Some pro-Israel conservative students are voicing concern over the College Republicans of America’s new political director, citing his ties to neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes as evidence of the party’s increasingly “alarming” shift toward extremism. 

Kai Schwemmer was tapped last week as political director of the campus group, which has grown to more than 200 active chapters across U.S. universities since it was established in 2023 as an offshoot of the College Republican National Committee.  

Schwemmer, known on social media as Kai Klips, has a channel on Fuentes’ invitation-only streaming platform Cozy, which he launched with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Schwemmer appeared in a 2021 video promoting Fuentes’ “White Boy Summer” tour and was featured as a “special guest” at Fuentes’ 2022 APFAC III conference, the progressive advocacy organization People for the American Way reported. 

Schwemmer has also been outspoken about his affiliation with Fuentes’ “America First” political movement. Though Fuentes’ “America First” podcast was initially inspired by the speeches and platform of President Donald Trump, he later adapted the term for his own purposes, after distancing himself from the mainstream GOP, to attract young conservatives. 

Schwemmer, who lamented on X that “the white population is globally declining and … the acceleration of mass immigration is one major part of this,” was also one of several America First activists to be featured in the 2022 pro-Fuentes documentary “The Most Canceled Man In America.” In the film, he credits Fuentes’ rhetoric with bringing him into the America First movement and radicalizing him on the issue of immigration. 

Fuentes refers to his supporters as “Groypers” or the “Groyper Army,” “who see their bigoted views as necessary to preserve white, European American identity and culture,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

In a December interview on Reawaken USA, Schwemmer falsely claimed that the top executives of Boeing and Raytheon are Jewish, grouping them among “Zionists in America who no matter what are supportive of — whether it’s just military or monetarily — they’re going to U.S. involvement and U.S. support for Israel.”

College Republicans of America did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider asking about the appointment of Schwemmer or how the selection process works.  

Still, Schwemmer maintains that he is a more moderate voice in the America First movement. 

Schwemmer said he tries to avoid the most extreme rhetoric used by others in his movement because, “I have political aspirations.”

“It’s alarming but not surprising,” College Republicans of America would select a Fuentes ally as its leader, Felipe Avila, a senior studying nursing at Catholic University of America, who identifies as conservative, told JI. 

Avila, who is Catholic and Hispanic, was briefly a member of his campus chapter of College Republicans until about two years ago. Following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and ensuing war in Gaza, “I saw them become more isolationist with their approach on campus,” he recalled. “Support for Israel became such a debated issue.”  

Avila, who went on to start a campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel last year, said College Republicans are “always refusing to work or partner with SSI.”

A former intern for Republican Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and member of Turning Point USA on campus, the conservative student organization founded by Charlie Kirk, Avila said, “[Many] people involved with College Republicans probably share Schwemmer’s views, especially on the Israel or [the] Jewish people issue, but they’re not as outspoken.”

With Schwemmer’s appointment, however, Avila is concerned that “now expressing openly antisemitic views won’t be as taboo as it was five or 10 years ago.” 

“If you’ve been on the local level you’ve seen the shift. Being as involved as I am with conservative politics, I’ve noticed it. We’re not just seeing it within College Republicans but in conservative discourse in general. I would describe it almost as a civil war where we’re seeing a dissident group with radical anti-Christian views that is almost trying to hijack the conservative movement,” said Avila. 

He described the antisemitic shift within Gen Z and millennial conservatives as “a pernicious disease that’s taken root within the conservative movement and we see that with this new appointment.”

“I think it will be a lot more encouraging for people to embrace these views… It’s simply a banner for frustrated young conservative men to hold these antisemitic, misogynistic views,” he said.

Ariel Akbashev, a junior at Queens College studying philosophy who identifies as conservative but has never been involved with College Republicans, said the appointment of Schwemmer, who he called a “big conspiracist” is “what I envisioned the Republican and conservative movement to lean towards.”    

