Some choices are minor and forgettable. Others have large, lasting repercussions. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’s decision to side with podcaster Tucker Carlson in an October 2025 video is decidedly the latter.
Carlson had posted a softball interview with Hitler and Stalin devotee Nick Fuentes, in which Carlson attacked Christian Zionists as heretics with a “brain virus.” When Roberts backed Heritage’s “close friend” Carlson and dubbed the commentator’s critics “the globalist class,” “a venomous coalition,” and “bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” it was widely viewed as a gauntlet thrown.
Roberts has kept his job after backtracking, but some others affiliated with Heritage have headed for the exits. That includes former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore, education scholar Jay Greene, board members Robert George, Shane McCullar, and Abby Spencer Moffat, George Mason law professor Adam Mossoff, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, more than a dozen scholars who defected to former Vice President Mike Pence’s Washington-based advocacy organization, and the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
The task force had been synonymous with Project Esther, Heritage’s initiative to combat antisemitism by focusing on “a global Hamas Support Network.” Relatedly, the knock on the task force had been its exclusive focus on the political Left. Pastor Luke Moon, who’s been the executive director of the Philos Project and a task force co-chairman, explained that it was based on a perception that Jew-hatred was seismically worse on the Left. However, with Roberts’s video spotlighting the fight underway to define the post-Trump Right, and whether to embrace the identitarian Right, the task force has pivoted.
On Nov. 18, the task force hosted its first post-Heritage event, “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right,” with the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel. The event at The Line hotel in Washington showcased Christian and Jewish speakers with varied perspectives on this reality. There was widespread agreement, though, that Jew-hatred not only exists on the political Right, but it must also be fought.
“We are here as a task force to declare wherever it arises on the Left, Right, or in between, we declare in America zero tolerance to any antisemitism in our nation,” said Pastor Mario Bramnick, president of the Latino Coalition for Israel and task force co-chairman. “Antisemitism is not just an anti-Jewish problem: It is anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-Western.”
Moon referenced the Left’s ignoring the rise of its radicals as a cautionary tale, making the case for a coalition opposing metastasizing Jew-hatred on the political Right. Looking back over recent weeks, Moon said, “I don’t feel like we did win the last battle, but we didn’t lose yet either. And so I welcome you to the fight.”
Speakers described the contours of, and parties to, that fight differently. Bramnick explained, “The task force severed our relationship with Heritage as a result of what started two weeks ago and failure to mitigate the damage that was caused by Kevin Roberts’s statements.” Anglican priest and theologian Gerald McDermott questioned Roberts and Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion that “one must always defend our friends in public, even apparently when the friends are guilty of great evil, such as the evil of antisemitism.” But mostly, Roberts was ignored.
Both Bramnick and Moon expressed gratitude for Heritage’s having hosted the task force. Bramnick further hopes “Heritage will address these issues [that prompted the task force’s departure] and take zero tolerance towards antisemitism, not just on the Left but also on the Right.” The person most frequently criticized was Carlson.
Bramnick said he’s observed “antisemitic acts coming from MAGA movement leaders,” specifying “Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Steve Bannon … Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, among others.” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) and Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein added Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to Bramnick’s list.
Klein expressed concern that Vance has “praised his friend Tucker Carlson,” characterized a young Republicans’ group chat praising Adolf Hitler as “joking,” and answered a college student’s question about Jews “secretly shaping” President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy by saying, “they’re not manipulating or controlling this president, I assure you. This president, as if they’ve been controlling and manipulating other presidents.” Klein also corrected Trump, “my favorite president of all time,” after the latter “praised Tucker Carlson as a good man,” who’s entitled to interview Fuentes. “No, we aren’t saying it’s illegal,” Klein clarified. “We’re saying it’s immoral. It’s outrageous to give a platform to such a monster.”
With the task force’s mandate now broadened, speakers made clear they oppose Carlson’s post-Fox News hobbyhorses. Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed, who attended “more bar mitzvahs than baptisms growing up” in Miami, promised, “We’re going to stand for Israel, we’re going to stand with the Jewish people, and we’re going to stand against antisemitism and religious bigotry in all of its ugly forms.”
“For us, it’s not a matter of politics or really ultimately even policy, although it touches on those things,” Reed said. “For us, it’s personal, and it’s about the core of our being.” Reed referenced German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom Carlson recently attacked for having “decided Christianity’s not enough, we have to kill” Hitler. Bonhoeffer “is lionized in our [evangelical] churches,” Reed said. “His letters from prison are standard reading in Bible studies in American churches.” That reverence includes Dutch watchmaker Corrie ten Boom, whose family hid Jews during the Holocaust. “I have been to Haarlem outside Amsterdam, and I have stood in those secret compartments behind their closets, where the Jews were hidden. And what I learned is what millions of other evangelicals learned from Bonhoeffer and the ten Booms and other righteous gentiles. We learned that being a good Christian means defending Jews.”
