NEWS HEADLINES: Heritage Foundation president addresses backlash following Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes – One America News Network

OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
6:26 PM – Friday, October 31, 2025

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts issued a statement in regard to Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview controversial commentator Nick Fuentes, declaring that “canceling” Fuentes “is not the answer” while calling for engagement rather than isolation of more far-right voices.

Roberts’ most recent remarks, delivered in a video posted to X this week, came three days after Carlson hosted Fuentes — a 27-year-old Holocaust skeptic who has been repeatedly disavowed by Republican leaders — for a two-hour episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show.”

Carlson and Fuentes had previously clashed before Monday’s conversation, with Carlson mocking the 27-year-old as a “weird little gay kid in his basement.” Fuentes, in turn, has argued that it’s hard to trust someone whose father “worked in conjunction” with the CIA at some point in his career — calling out the former Fox News host.

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labels Fuentes, who is one-quarter Mexican by ancestry, a “white nationalist live streamer.” However, Fuentes himself says that he doesn’t agree with that label. He has described himself as a “devout Catholic” and “traditional Catholic” who is “America first.”

“The reason I wouldn’t call myself a white nationalist—it’s not because I don’t see the necessity for white people to have a homeland and for white people to have a country,” Fuentes said. “It’s because I think that kind of terminology is used almost exclusively by the left to defame and I think the terminology and the labels that we use—I don’t think that we can look at them outside of the context of their connotations in America,” Fuentes said previously on a political talk show — as reported by peoplefor.org.

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“Six million cookies? I’m not buying it,” Fuentes said in 2019, comparing baking cookies to Jews who were killed by the Nazis during the holocaust — and suggesting that the official holocaust death toll is fabricated.

In the Monday interview, Fuentes further downplayed the Holocaust and argued that “organized Jewry” controls American institutions. Carlson did offer mild pushback on some points, but largely allowed Fuentes to elaborate without as much challenge as other pro-Israel Christians and conservatives had hoped for.

Roberts, whose conservative think tank is a leading architect of the proposed Project 2025, addressed rumors that Heritage was distancing itself from Carlson ahead of his scheduled appearance at a Heritage event.

“Yesterday I said that I abhorred views expressed by Nick Fuentes—and that the best way to fight antisemitic ideas was to challenge them head on.   Fuentes replied on X by saying “I don’t know what exactly you ‘abhor’ about my views.” Allow me to elaborate—because there is plenty to condemn.   First, the @Heritage Foundation and I denounce and stand against his vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history. We are disgusted by his musings about rape, women, child marriage, and abusing his potential wife.  Fuentes made grotesque analogies to try to cast doubt on the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and has said “I think the Holocaust is exaggerated. I don’t hate Hitler.” Fuentes called for the death penalty for “perfidious Jews” and other non-Christians, stating that “when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty.”   Fuentes praised Hitler and in the Tucker interview said he is a “Stalin admirer.”  Fuentes stated that his goal is “total Aryan victory” and claimed that “black people should be in prison for the most part.” This is but a sampling of his vile daily rhetoric.  Racism and antisemitism are not relics of the past. They have blossomed on the Left on university campuses and grown on the Right through figures like Fuentes. Nick Fuentes’s antisemitism is not complicated, ironic, or misunderstood. It is explicit, dangerous, and demands our unified opposition as conservatives. Fuentes knows exactly what he is doing. He is fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.  Our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place. Join us—not to cancel—but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail.  For those, especially young men, who are enticed by Fuentes and his acolytes online—there is a better way.  I look forward to talking more about this in the days to come.”