JUST IN: Another Board Member Bails on Heritage Foundation in Wake of Kevin Roberts-Tucker Carlson Controversy

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

At least one more Heritage Foundation board member has resigned amid the ongoing unrest within the organization over President Kevin Roberts’s defense of Tucker Carlson, reported The Dispatch’s senior editor Mike Warren on Friday.

In October, Roberts posted a video message vociferously defending Carlson for interviewing controversial far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, attacking what he called a “venomous coalition” coming after the former Fox News host. Roberts’s video garnered swift and loud backlash from numerous prominent conservatives — and even several Heritage employees.

Sparks flew at an internal meeting of foundation staff in early November, a video of which was leaked to the press despite warnings that leakers would be fired. Heritage employees lambasted their boss for defending Carlson’s overtly friendly chat with “a Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi;” one staffer denounced Roberts’s video as “a masterclass in cowardice.”

Over the weeks that followed, several key people departed Heritage, including Roberts’s former chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus, former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore, and board members Robert George, Shane McCullar, and Abby Spencer Moffat.

Last month, it was reported that former Vice President Mike Pence was poaching as many as fifteen employees from Heritage for his new D.C.-based think tank, Advancing American Freedom, including head of Heritage’s legal and judicial studies center John Malcolm (along with seven members of his team), head of the data analysis center Kevin Dayaratna, and director of Heritage’s economic policy studies institute Richard Stern.

Friday afternoon, Warren posted a tweet reporting that multiple sources “including one currently at Heritage” had confirmed that two more board members were resigning, Darryle Owens and Virginia Heckman, which would bring the total number of board resignations since Roberts’s defense of Carlson up to five.

“Ginger Heckman’s resignation is notable because she is the granddaughter Ed Noble, one of the founding donors to Heritage back in the 1970s,” Warren added.

Warren posted another tweet about 45 minutes later after he got in touch with Heckman indicating that she may still be involved with Heritage.

“Over text message, Ginger Heckman tells me that she remains ‘an active member of the Heritage board. Any other questions can be directed to the Foundation,'” he wrote. “Heritage has not yet provided me with a statement.”

Resigned board member George also posted several tweets that many commenters interpreted as being directed at the controversy at Heritage, writing:

There always have been, and (I assume) always will be, ideological dogmatists, conspiracists, and other extremists and cranks on both the left and right in American politics. The key thing, it seems to me, is to ensure that they do not become mainstream. My fear today is precisely that they are becoming mainstream. Even people who are not cranks are coming to suppose that we must choose, however regretfully and reluctantly, between “our cranks” and “their cranks.” This is dangerous territory.

There are, it seems to me, two types of cranks and conspiracists, and we find them across the ideological spectrum. First, there are those for whom it’s at least partially schtick–they’ve got a racket going, sometimes a lucrative one, and they need the attention and “clicks.” Second, there are the sincere ones who, blinded by ideology, lack the perspective necessary for rational assessment, self-criticism, and self-control. They are true believers who suppose they are “saving the country” from evil forces who are hellbent on destroying all that is right and good. It’s hard not to feel a certain pity for people in the second category–they are, after all, sincere and well-intentioned. But they are also far more dangerous.

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