McDermott filled out that Christian view, offering a detailed, biblical refutation of Carlson’s claim that Christian Zionism is “a brain virus” and “a Christian heresy.” McDermott explained that “Zionism, which is simply the idea that Jews have and deserve a homeland, is not only a Hebrew bible idea repeated 1,000 times there — I’ve counted — but that it’s all over the surface of the New Testament. It’s a brain virus and theological blindness for Christians not to see it.”
With nobody defending Carlson, the big question remained how attendees envision the task force’s post-Heritage mission. Ellie Cohanim, a task force co-chairwoman and former U.S. deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told the audience, “Our task is clear: to speak the truth when lies about Jews or Israel are spread. To demand moral clarity in our schools, our universities, and in our government. To teach the next generation that our freedom is rooted in the biblical notion of human dignity, not in the ideologies of those who despise our civilization. And to remember George Washington’s words [promising American Jews equality] not as a historical artifact, but as a living pledge that demands our vigilance.”
There is interest in religious education from both Jewish and Christian perspectives. Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, wants to teach the public “the biblical roots of antisemitism,” which harken back to “Pharaoh, Haman, and … Laban” and became two primary tropes: “Jewish property is stolen,” and “Jews are unfair to everybody else.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who visited a “kibbutz where the walls were splattered with the blood of women and children who were brutally murdered” and the Nova Music Festival site with Moon, Cohanim, and Bramnick, recalled, “We repented on that site for what the United States had facilitated and took place. I don’t want to have to repent again for my silence.” Perkins told listeners, “We have an educational problem in our own community. We have to push back on this idea that Judea and Samaria is up for sale.” Perkins’s solution involves a nine-part video series for younger evangelicals about “the heart of Israel, where 80% of what we read about in Scripture took place” and an e-book making a biblical and prophetic case for Israel.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also offered a religious message via video. “Never has there been a more important time to get the message out about what the Scripture teaches,” Huckabee said. “You don’t have to be political. I’m asking you to be biblical” and “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
Other government officials addressed politics. Fine, who stands by calling Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America,” wants Republicans to recognize that “we have a choice in our own movement today.” That is, will Republicans replicate Democrats’ response to leftists’ Jew-hatred, ignoring it and hoping “it will go away,” or “are we going to punch it right in the face?” Fine appreciated that this group had chosen the latter.
Leo Terrell, chairman of the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said his “goal is to eliminate antisemitism, period.” Pointing to the public relations war, Terrell said, “We need to expand our base. We need to be just as loud, just as vocal as the other side.” Terrell also wants to “set up guardrails now, because we don’t know who’s going to win in 2028. We don’t want to go backwards.”
The Generation Z panel offered advice with an eye on younger voters. Isaac Woodward, who’s been director of the Philos Leadership Institute, recommended listeners “live with the courage of your own ideals, the actual patrimony of your civilization, as Christians, as Jews,” and don’t “let rage bait and troll culture take us over.” As for combating right-wing Jew-haters, Media Research Center Anderlik fellow Justine Murray commented, “Humor is the best disinfectant.” She urged “more speech” and eschewing the term “hate speech.” Murray suggested following LibsofTikTok’s lead: “Hold up a mirror to them.” Murray continued, “Mock them, because they want us to get angry and offended, and there’s really no reason to. These are a bunch of freaks.”
Moon concluded the event by saying, “This whole thing is still an ongoing conversation. I think a lot of people have just woken up over the last several weeks to how bad this problem is.” He is “looking forward to … ideas for the solution,” which includes “this group.” Moon encouraged leaning into “what you think would be good ideas on how we move forward.” Among Moon’s recommendations were “a rapid response group,” an “effort to mobilize pastors around the country to speak up,” nationwide events like this, and achieving “practical, regional stuff.” To ensure “our message” gets out, there must be more “people speaking it out there.” Finally, “we have to hit the problem and challenge of Tucker from a lot of directions.”
Task force members see the struggle underway on the Right and intend to fight it. Implementing various presented ideas will, of course, be the hard part. Teaching young people about their history and religious inheritance alone is a yearslong effort requiring a nationwide network of committed parents, religious leaders, and other adults. It’s also crucial if the Right and the country are to turn things around.
When the moment unexpectedly required it, task force members were willing to walk, rather than compromise their values.
GUNNING FOR THE GAZA HUMANITARIAN FOUNDATION
In November, Carlson told Alabama’s 1819 News podcast that he had “liked” Roberts, past tense, but now thought Roberts “weak” and “dead in a way.” Like a character out of Greek tragedy, Roberts’s intense loyalty to Carlson is apparently unrequited.
Either way, Roberts has made a choice. Now everybody else gets a vote. Conservatism has evolved over Heritage’s five decades, but certain critical ideas remain unchanged. Namely, Western civilization is worth defending, and identitarianism deserves no place on the mainstream Right.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is a columnist for London’s Jewish Chronicle.