“We’re seeing people like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and now Schwemmer have huge platforms, getting views and because of that the youth is heavily impacted,” Akbashev, president of EMET, an on-campus Jewish student association and treasurer of Turning Point USA, an unregistered campus group, told JI. 

Five years ago, a group like College Republicans would have worked with a pro-Israel campus group, said Avila. “Now, they’re very isolationist or hesitant to be seen working with us.”

Weeks before Graham Platner promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theorist in a now-deleted social media post on Thursday, the controversial Maine Senate candidate appeared on a popular YouTube show whose host has spread specious claims about Jews and Israel.

Platner faced blowback this week for boosting a social media comment about a looming war with Iran by Stew Peters, a neo-Nazi influencer who has frequently espoused antisemitic tropes and engaged in Holocaust denial. Platner’s team said the post was made in error and “immediately” removed it after learning it elevated a “despicable account.”

In late January, however, Platner sat for a lengthy online interview with Nate Cornacchia, a retired Green Beret who has also promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories. Near the end of their hour-long conversation, Platner, a fellow military veteran, called himself “a longtime fan” of Cornacchia’s YouTube channel, “Valhalla VFT,” and said it was “an absolute pleasure being” on the show.

Cornacchia, whose show claims nearly 500,000 YouTube subscribers, has in recent months helped stoke a burgeoning far-right conspiracy theory alleging that Israel was involved in the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

Two days before speaking with Platner, for instance, Cornacchia went on a podcast hosted by Jake Shields, a former mixed martial arts fighter who is now a prominent Holocaust denier, and pointed to what he described as “huge links” connecting Israel to Kirk’s killing. “The biggest one, the way I look at it, is because he was basically so important from the Zionist side to the young right wing, sort of that counter Nick Fuentes audience” that “Israel needs desperately,” he said.

“Charlie Kirk said that he was tired of being bullied by his Jewish donors” and that he “no longer could support the pro-Israel cause, and he was dead 48 hours later,” Cornacchia added on the show, where he also agreed with Shields’ assertion that President John F. Kennedy had “probably” been assassinated in a covert “venture between the CIA and Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency. “100%,” he replied.

In addition, Cornacchia has suggested that the global war on terror was conducted “on behest of Israel” and claimed Israel would benefit if another 9/11-style attack were carried out during the tenure of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying it would help to drum up Islamophobic sentiment and lead to another foreign military entanglement in the Middle East.

The Jewish state “got exactly who they wanted” in Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor whom the Israeli government has accused of antisemitism, he argued on his own show in November. “That’s their candidate, guys. You got to pay attention.”

The conservative YouTube commentator has also questioned why George Soros’ son Alex was seen posing for a photograph with Mamdani on the night of his election. “You may immediately be thinking, ‘Oh, well, of course, that’s because Soros funds all the socialists,’” Cornacchia said of George, a Jewish billionaire donor to left-wing causes and a Holocaust survivor who is often a target of antisemitic attacks. 

“No, no, no, no, that’s surface level,” he told his viewers, claiming that the philanthropist “moves in coordination with our greatest ally,” a term he uses to sarcastically allude to Israel.   

Platner’s interview with Cornacchia, which he promoted on his social media channels, did not touch on such topics. His team did not respond to a request for comment on Friday about Cornacchia’s antisemitic remarks.

The 41-year-old Senate candidate, who is running in a competitive Democratic primary to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), faced skepticism from critics last fall after he denied knowing a tattoo that was on his chest for years closely mirrored a Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones icon adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit. A former acquaintance of Platner who spoke with Jewish Insider said he had identified the symbol as such more than a decade ago, a claim he has denied. He had the tattoo removed last October. 

Still, even as he maintains a commanding polling advantage in the Maine Democratic primary against Gov. Janet Mills, Platner’s explanation of the tattoo — combined with past and recent online blunders — is raising questions about whether he can weather scrutiny in a general election that party leadership views as key to reclaiming the Senate majority.

