WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers and influencers continued Monday to distance themselves from Tucker Carlson after his sympathetic interview with prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes, putting on display a widening split on the right about how to address antisemitism within their party.

The fallout included at least one resignation, as a key aide to the head of a prominent right-wing think tank stepped down after backing his boss’s vigorous defense of Carlson.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation think tank, had announced late last week that the aide, Ryan Neuhaus, was simply leaving his chief of staff position for another role. But on Monday, a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation said Neuhaus had resigned. The resignation was reported earlier by The Hill.

Ben Shapiro, a conservative podcast host, also condemned Carlson on Monday as “the most virulent superspreader of vile ideas in America,” criticizing him for failing to push back on Fuentes during the interview and for allowing him instead to spread his ideas unchallenged on a huge platform.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans were quick to disavow antisemitism and declare unbending support for Israel, even as some refrained from singling out Carlson by name.

“There’s already the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel, and is OK with antisemitism,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in an interview. “We’ve got to be very clear we don’t support antisemitism and we do support Israel.”

The uproar over Carlson’s interview has created a dilemma for many Republicans in Congress. Many have routinely derided “cancel culture” among progressives and accused the left of intolerance. They have also rejected the idea that conservatives should cast out figures within their own ranks who make indefensible statements.

Vance Mocks Outrage

When a cache of leaked antisemitic, misogynistic and other bigoted texts that circulated among a group of Republican operatives recently surfaced, Vice President JD Vance ridiculed the outraged reaction as “pearl clutching.”

But others, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have argued that Republicans must rid their movement of such viewpoints. Cruz has positioned himself as one of the party’s loudest voices denouncing antisemitism and appeared especially eager for a hand-to-hand fight with Carlson.

“It’s a handful of voices that are spreading this garbage, and it is giving every one of us a time for choosing,” Cruz said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit in Las Vegas on Thursday. “As for me, I choose to stand with you. I choose to stand with Israel, and I choose to stand with America.”

Cruz’s personal and ideological grievances with Carlson are not new. He was a guest on Carlson’s show in June, when Carlson tried to embarrass him by putting him on the spot about his knowledge of Iran. Carlson said that Cruz “doesn’t know anything about Iran” while noting that the senator had called for regime change there.

On Monday, Cruz declined to comment about the resignation of Neuhaus, the Heritage Foundation aide, or to expound further on his views about Carlson.

“I am a big fan of the Heritage Foundation,” he said. “I spoke at length on the topic of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes on Thursday night.”

On Friday, Roberts thrust the right-wing think tank he leads, which created the “Project 2025” plan that has guided much of President Donald Trump’s agenda, into the middle of the controversy.

“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,” Roberts said in a video he posted on social media after the Carlson-Fuentes interview. He described Carlson as a “close friend” of the Heritage Foundation, and said that “the venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division.”

Republicans Make Backing Israel a Litmus Test

Many Republican lawmakers, who have made backing Israel a litmus test and taken Democrats to task, accusing them of being insufficiently supportive of the Jewish state, quickly took a different tack.

“I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said over the weekend at the RJC event. “Here’s what I do know: You can sit in a basement with weird people and say weird things. It’s a free country.”

But, Graham added: “I want the world to know antisemitism, anti-Israel rhetoric, anti-Israel thought is not the road to being elected as a Republican. You will lose.”

In an interview, Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said it was a mistake for Republicans to debate whether it was appropriate for Carlson to be “platforming” Fuentes.

“That’s a term of the left,” he said. “Our issue isn’t so much that Tucker had Nick Fuentes on for an interview. Our issue is that he failed to meet the moment and ask him tough questions about why he admires Adolf Hitler, why he’s a Holocaust denier and hates Jews, why he is pro-Putin and pro-Stalin.”

Brooks said it was unfortunate that the “Hitler is cool” wing of his party was gaining attention, but he noted that it was far from a new phenomenon.

Jewish Republicans in the past have combated the influence of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who made inroads with the Republican Party in the 1990s. They stood up to Pat Buchanan, the former Republican presidential candidate who advanced antisemitic ideology.

Antisemitism in the Republican Party can be traced all the way back to the John Birch Society, a semi-secret society that espoused antisemitic views. Carlson remains a formidable force in the Republican Party, and some of the biggest critics in the days after the Fuentes interview were those who had warned of his dangerous influence for years.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has long blamed Carlson for the cratering of political support for Ukraine within the Republican Party. Carlson in the past described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, as “sweaty and rat-like”; “shifty”; “dead-eyed”; a “persecutor of Christians”; and a “friend of BlackRock,” the investment company.

Over the weekend, McConnell criticized Roberts for defending Carlson.

“Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” he wrote on social media, making a reference to Roberts’ defense of Carlson. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Annie Karni/Kent Nishimura
c. 2025 The New York Times Company