‘I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech.’
House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a brief hallway interview with National Review on Tuesday that conservatives should not “amplify” rhetoric from Nick Fuentes, an avowed Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin apologist with a track record of making bigoted statements about women, Jews, and black people.
Johnson’s comments come days after Fuentes sat for a friendly interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Pressed about whether Carlson’s views and voice in particular have a place in the conservative movement following his decision to give Fuentes the opportunity to air his noxious views, Johnson said conservatives have an obligation to speak up about antisemitism “wherever it is.”
“Look, I heard a compilation of some of the worst things that Nick Fuentes has said. It’s—it’s absolutely outrageous,” Johnson said. “Some of the things he’s said are just blatantly antisemitic, racist and anti-American. Anti-Christian, for that matter. I think we have to call out antisemitism wherever it is. And I don’t think—whether it’s Tucker or anybody else—I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech.”
“He has a First Amendment right, but we shouldn’t ever amplify it,” Johnson added.
During his interview with Fuentes, Carlson said that he hated Christian supporters of Israel, naming Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee specifically, more than anybody.
The Heritage Foundation continues to hemorrhage support from Jewish organizations and leaders amid the fallout from the controversial video statement the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, issued last week pledging continued support for Carlson and urging conservatives against canceling Fuentes.
In the video, Roberts accused the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson of “sowing division,” and said that Heritage would never distance itself from Carlson.
The Friday video prompted heated pushback from within Heritage and from prominent figures across the conservative movement. Roberts responded by posting a lengthy thread on X later in the day condemning Fuentes’s bigoted views. Roberts again addressed controversy during a speech at Hillsdale College Monday night in which he apologized for not making clear in his initial video statement that he condemned antisemitism, but again pushed back against those he accused of trying to “cancel” Carlson.
After Roberts’s speech, Thomas McKenna, editor of the Hillsdale Collegian, asked whether there was anything Carlson could do that would cause Heritage to distance itself from him.
“We don’t forsake friends,” Roberts said.
“That doesn’t mean we’re endorsing every word of the content — or even a lot of the content,” he added.