Mills, for her part, strongly hinted at such doubts in a snarky X post on Friday. “For what it’s worth,” she wrote, “I don’t have any tattoos.”

And on the same day he was drawing backlash for amplifying a conspiracy theorist this week, Platner was fielding a combative call from a listener during an appearance on a podcast hosted by the comedian Tim Heidecker.

The caller cast suspicion on Platner’s claim that he did not know the tattoo represented a Nazi symbol until recently, citing his self-proclaimed knowledge of World War II history, and called on the candidate to apologize rather than “dodging around” the issue.

But Platner held firm. “I’m not going to apologize for something that I didn’t know about or do,” he insisted. “The moment that it was clear and I was putting it in that context I had it covered, because I don’t want that on my body.”

The neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes has drawn a sizable online following that has fueled debate over his influence in the Republican Party as it grapples with how to address mounting antisemitism within its ranks, particularly among younger conservatives.

But a new report suggests that his rise may in part be artificially driven by a cluster of anonymous social media accounts largely based in foreign countries, and raises questions about the organic popularity of Fuentes’ movement in the United States as he seeks to grow his political reach to shape the coming midterm elections. 

The report, published on Monday by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonprofit watchdog group affiliated with Rutgers University, analyzed a recent sample of Fuentes’ posts on X and found that engagement within the first 30 minutes not only far exceeded his “legitimate reach” but also “routinely” outperformed accounts commanding significantly larger followings, including Elon Musk, who owns the platform.

For the 20 Fuentes posts examined by NCRI in that opening time window, just over 60% of initial amplification came from the same repeat accounts, pointing to a pattern of “behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation,” the report states.

Nearly all those users were “fully anonymous,” with no real name, location or other identifying markers, according to NCRI, and a majority were “openly” or “functionally single-purpose” accounts dedicated to promoting Fuentes’ extremist positions, which have included Holocaust denial and admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Meanwhile, the report also found, roughly half of the accounts that promoted three of Fuentes’ most viral posts before the assassination of Charlie Kirk — whose death in September left a major vacuum in the conservative youth movement that Fuentes has been seeking to fill — originated from foreign users that were “heavily concentrated” in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia, the sites of known content-engagement farms. 

“There is no organic explanation for this pattern,” the report notes, calling such activity “consistent with outsourced engagement infrastructure. These geographies describe the same low-cost amplification clusters and engagement farms that foreign actors often use to manufacture virality, distort platform metrics and manipulate recommendation systems.” 

The report argues that such alleged “manufactured engagement” artificially helped elevate Fuentes as a subject of heightened mainstream media interest in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, in addition to a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson weeks later, allowing “him to appear active, relevant and in position when a replacement narrative became available inside the broader MAGA ecosystem.”

Fuentes’ “manipulated reach is not accidental,” the report states, citing hundreds of instances from his show in which he has issued “real-time commands” to share his posts on social media — directives that the NCRI says run afoul of X’s content moderation policies prohibiting “orchestrated amplification.”

“Taken together,” the report concludes, “the evidence points to a deliberate, foreign-influenced campaign — relying on anonymous and possibly automated accounts — to artificially inflate Nick Fuentes’s reach, gaming the platform’s algorithm in a systematic effort to elevate his influence far beyond what genuine grassroots support could achieve.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and nearly all Senate Democrats are set to introduce a resolution on Monday condemning neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson for hosting Fuentes on his show. 

The legislation also highlights that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson and Fuentes and notes that the Trump administration nominated an official who expressed affinity for the Nazis, referring to Paul Ingrassia.

The resolution comes weeks after Carlson’s friendly sit-down with Fuentes prompted a reckoning in the conservative movement over antisemitism on the far right and its normalization in certain circles. Schumer reportedly sought Republican backing for the resolution, but no Republicans have signed on at this point.

