Bulwark Takes - Heritage Chooses Tucker Over Its Own Principles

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Tucker Carlson’s gone full mask-off, giving airtime to white nationalist Nick Fuentes while the Heritage Foundation rushes to defend him. Sam Stein and Will Sommer discuss the latest False Flag. 

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Learn more at BP.com slash investing in America. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the book with my man. Will Summer, author of False Flag, one of the most critically acclaimed, widely loved and praised newsletters in the game. Truly, a masterpiece. That's me. One review that I read the other day said, essential reading. Essential. It must be talking about another newsletter, but I'm happy to take it. Sorry, that was actually the breakdown newsletter. Sorry, I got my wires across here. Will you have another good one today? You made the case. I wasn't convinced, but I think you made it, after I read it, I was convinced that this Tucker Carlson interview with Nick Fuentes is a big, big deal.

I guess I wasn't convinced because I'm sort of the mindset like, oh, my God, so much crap is happening. Of course, they're talking to each other, whatever. This is just like furthering a trend that we've already experienced. But your position is that actually it's kind of a seminal moment. Can you elaborate as to why? Yeah, so just to lay the groundwork here, so just to lay the groundwork here, we had on Monday Tucker Carlson put out this kind of long anticipated interview he was going to do with the

white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who's very much arising and kind of challenging the status quo force in MAGA media. And, you know, Tucker, I will say, basically let Nick Fuentes say whatever. I mean, at one point he talked about organized jury and Tucker's going, you know, Why were people mad at you? And then Nick Fuentes would give kind of like the biggest spin to his comments. And then he'd say, well, I don't know. You know, I can't believe they're canceling you for that, Nick.

So he gave him this really massive platform. And I wanted to write about this because it really kind of, it's been taking, it's gone off like a bomb in right wing media and everyone's freaking out about it. Because Nick Fuentes, because this is a guy who's a Holocaust denier, very openly anti-black. I mean, he'll say the N-word. You know, he's obviously extremely anti-Jewish and, you know, has admired Hitler. people like that. And so this is someone that even in kind of the topsy-turvy world of right-wing media these days was seen as someone you didn't really pal around with or promote or collaborate

with. And Tucker now has opened that door up. And really, you know, who's to say, that sort of suggests that his politics now are acceptable within the Republican town. Yeah, I guess that's the question. It's like maybe I just assume they're already acceptable, right? Like I just just sort of have the mindset that, yeah, of course, he's toxic and anti-Semitic and horror. horrible. But at the same time, he's got a huge platform. And people love him on the right. Obviously, I'm not a big fan. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that was where I was sort of torn. On the one hand, obviously, he's a horrible figure, gross. My people are not the biggest fans to say it lightly. On the other, I almost felt like he already had achieved acceptability. And I don't know why I felt

that way because I suppose, you know, when he had dinner with Donald Trump in the campaign, obviously Donald Trump rushed to, you know, disassociate himself with it. But then again, he had dinner with Donald Trump, right? Like, he actually did get into Mar-a-Lago. So I already thought he was kind of in the realm of acceptability in that sense. I'm curious, who do you think's going to like, if you had to guess who platform is the guy next? Because you say Tucker putting him on the show opens the doors but to what like who's he's not going to go on fox is he i mean maybe someday he could yeah i mean there there's or you know someone with similar politics uh you know the um you know will he start going on megan kelly he's he's not going to go on ben Shapiro i mean ben Shapiro is no fan of

his um but i think you know it's maybe not even maybe he will maybe ben Shapiro might do it and just be like i'm going to argue with you and they'll just argue right i don't know yeah i i mean I think there was a pretty good taboo on, you know, praising Hitler, questioning the Holocaust that even persisted on the right. And so, and as you said, I mean, it is a little silly on one hand to be saying, Tucker, now you've done it. Now the Republicans are all going to be Nazis when Trump did dine with him. Although, you know, on the other hand, that was treated as a huge disaster. And, you know, all these Republicans were saying, how could this possibly happen? Trump had to disown him or kind of distance himself from it. So I do think, I mean, this is we're, this is sort of the latest triumph

