The GOP civil war over Nick Fuentes has just begun
Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist known for his anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny, may be tearing the Republican Party apart.
The split erupted last Tuesday when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released an in-depth interview with Fuentes, the leader of the so-called America First movement who denied the Holocaust, praised Hitler, and shared strongly misogynistic views.
During the interview, Fuentes expressed anti-Semitism about the threat apparently posed by “organized Jews” in America, while Carlson criticized figures such as Senator Ted Cruz and former President George W. Bush as “Christian Zionists” who have been “taken over by this brain virus.” Carlson has been criticized by the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, among others, for giving Fuentes a platform, and the controversy escalated after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a high-profile conservative think tank, condemned those attacking Carlson as a “toxic alliance.”
“Tucker Carlson is and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation,” Roberts said in a video posted on X on Thursday.
Roberts’ comments, seen by many as a tacit endorsement of Fuentes’ anti-Semitic worldview, sparked a massive division on the right, with everyone from prominent and influential broadcasters to senators and other lawmakers attacking or defending Roberts and Carlson.
The debate continued to rage over the weekend with many claiming the situation was a reflection of wider concern about what was perceived Rising anti-Semitism Inside the MAGA movement.
“In the last six months, I’ve seen more anti-Semitism on the right than I’ve seen in my entire life,” Cruz told the Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas last Thursday, hours after Roberts’ video was released. “If you sit there with someone who says that Adolf Hitler was so wonderful, and that his mission was to combat and defeat world Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and complicit in this evil.”
Senator Mitch McConnell, Quoted from Roberts videowrote on
“My mother was on the board of Heritage for 40 years,” John Podhoretz, a conservative political commentator, wrote on X, citing Roberts’ post. “You tainted it, you rotten amoeba.” Podhoretz deleted the post on Monday.
However, a number of prominent Republicans came out in support of Roberts.