The resolution outlines Fuentes’ long history of overt antisemitic activity, as well as the series of antisemitic comments that Fuentes repeated on Carlson’s podcast. It highlights Carlson’s failure to “push back on or reject the claims made by Fuentes” and that Carlson “at times even validat[ed] his framing.” It also notes that Carlson was a keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

The legislation states that the Senate “strongly rejects the views of and platforming of Nick Fuentes” and “condemns the effort by Tucker Carlson to platform and mainstream Nick Fuentes.”

The resolution also specifically highlights that Roberts posted a video defending Carlson and attacking those criticizing him — accusing Roberts of employing “antisemitic dog whistles” — as well as for refusing to take down the video even as he as apologized for portions of it.

It calls on “all elected officials, thought leaders and community leaders to reject and condemn white supremacy and antisemitism whenever and wherever they occur.”

And it highlights that President Donald Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia — who said in an unearthed group chat that he has a “Nazi streak in me from time to time” — for an administration post and has since named him to a different role in the administration after his nomination was withdrawn. The resolution does not specifically name Ingrassia.

The resolution is being sponsored by every Senate Democrat.

The legislation has been supported by a series of Democratic-affiliated and progressive-minded Jewish groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Jewish Women International, the Union for Reform Judaism, Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women.

“The platforming of individuals who promote hateful, antisemitic, and white supremacist rhetoric is dangerous and entirely at odds with American values,” JWI CEO Meredith Jacobs said in a statement. She said that Congress “must forcefully condemn any attempt to mainstream antisemitism” and other hatred and “the fact that such condemnation is not universal underscores the very real and present danger that these ideologies are gaining ground in our society.”

JCPA CEO Amy Spitalnick said that antisemitic and white supremacist extremism “threatens every single one of our communities and the core of our democracy – yet we’ve seen political leaders continue to embrace and platform this deadly hate and those who peddle it, like Nick Fuentes” and urged all senators to support the resolution.

DMFI urged the Senate to “send a powerful message that there is no place for these hateful ideologies in our society by passing this measure.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of JDCA, condemned Republicans for not signing onto the resolution.

“This issue should not be partisan, yet not one Republican has joined this resolution, and the President of the United States has refused to condemn Fuentes, Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes, and the hate they’ve espoused,” Soifer said in a statement. “We’re deeply concerned about Republicans placing politics above efforts like this one to combat white nationalism, antisemitism, and hate, and strongly encourage them to join this effort.”

UPDATE: This article was updated to reflect that the legislation’s findings highlight Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’s defense of Carlson and Fuentes but the resolution does not specifically condemn him.

Robert George, a prominent board member of the Heritage Foundation, said on Monday that he was resigning from the conservative think tank, in the latest sign of continued fallout over its president’s controversial defense of Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview last month with a neo-Nazi influencer.

“I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th,” George said in a Facebook post Monday morning, referring to the group’s president. “Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

His decision to step down indicates that Roberts is likely secure, for now, in his role atop Heritage, as its board remains split about his future, according to a former Heritage staffer familiar with internal discussions.

“It’s a good sign for Kevin, that’s for sure, because Robbie was clearly upset about the mistake Kevin made and thought there really needed to be drastic action to correct it,” the former staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “This means there’s now one less vote on the board for removing Kevin.”

George, a Heritage board member since 2019 who serves as director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions at Princeton University, reportedly lobbied for Roberts’ removal behind the scenes.

In his announcement on Monday, George called Roberts “a good man” and said that he had “made what he acknowledged was a serious mistake,” but added, “What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.”

He said that he was “sad to be leaving the” think tank and still had “great affection and esteem for” his “board colleagues,” wishing Heritage “the very best.”

He did not respond to a request for comment from JI.

“We are thankful for Professor George and his service to Heritage,” a spokesperson for Heritage said in a statement Monday. “He is a good man, and we look forward to opportunities to work together in the future. Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish. We are strong, growing and more determined than ever to fight for our republic.”