for Nick Fuentes, unfortunately, particularly after Charlie Kirk's assassination, he's been on a real string. There's this big TikTok trend of young women who will be listening to Nick Fuentes and saying, you know, this guy might make some good points or something. Or do you have these kind of more mainstream podcast hosts playing it and saying, you know, they say this guy's crazy, but, you know, maybe he's not so crazy on this issue. So yeah, I think it's just kind of his growth. I mean, you know, on the other hand, you know, you're saying, well, let me do the other hand for that because you reference this, but like, we're like, oh my God, it's, it's like super disturbing. And it is that this guy who is a Hitler apologist and a neo-Nazi and hates openly hates Jews and super

disturbing that he's ascending to these heights and getting these followers. And he's really opening the door. And yet, in like the past month, we had a story where these young Republicans were like sending text to each other being like, I got, you know, what was, what was the shit? It wasn't them who said, I have a Nazi streak. That was the Trump appointee who said, Paul and Gracius, who said, I had a Nazi streak. But these guys were, you know, talking about, you know, Hitler and stuff on text. It's clear that there's a thread of this that's in the movement that exists. And Frontace is the embodiment of it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very real that that kind of, uh, Gen Z or younger millennial group of, you know, maybe millennials in general,

I won't exempt my own generation from this. I think the kind of younger crop of Republican operatives clearly has a ton of Groyperism going on or, you know, being just kind of, even if they aren't saying specifically, you know, I'm following Nick Fuentes. I mean, there's a lot of quasi-joking around about Hitler and Jews and race. And, you know, we can look at the Doge staffer who got caught with making these similar comments and ultimately they hired him back. There were all of these instances that keep coming up.

I mean, there was one, someone tweeted at me about some Republican, you know, staffer in at the state level. And this is getting so common now that I was just like, you know, I can't cover it. It's the state level. I'll be, you know, we'll be playing whackamol. I was going to say, you could spend much of your day probably unearthing really rancid social media posts of mid to low level Republicans that are basically like, you know, Hitler, he had some good ideas or like, I got like a little Hitler and me. and then, you know, that's just like, that's just the way it's going to be. Not today, and I just don't want this to be confused. I'm not diminishing Nick Fuentes.

I do think there's something significant about Tucker saying, or at least not challenging the guy. The other thing that happened, though, is that today, and this is, this was a little bit more surprising, I suppose. The guy who heads up heritage, the conservative think tank, Kevin Roberts, puts out a video in which he responds to, I guess there was a bunch of calls that Heritage Distance itself from Tucker Crosson over the Nick Fuentes interview. So I didn't realize there was calls for Heritage Distance itself from Tucker or whatever. This guy, Kevin Roberts, who you might remember from the Project 2025 Bugaboo over the campaign, he puts out this video, it's two hours and two hours, it's two minutes and 40 seconds. I don't know if we're going to play it all, but let's play some of it.

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 or sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. All right, so like, I have some thoughts in this, but what were your initial thoughts about this? Sure. So, I mean, you know, this is heritage. This is one of the pillars of movement and conservatism. They were sponsoring Tucker's show. they had this donation page where you would go to, you know, if you, he'd give the plug on the show,

and then you go and donate, they'd say, we're so proud to be partners with Tucker. And then earlier this week after the Fuentes interview came out, they edited that and removed. So if you went to heritage.org slash Tucker, it now just said, donate to the Heritage Foundation, not we're proud to be in business with Tucker Carlson, things like that. And so that had prompted me to email them and say, hey, and I think a lot of other people saw this and they thought, Tucker, you know, Heritage is abandoning Tucker. And it seemed, you know, even at this age of, we're not going to cancel anybody, whatever, it seemed like something that probably would have happened. And instead, not only do they not cancel Tucker, they stick with them and put out this video saying, you know, Christians can

