The hugely influential conservative group behind Project 2025 is in turmoil after its leader defended Tucker Carlson for giving a softball interview to an antisemitic white supremacist.
A GOP civil war erupted after multiple Republican figures lashed out at Carlson for hosting Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his online show and offering little pushback to his far-right views. During the interview, Carlson and Fuentes also mocked Christian conservatives such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for their unwavering support of Israel.
However, Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation think tank, quickly defended Carlson in a video posted on X last week that has been viewed more than 24 million times, saying the former Fox News host “remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
Multiple staff members at the Heritage Foundation were outraged by Roberts’ remarks and called for him to resign, with several members of its antisemitism task force quitting in protest.
“It’s an absolute s–tshow. He’s lost control of the organization,” one senior staff member told CNN. “It is open rebellion, it is disgust… 85 percent are totally disgusted.”
Other chat messages seen by CNN show that Heritage employees are in disarray over Roberts’ failure to denounce Carlson’s platforming of a raging antisemite.
“It just makes me sad and mad,” wrote one senior staffer. Another wrote that the fallout is “really hurting Heritage,” adding, “as it should.”
“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 staffer wrote in a text exchange.
Roberts addressed the revolt at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday, telling employees: “I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution, and I’m sorry, period, full stop,” according to a recording obtained by CNN.
The Washington Post reported that Roberts also said in the meeting that Fuentes—known for his young far-right supporters called “groypers”—is an “evil person,” but argued that “he has an audience of several million people and at least some of that audience might be open to be converted” to mainstream conservatism.
In one extraordinary moment, Roberts’ speechwriter, Evan Myers, suggested the director may need to attend a Shabbat dinner to address growing concerns about antisemitism within Heritage. When Roberts replied that doing so would conflict with his faith, another Heritage executive responded: “I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer but rather a personal attack on you.”
Fuentes, who gained national attention after dining with Donald Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, is becoming increasingly influential among certain right-wing factions, despite being broadly rejected by mainstream conservatives.
Fuentes openly celebrates the turmoil he is causing within the GOP as he pushes to pull the party toward his white nationalist ideology.
“We are thoroughly in the groyper war,” Fuentes said on his podcast last week. “The civil war for the GOP.”
The Heritage Foundation was behind the controversial 922-page Project 2025 manifesto, which was published in April 2023 and outlines how a Republican administration could overhaul the federal government. The Trump administration appears to be implementing several of the manifesto’s recommendations.
Trump has repeatedly denied any connection to Project 2025, despite multiple members of his Cabinet being involved in drafting the playbook.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Heritage Foundation for comment.
The post Project 2025 Group Descends Into ‘Absolute S**tshow’ Over Leader’s Tucker Carlson Defense appeared first on The Daily Beast.