George had argued in a social media post last month, in response to Roberts’ defense of Carlson, that “American conservatism today faces a challenge” from “those who reject our commitment to inherent and equal human dignity,” adding, “I will not — I cannot— accept the idea that we have ‘no enemies to the right.’”

“The white supremacists, the antisemites, the eugenicists, the bigots, must not be welcomed into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable,” he wrote.

Roberts, for his part, has apologized for his video remarks standing behind Carlson and refusing to “cancel” Nick Fuentes, whom the former Fox News host had interviewed in an amiable discussion that failed to challenge his admiration for Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denialism and other antisemitic views.

The Heritage president has also voiced regret for dismissing Carlson’s critics as part of a “venomous coalition,” claiming that he did not intend to invoke an antisemic trope, and denounced Fuentes. But he has otherwise continued to back Carlson, a personal friend, and declined to delete the video featuring his initial comments on the matter.

Some conservatives criticized the foundation on Monday for contributing to George’s departure.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a social media post that George “was the head of the ‘Kevin Roberts showed terrible judgment and there need to be consequences’ camp, which has apparently lost out to ‘everything is well, nothing to see here’ camp.” 

“Heritage will now decline as an institution (or we will decline as a nation). Sad,” Shapiro lamented.

George’s resignation marks the latest defection from Heritage in recent weeks, as the think tank continued to face backlash over Roberts’ handling of the controversy. Last week, for instance, a legal expert resigned from his role as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, citing Roberts’ video and “subsequent interviews, videos, and commentary.” 

Earlier this month, an antisemitism task force that worked with Heritage cut ties with the organization, saying it “cannot allow the conservative movement to be corrupted and destroyed by those consumed with attacking America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and values, thereby distracting us all from the real challenges facing our nation.”

The former Heritage staffer told JI that there are still “a lot of conservatives inside the” foundation “who are not comfortable with the trajectory of the organization,” noting that George’s departure could fuel further resignations. “It feeds the narrative that movement conservatives feel they’re being squeezed out.”

“What you’re not yet seeing is a mass exodus in terms of the scholars inside the organization, but that could be coming,” the former staffer predicted. 

In his resignation note on Monday, George expressed hope 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.’”

“The anchor for the Heritage Foundation, and for our nation, and for every patriotic American is that creed,” he wrote. “It must always be that creed. If we hold fast to it even when expediency counsels compromising it, we cannot go wrong. If we abandon it, we sign the death certificate of republican government and ordered liberty.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts apologized in a staff meeting on Wednesday for  his video last week defending Tucker Carlson and refusing to “cancel” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes, saying that the video was the result of internal failures of communication and consultation that left too few people involved in its production.

Roberts and other Heritage leaders also repeatedly made reference to a plan under development for how Heritage will approach its relationship with Carlson going forward, amid strong pressure from numerous staff members to forcefully disavow the right-wing podcast host  and his activities, but provided little clarity about what that approach will entail and sidestepped the full-throated denunciation of Carlson that several Heritage staffers sought.

In opening remarks, Roberts said ultimate responsibility for the video lay with him, but that Heritage’s former chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, who recently resigned, was responsible for writing the script. Roberts also criticized Neuhaus for retweeting a post saying that those upset by Roberts’ video should resign.

Roberts said that he himself was willing to resign but that he also felt a “moral obligation” to stay on to clean up the “mess” he created.

Roberts said that the video was the result of a “short circuited” process which violated Heritage’s “one voice” policy, adding that he wrongly believed the script had been approved by others in Heritage’s leadership, but that he should have personally checked in with colleagues.

“Some of the substance, maybe most of the substantive points, are things that I and I think we believe, but there are a couple of pain points that I want to address specifically,” Roberts said. 

He said that the intention of the video was to address public and private pressure on Heritage to disavow Carlson as well as to denounce the antisemitic and otherwise “grotesque” stances maintained by Fuentes, the latter of which he addressed in a separate post following backlash to his video. 

But Roberts also largely pleaded ignorance about both Carlson and Fuentes’ views and content in the staff meeting. Roberts’ video remains on his X profile.

