Heritage Foundation Defends Tucker Carlson From ‘Venomous Coalition’ of Conservatives ‘Attacking’ Him: ‘Their Attempt to Cancel Him Will Fail’

X/@KevinRobertsTX

President of the Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts defended former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday after Carlson received backlash for interviewing controversial right-wing commentator Nick Fuentes and criticizing the Israeli government.

“I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the State of Israel without being anti-Semitic, and of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned,” said Roberts in a video after the Heritage Foundation received calls from some social media users to cut ties with Carlson:

My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.

The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now. We don’t take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate. We also don’t take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support, and we’re adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement, our friends, our members, and the American public.

He continued, “We will always defend truth, we will always defend America, and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains – and as I have said before, always will be – a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail.”

Roberts argued, “The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate, and we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.”

He concluded, “As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, ‘What I am not okay with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first.’ That’s where our allegiance lies and that’s where it will stay.”

Roberts released his statement after social media users speculated that the Heritage Foundation had cut ties with Carlson following a campaign by pro-Israel conservatives to ostracize Carlson from the conservative movement.

Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer himself received backlash this week after he suggested that Carlson should be “neutralized” in an effort to protect the Republican Party.

Social media users condemned the wording of Hammer’s article, which was published less than two months after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University.