author details concerns about Tucker Carlson’s podcast interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes as an example of extremism being laundered into mainstream conservatism, arguing this represents a troubling normalization of radical ideology within the MAGA movement[1]. According to the author, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’s response was inadequate because Roberts defended Carlson while using rhetoric that echoes antisemitic tropes by suggesting critics pursue a hidden agenda, though the author notes that some Heritage staffers bravely pushed back against this position[1]. The author highlights that prominent conservative figures including Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board appropriately condemned both Carlson and Fuentes, demonstrating that meaningful accountability briefly emerged[1]. The author contends that these condemning voices bear some responsibility for the extremist ecosystem they now critique, noting that Mark Levin’s radio show reportedly radicalized Fuentes himself and that figures like Shapiro previously amplified conspiracy theorist Candace Owens through their media platforms[1]. Most significantly, the author argues that Trump himself represents the root cause of this problem, citing his 2022 dinner with Fuentes, his 2020 comments to the Proud Boys, and his role in mainstream birther conspiracy theories as evidence of enabling extremism[1]. The author emphasizes that right-wing antisemitism has metastasized during Trump’s political dominance, with the “alt-right” shedding its “alt” prefix and becoming normalized, particularly among young conservatives who came of age during the Trump era[1]. The author concludes that condemnation of Carlson and Fuentes remains ineffective unless conservatives address Trump’s enabling role in cultivating the toxic ecosystem that made this extremism possible.
Different views on the topic
Conservative figures operating within the “America First” camp, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, argue that the debate over Israel policy represents legitimate political disagreement rather than antisemitism or extremism, contending that no other country’s interests should supersede American interests[1]. According to this perspective, questioning U.S. funding to Israel reflects patriotic concern rather than bigotry, with Greene arguing that fellow Republicans mischaracterize policy criticism as hate speech to silence dissenting voices[1]. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon articulated this opposing view by criticizing Israel’s territorial expansion and arguing that the United States never committed to supporting such policies, positioning this as a question of national interest rather than antisemitism[1]. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts defended Carlson by emphasizing that conservatives should not “cancel our own people or police the consciences of Christians,” framing concerns about extremism as an attempt to purge dissenting voices from the movement rather than as legitimate accountability[1]. This opposing perspective views the controversy as driven by what Roberts characterized as a “venomous coalition” attempting to impose ideological conformity and silence alternative viewpoints on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Israel and America First priorities[1].
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