“About ‘no cancelation,’ is there a limiting principle to that? I should have said that there was, especially in light of Tucker hosting not just Fuentes, but a handful of other people,” Roberts said. “You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone — a personal friend, an institutional friend — while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said. You’re not endorsing softball interviews. You’re not endorsing putting people on shows. And I should have made that clear.”

At the same time, Roberts also indicated that he had engaged privately with Carlson about objectionable content on his show in the past, including Carlson’s hosting of Holocaust revisionist Daryl Cooper.

Roberts repeatedly alluded to plans in development to clarify the relationship between Heritage and Carlson, and said that a variety of senior Heritage staff will be involved in developing those plans. He said he does not approve of much of Carlson’s recent activity, but generally withheld direct rebuke.

“I made the mistake of conflating too much the personal friendship I have with Tucker — although I want to be really clear, I don’t think that everything, or maybe even most, of what he does now is helpful or good — but conflating that with, particularly the word ‘always,’ as the institution,” Roberts said. “Even the institution can say, ‘Tucker will be a friend,’ but that’s different than saying that you endorse everything your friend does.”

Addressing revelations that Heritage had a paid partnership with Carlson, Roberts noted that the partnership ended this summer, and that Heritage had similar arrangements with various other media figures including Fox News commentator Mark Levin, who has spoken out against Carlson’s antisemitism.

Roberts said that his approach in the video and going forward was and will be driven, in some capacity, by a desire to appeal to and “drive a wedge” between Fuentes and followers of his who might be persuadable or do not share Fuentes’ bigotry.

“Fuentes … has an audience of several million people. At least some of that audience might be open to be converted. My video didn’t do that, although the intention was to open that idea — not to endorse what Fuentes was saying, but quite the opposite, to appeal to them,” Robert said. “There’s a segment of that audience who might be with us, and they really are not Nazis and antisemites, then maybe we can eventually bring them into the fold.”

Roberts offered an apology for the specific terminology he used in describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition,” saying he did not intend to invoke antisemitic tropes. 

A staffer later pressed him on his description of Carlson’s critics as a “globalist class and their mouthpieces,” which the staffer said also seemed to be an antisemitic trope. Roberts apologized for those comments as well, and said his use of “globalist” was meant differently.

“I misread the situation and the advice that I got,” Roberts said. “I took the advice. I didn’t stop. I own that. [It] was bad, and I should have been better in that moment.”

During a Q&A with Heritage staff, Roberts faced frustration and disappointment from a series of Heritage staffers, some of whom said they had lost confidence in his leadership and argued that both the initial video and his subsequent response and belated apology had been insufficient and wrongheaded. Many said that Heritage needed to make a clear and unequivocal statement disavowing Carlson in order to move forward.

“Only after it became clear that Ryan falling on his sword would be insufficient to quell the outrage, both inside and outside of this building, did we finally see you manage the courage to utter the words, ‘I made a mistake,’” Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, said. “It took you four days to say that, and even then, the mistake was couched largely in terms of, ‘Well, I’m sorry you guys just didn’t really understand the words that were coming out of my mouth, and maybe I should have spoken better, but also maybe try to listen better.’ With all due respect, Dr. Roberts, we all understood what you said in the video and in the ensuing response.”

Swearer also charged that Roberts has continued to avoid going after Carlson directly.

“We watched you seem perfectly willing to attack all of our friends and allies on the right, but say nothing about the guy who just said he dislikes nothing more than Christian Zionists,” she continued. “We watched this sort of incoherent defense for days of, ‘Well, we can’t participate in cancel culture, and anyone who attacks Tucker is participating in cancel culture, but also we’re going to attack the people who are participating in that cancel culture, and that’s not cancel culture.’”

Several staffers said that the video and the fallout from it had severely damaged Heritage’s reputation and partnerships with other institutions, that serious work would be needed throughout the organization to repair that damage and that Heritage had thus far failed to articulate any such plan or clearly disavow Carlson after nearly a week.

