A major MAGA civil war erupted into the open in the last week, pitting Tucker Carlson and other “America First” Trump supporters against what Nick Fuentes calls “Israel First” Republicans.
This is a continuation of topics I’ve discussed in previous posts on odd alliances forged by opposition to the genocide in Gaza and reactions to the death of Charlie Kirk.
Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes on his insanely popular podcast last week. The full interview garnered 17 million views on X.com, 5 million views on YouTube, and no telling how many of his reported 2.6 million Spotify followers tuned in but Carlson was the #2 podcast on the service last week.
For comparison, the top rated show on Fox News (the most watched cable news program) drew 3.7 million viewers.
The top rated news show on broadcast television is ABC’s World News Tonight which averages around 7.8 million viewers.
Tucker Carlson IS the American mainstream media in 2025. If he is platforming the frequently cancelled Fuentes, that’s a big deal.
https://t.co/1DKklzHFSk pic.twitter.com/ht2QMXAkp8
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) November 3, 2025
It was also interesting to me because the last time I’d seen Carlson discussing Fuentes, he called Fuentes “this child, this weird little gay kid in his basement in Chicago” while interviewing Candace Owens.
But the most interesting thing about the interview was their joint condemnation of Christian Zionists.
Tucker Carlson Calling Out Neocons and Christian Zionists
Carlson had a notably tense interview with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) four months ago, but I had not expected a full throated attack on the ideology of Christian Zionists like Cruz.
Nick Fuentes: Where does neoconservatism come from? It arises from Jewish leftists who were mugged by reality when they saw the surprise attack in the Yom Kippur war.
Tucker Carlson: Well, that’s a lot of it for sure. But then like how do you explain Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and there are a lot like that: John Bolton, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, I mean, all people I know personally who I’ve seen like be seized by this brain virus and they’re not Jewish.
They’re most of them are self-described Christians. And then the Christian Zionists who are…
Christian Zionists, like what is that? And I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy and I’m offended by that as a Christian.
Christian Zionism, for those of you lucky enough not to be surrounded by it on a daily basis (there are more Israel First zionists in Texas than Israel), is rooted in Protestant eschatological ideas about “the rapture” — an idea invented by the 19th Century Irish Calvinist John Nelson Darby.
Today, the movement is led by, among others, Texas minister John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel.
About Christian Zionism
It’s impossible to understand the Israel First branch of the Republican party without understanding the influence of Christian Zionism.
I highly recommend this Tad Delay piece from Parapraxis Magazine for those who want an introduction.
But let’s get back to the blow-by-blow of the political fallout from the Carlson/Fuentes tête-à-tête.
Nick Fuentes Is Cancelled No More
Ali Breland in The Atlantic wrote a mammoth piece decrying that “The firewall against Nick Fuentes is crumbling” and bemoaning the fact that Carlson had given Fuentes “access to one of the largest audiences he has ever had.”
She also lists a greatest hits of Fuentes’ racist and anti-Semitic statements, that had Carlson himself comparing the young influencer to David Duke just weeks ago.
But most importantly, she bemoaned Fuentes’ influence on today’s GOP:
In a 2021 episode of his livestreamed show, Fuentes said he wants to drag the Republican Party “kicking and screaming into the future, into the right wing, into a truly reactionary party.” His vision is coming true. Consider the leaked group chats of Young Republican leaders that were revealed by Politico earlier this month. The messages are full of the kind of anti-Semitic and racist jokes about the Holocaust and Black people that Fuentes has made as a livestreamer. Fuentes wasn’t directly referenced in the messages, though he claimed shortly after the leak that there are “Groypers in every department, every agency.” Vice President J. D. Vance called the messages “offensive jokes” and dismissed outrage over the texts as irrational “pearl clutching.” Fuentes celebrated the response on his livestream: “I never thought I’d see it ever, but Republicans are finally learning to play the whataboutism game, and I think that’s absolutely overdue.”
Heritage Foundation President Defends Carlson
But the mess really hit the fan when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, put out a video on X.com last Thursday defending Tucker Carlson from the “venomous coalition attacking him.”
Roberts’ statement came after changes to their web site excising mentions of Tucker Carlson inspired speculation that they were preparing to disavow him.
There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.
I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025
I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic.
And, of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned.
My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology.
But when it doesn’t, 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.
The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now.
We don’t take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate.
We also don’t take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support. And we’re adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public.
We will always defend truth. We will always defend America. And we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda.
That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.
The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail.
Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.
I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate.
And we have seen success in this approach, as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.
As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, “what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first.”
That’s where our allegiance lies, and that’s where it will stay.
The backlash was immediate and intense.
Zionists Speak Out at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit
Roberts immediately faced incoming fire from a bipartisan coalition of Israel first U.S. Senators, including Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Democrat Chuck Schumer.
“Now is a time for choosing. If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very cool and that their mission is to defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” said Cruz at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Summit in Las Vegas (6.4 thousand views on YouTube).
“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” McConnell tweeted.
“Last I checked, conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” he continued. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is.”
Schumer told the Associated Press he found Roberts’ remarks “deeply disturbing.”
But nothing could top the rhetoric coming from U.S. Senator (R-SC) Lindsey Graham and U.S Representative (R-FL) Randy Fine.
Lindsey Graham tells Republican Jewish Coalition not to worry about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes: “I feel good about the Republican Party. I feel good about where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.”
“Trump is my favorite…pic.twitter.com/dTJPy2Uvs0
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) November 2, 2025
Rep. Randy Fine, who celebrated Israel killing babies in Gaza, tells Republican Jewish Coalition that Tucker Carlson and Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene are “evil.”
Carlson is “the most dangerous anti-Semite in America.”