criticize Israel. A lot of things, basically, you know, we're not going to go after people on our own side when we should be focusing on the left. It was crazy. I mean, I can't even, it's hard to imagine the Heritage Foundation doing this type of messaging five years ago. It really is. The globalists or the mouthpieces of Washington, they're not going to be bullied by them. It's like, you might as well put triple parentheses around that. They talk about not taking directions from the donor class, focusing on our adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. That's like classic republicanism these days. Tucker always will be a close friend of heritage. Always, like, is there nothing Tucker can do that

would like make you disavow that guy? I mean, there's got to be something. it really stood out to me in a way that, like, I don't know, and just very much the rhetoric of the moment of the right from Kevin Roberts there. You know, one thing I would point out here is that, you know, there's also the Charlie Kirk of it all, right? Because Nick Fuentes was Charlie Kirk's arch enemy. In the case of Heritage, they, in their Capitol Hill office, had a giant 10-story banner.

Don't forget Charlie Kirk, the lessons of Charlie Kirk. We miss him so much. Now, they're paying, because they're sponsoring this show, they're paying to platform a guy who not only was Charlie Kirk's archite many years ago, but up until basically the day he died. And since then, has been saying, well, you know, I think Erica Kirk is a plant. This is some weird setup or saying, and you think that's just the vialist things about Charlie Kirk. And so, and now I guess they're fine with that. Well, I thought your theory, I think your theory of the case that you put in the piece is probably the one that I ascribed to too, which is that they're just big old. I'm going to say pussies because they don't want to get the backlash that will come if you offend people like Carlson or if you offend people like Nick Fuentes. They just don't. And so they do whatever. It's not about focusing your, you know, going after your adversaries on the left. It's about avoiding the criticisms from the right. That's what it's about. They just don't want to have to deal with the online mob. This is a phenomenon we're seeing a lot now, which is, you know, people are avoiding taking stands against things they previously would have opposed. Megan Kelly has

and very reluctant to go after Fuentes or Tucker, or, excuse me, or Candice Owens. Similarly, I think Tucker, you know, he tangled about a month ago with Nick Fuentes over who was a federal operative or whose dad was in the CIA in Tucker's case. And then, you know, according to Fuentes, and this didn't make it into peace, but basically right after the CIA fight, Tucker calls Fuentes up and he says, hey, you want to come on my show? So it's clearly, like, Tucker gets owned here. And then he's like, oh, God, I got to get right with this guy, get him on my show. Well, and I do think that's like a real side effect of online culture, which is that you are instantaneously going to be inundated with an online mob if they don't like you.

And honestly, if you say even anodyne things, they'll come after you. And it has a psychological effect on people in this business. It's kind of like audience capture, where you just don't want to have to deal with that shit. Or you're afraid that you're going to lose audience. And all I can say is that as someone who takes it on the chin all the time online, me it's good for you you should you should embrace getting dunked on it's it's fantastic it's refreshing for the soul well you know sam if getting dunked on is good for you you would you must just be doing absolutely fabulous i look at this day and day out you think that this is natural

no this comes with people online screaming at me that it's like the greatest rejuvenation every day i look forward to it's fantastic well i mean the one thing i think you're keep in mind I mean, Nick Blentis is a young guy in his 20s, who basically came out of nowhere, marched in Charlottesville, all this stuff. And I think it really tells you where the dynamics are in right wing media that you have someone as big as Tucker and also an institution like heritage, just be sort of behemoth of the MAGA movement saying, oh, yikes, excuse us. No, they, Kevin Roberts did say, I, you know, I don't like Nick Fuentes in this video. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It's like they are so nervous about these little gropers who have huge followings that they bend over backwards to not. Look like they're not on the same page.

All right, buddy, listen, thank you for this. I appreciate it. Appreciate you having to swimming these waters. I always say that, but it's true. You do a good service for us. So thank you for that. Everyone subscribe to False Flag, which is a must read newsletter. Even if I was joking, it really is a must read.

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