“It has been six days, almost a week, where we as an organization have been unable to utter the words … ‘Tucker’s an antisemite and we as Heritage do not want to associate with him,’” Daniel Flesch, a senior policy analyst at Heritage involved in its Middle East and antisemitism work, said. “We still do not have a statement about that. … We are bleeding trust, reputation, perhaps donors, who knows what else — support.”

“If the Heritage Foundation and you do not dump Tucker Carlson publicly, we are not going to repair that damage,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at Heritage, said, adding that it would be unworkable to make a public distinction between Carlson being a personal friend of Roberts versus being a friend of Heritage as an institution.

While the majority of those who raised questions during the meeting were deeply critical of Carlson, a pair of staffers stood out as taking a different stance 

One, describing herself as a member of Gen Z, said that she and many young staffers agreed with Roberts’ video. She also claimed that charges of antisemitism against Carlson were driven by his opposition to foreign intervention.

“Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic,” the staffer said. “It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy. We believe it does go against church doctrine and the teachings of the early church fathers to use Christianity as a defense for a secular nation.”

Roberts responded that Heritage must be “agnostic” on theological questions of Christian Zionism. 

Derek Morgan, Heritage’s executive vice president, added that Heritage’s institutional position is that, “Israel has been a great ally of the United States” and that, “When it’s in the American interest to support the nation of Israel, we will do so.”

Another staffer, Evan Myers, raised particular concern about a request from the Heritage-aligned National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, that young Heritage staffers be offered the opportunity to attend Shabbat dinners as a space for education.

Myers said that doing so would violate his and others’ religious beliefs and that he was concerned that attendance at such events would be used as a “litmus test.” He further suggested that those involved in the task force would leak to the media the names of those who declined to participate.

Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at Heritage and a board member of the task force, said she took offense with Myers’ characterization of the request.

“This was a recommendation … That was an open offer from the task force. It was made in generosity of spirit and in the hopes of increased dialogue on this issue,” Coates said. “And Evan, I’m deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer, but rather a personal attack on you. It was not.”

Roberts expressed frustration that communications between himself and members of the antisemitism task force had been shared with the press.

“It’s hard for me and for this institution to consider recommendations when we can’t do that privately,” Roberts said. “I just want to let you know as we move forward on a detailed plan … it’s got to be under the terms that we get to have the conversations privately.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) criticized Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, adding his voice to the growing list of Republicans who have publicly admonished the former Fox host for mainstreaming the avowed antisemite. 

The House speaker made the comments on Tuesday when asked in the Capitol if Carlson should still have a place in the conservative movement given his embrace of antisemitic figures like Fuentes. Johnson criticized what he described as Fuentes’ “anti-Christian” and “antisemitic” views and said conservatives have an obligation to call out antisemitism “wherever it is.”

“Look, I heard a compilation of some of the worst things that Nick Fuentes has said. It’s absolutely outrageous,” Johnson told National Review’s Audrey Fahlberg. “Some of the things he’s said are just blatantly antisemitic, racist and anti-American. Anti-Christian, for that matter. I think we have to call out antisemitism wherever it is.” 

“Whether it’s Tucker or anybody else, I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech. He has a First Amendment right, but we shouldn’t ever amplify it. That’s my view,” Johnson added.

Asked later Tuesday if Carlson’s views and voice belong in the conservative movement, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) did not directly reject Carlson but said that the party should have no space for antisemitism.

“Well, there are lots of voices, obviously, out there, but I don’t think there ought to be any — there just should be no room at all whatsoever for antisemitism or other forms of discrimination. That’s certainly not what our party is about,” Thune said. 

“Our party is a party that welcomes all comers,” he added. “We want to stand up for and on behalf of the American people who work hard every day to make a living and just want a government that works for them, hopefully at the lowest possible cost and in a way that enables them to go about their lives and provide for them and their families.”