“It makes my stomach crawl that I have to… pic.twitter.com/2fXj3pVgXX
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) November 2, 2025
Graham’s repulsive outburst racked up 848,000 views on X.com where the up-and-coming Israel first Congressman Fine only got 15,000.
I can’t help but hope that the more people see Graham and Fine speaking their truth, the less support they will have.
Roberts Immediately Backpedals
The next day Roberts was interviewed by Dana Loesch and agreed, after a long, awkward pause, that Carlson was “sowing division” by calling out Christian Zionists.
Q: Is it ‘venomous’ to say that you hate Christian Zionists?@KevinRobertsTX: “Of course it is” pic.twitter.com/srCNracEse
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) October 31, 2025
Roberts also put out a 350 word tweet in reply to Nick Fuentes’ question “what exactly do you abhor about my views?”
But not all of the Republican response was negative as reported by Politico’s Nightly newsletter:
Meanwhile, other conservative group chats in Washington were blowing up with messages in support of Roberts’ stance. “I woke up with more texts about this last night than I did when Trump was elected,” one conservative operative, granted anonymity to discuss private messages, told Nightly. “Everything else has dissipated.”
In a message to Nightly, Carlson professed surprise at the heated reaction to Roberts’ statement. “It’s shocking to me that a principled statement in favor of free speech would be controversial on the right. But it’s also clarifying,” Carlson wrote. “Remember who opposed it.”
Laura Loomer Goes Ham on Roberts
Amusingly, the sharpest attacks on Roberts are coming from Laura Loomer, another right-winger who is frequently cancelled and officially labeled a “conspiracy theorist” by Wikipedia. The main difference between Fuentes and Loomer is there’s no question she is Israel first.
I mean, sure she’s got Alex Jones’ InfoWars and the infamous Project Veritas on her resume, but she’s now a powerful Trump 2.0 administration insider.
As the The Guardian reported in April, she can get people fired, including from the National Security Council.
So it seems likely Roberts felt a cold chill down his back when he learned Loomer had tweeted:
“What @KevinRobertsTX needs to understand is you can respect someone’s right to free speech but also condemn them and their wicked behavior that is rooted in a desire to fracture the evangelical GOP base.
Tucker is the demon who he says scratched him in his sleep.
How’s that for venom?
Loomer next zeroed in on the specific Heritage Foundation staffer she blamed for writing Roberts’ remarks on Carlson.
I’ve been told by multiple sources that @RyanMNeuhaus wrote the speech for @KevinRobertsTX that referred to everyone critical of anti-Semitism and revisionist Christianity as a “venomous coalition”.
If he did not, he’s more than welcome to chime in.
The chances of him being… https://t.co/DL0FPemMDO pic.twitter.com/nv6zngsFgN
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2025
Heads Roll at Heritage
By Friday, Roberts was sending an email to Heritage Foundation staff titled “Heritage’s Stand Against Antisemitism and for Civilizational Truth.”
Per The Hill, the email announced that chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus was vacating his role to become a “senior advisor” to the Simon Center while executive vice president, Derrick Morgan, would be acting chief of staff until the end of the year.
Steve Bannon Confronts Loomer
But this is more than a matter of “the empire strikes back” as this confrontational Steve Bannon interview of Loomer shows.
This is the clip that’s gone viral:
🚨 Steve Bannon shredded Laura Loomer live on air! The debate turned into a full-blown meltdown — and the clip is spreading like wildfire. pic.twitter.com/UIIxbH1IcL
— SilencedSirs◼️ (@SilentlySirs) November 2, 2025
Loomer accused “some on the right” of having “Israeli derangement syndrome.”
Bannon pushed back hard on the Israel first Loomer:
Steve Bannon: “Well, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on a second. If Netanyahu and the Jewish—hold on, if the Israeli government had dealt straight with us, you wouldn’t have had this problem. They’re liars. They’ve been stone-cold liars. They gave bad information. So I’m not going to let that go unchallenged. That’s just bullshit. OK?”
“Do not—don’t sit there all innocent about what Netanyahu’s—Netanyahu’s government has been atrocious, and we should have regime change in Jerusalem, and we should have it immediately. They’ve lied to the American government. They’ve lied to the American people consistently.”
These divisions on the right may be pitting one loathsome crew of racist reactionaries against another, but it is extremely novel to see the American Republican party and broader right wing tearing itself apart over whether or not to put Israel first.
This was not seen in the Bush-Cheney years that launched the endless “Global War on Terror” and maybe, just maybe it’s a sign that the neoconservative reign of terror may be running out of steam.
UPDATE
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) responds:
The recent speeches given at the RJC conference were filled with hateful rhetoric and lies about not only myself, but my colleague Thomas Massie, my good friend Tucker Carlson, and Americans who sincerely mean it when we say America FIRST.
No other country’s interest should come…
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 3, 2025
Full text:
The recent speeches given at the RJC conference were filled with hateful rhetoric and lies about not only myself, but my colleague Thomas Massie, my good friend Tucker Carlson, and Americans who sincerely mean it when we say America FIRST.
No other country’s interest should come before our own.
But when actual Republican members of Congress and Senators and influential figures take to calling us “dangerous threats” or even dare to call Tucker “Hitler” and publicly announce to cancel us, they are not only doing exactly what Democrats did by calling Republicans “Nazis” and Trump “Hitler” but they are also trying to get us killed.
And what purely disgust me is that they know it.
They know exactly what they are doing and they are doing it on purpose.
Me and my very serious fellow America Firsters are not against anyone, we are only sincerely for our own country, America.
In all the most well intentioned ways.
And that includes every single American citizen and their children and their children and future generations.
It’s not identity driven at all no matter how much the haters trying to get us killed claim.
We are winning and our movement is growing and I thank God for that because my children’s generation deserves hope for their future and their opportunity to live the American dream.
