Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts admitted that he’d “made a mistake” regarding his staunch defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, The Washington Free Beacon reports.
“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution and I am sorry for that. Period. Full stop,” Roberts said during a Wednesday meeting with staff of the conservative think tank, according to video obtained by the Beacon.
Roberts’s acknowledgment comes only after he and the think tank received severe backlash, including from conservatives, over a video he posted last week in which he declined to distance the organization from Carlson. In it, he argues that critics of Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, are part of a “venomous coalition” trying to “cancel” the right-wing media personality.
In Wednesday’s meeting, Roberts maintained that the organization did not “cancel” its friends, but said that his statement could have stressed that there was a “limiting principle.”
“You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone… 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’ve made that clear,” he said.
A Heritage Foundation spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roberts added that the script of that video, which was written by the Heritage Foundation’s former chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus, should have gone through more layers of approval. Neuhaus, someone Roberts characterized as a “good man” who also made a “mistake,” resigned late last week amid the uproar over the organization’s statement.
Roberts also singled out the use of the term “venomous coalition” in the video and apologized to his Jewish colleagues over how that evoked an anti-Semitic trope.
His apology to the organization follows right-wing in-fighting over Carlson’s sympathetic sit-down with Fuentes, who’s known for expressing sexist, racist and antisemitic views.
As HuffPost’s Lydia O’Connor wrote, “Carlson allowed Fuentes to speak largely unchecked in their interview... letting him spout off comments about the problems with ‘organized Jewry in America,’ and declaring himself a longtime ‘fan’ and ‘admirer’ of Joseph Stalin with minimal pushback.”
Prominent conservative voices including commentator Ben Shapiro and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are among those who’ve condemned The Heritage Foundation’s original response and how it condoned Carlson’s interview.