It Could Happen Here - The Mainstreaming of Nick Fuentes by the Coward Tucker Carlson

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Garrison explains how Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes sparked infighting between the Heritage Foundation and Ben Shapiro, and the growing influence of America First branded antisemitism in the Republican Party. Sources: https://x.com/jasonahart/status/1985338713791172827  https://x.com/KevinRobertsTX/status/1984335805192532265   https://x.com/markgoldfeder/status/1985000264743416256?s=46  https://x.com/McCormickProf/status/1984646330849837488 https://www.jta.org/2025/10/31/united-states/ted-cruz-to-jewish-republicans-antisemitism-is-an-existential-crisis-in-our-party   https://jewishinsider.com/2025/11/gop-senators-tucker-carlson-left-wing-antisemitism-josh-hawley-james-lankford/ https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5586731-heritage-foundation-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-controversy/  https://nypost.com/2025/11/03/us-news/heritage-foundation-in-revolt-over-tucker-carlson-defense-after-controversial-nick-fuentes-interview-footsie-with-literal-nazis/  https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chris-demuth-resigns-from-the-heritage-foundation/ https://x.com/AudreyFahlberg/status/1985781905976115550?s=20  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/us/politics/heritage-foundation-antisemitism-task-force.html  https://freebeacon.com/politics/i-made-a-mistake-heritage-foundation-president-apologizes-to-staff-for-video-refusal-to-cancel-tucker-carlson-and-throws-shade-at-former-chief-of-staff/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/heritage-president-apologizes-for-tucker-carlson-defense-video-in-heated-all-hands-meeting/  https://www.mediaite.com/politics/david-french-schools-matt-walsh-over-his-call-for-no-enemies-on-the-right/  https://x.com/Cernovich/status/1985032452432437704?s=20  https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1985417108407124110?s=20  https://x.com/JDVance/status/1986099131845136594  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/opinion/nick-fuentes-kirk-successor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/us/politics/nick-fuentes-trump.html  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/nick-fuentes-tucker-carlson-interview/684792/  https://roddreher.substack.com/p/what-i-saw-and-heard-in-washington?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=trueSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded.

I felt it ripped through me. In season two of Rip Current, we asked, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? They were climbing trees, and they were sabotaged. College Street logging equipment in the woods. She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jingle bells, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, yo, can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. What's up, y'all? It's Kadeen. And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Everett. After podcast. This holiday season, tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After.

On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family, love and marriage, and everything else in between. Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. Join me, Danny Trejo, in Nocturno, Tales from the Shadow. An anthology of Modern Day. horror stories inspired by the legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows.

On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. CallZone Media. Two weeks ago, four days before Halloween, former Fox News, Tucker Carlson, hosted the 27-year-old white supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, on Tucker's popular internet show. Two weeks later, this interview has over 6 million views on YouTube, over half a million on Rumble, and 18 million alleged views on X the Everything app, with over 100,000 likes and 20,000 retweets, plus the unknown number of views from podcasting platforms like Apple or Spotify, on which Tucker Carlson's show also airs.

This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. Throughout the almost entirely friendly two-hour interview, Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson discussed Nick's libertarian origin story, his conversion to Trump's bombastic style of populism, getting a show on the right-side broadcast network as a teenager, after a viral college debate, how the daily wide. initially befriended, then tried to quash his early political career, and how that pushed Nick to adopt a far-right adversarial stance against mainstream conservatism and the gatekeepers of the conservative establishment, which Nick identified as the quote-unquote Zionist Jews like Ben Shapiro,

Dave Rubin, and Dennis Prager. Here's Nick and Tucker. It was the guys that were really controlling the media apparatus. that seemed to me to be the biggest impediment. Fox. Fox is not a Jewish business, though. Well, Rupert Murdoch is an ally of Netanyahu, so he's aligned. Yeah.

And he owns the whole News Corp Empire. So, and yeah, he's certainly a part of it also. I mean, Dave Rubin, though, does he matter? No, no, not really. Right. I mean, Dave Rubin, it's like, I don't know, do people watch Dave Rubin? They did back then, I mean, because you got to consider, they were kind of like, like the ascendant new media, you know?

They represented the next big thing. I mean, and Ben Shapiro seems irrelevant to me now? Now, but back then for the young, he was huge. So maybe you won. Oh, certainly. Tucker tried to advise Fuentes to focus more of his ire on Israel's influence on American politics as a foreign policy issue and not quote unquote. blood guilt based on ethnicity, while Fuentes defended the necessity of his rhetoric against what he

called the, quote unquote, unique issue of, quote, unquote, organized jury that promotes a form of identity politics linking Israel to, quote, Jewishness as an ethnicity, identity, and religion, unquote, which makes most culturally Jewish people incompatible with America First patriotism. This is basic dual loyalty anti-Semitism, which Nick continued to outline by framing Jewish people as a historically stateless people that resist assimilation and put their own interests above those of whichever non-Jewish majority country they currently reside, attention which the existence of Israel now heightens. No other country has a strong identity like that, this religious blood and soil conviction, this history of being in the diaspora, state, wandering, persecuted, and in particular, the historic animosity between the Jewish people and the Europeans. They hate the Romans because the Romans destroyed the temple. That's why Eric Weinstein goes to the Arch of Titus and gives it the finger and takes a picture. We don't think like that

as Americans and white people. We don't think about the Roman Empire in 2000 years ago. They do. Right, Americans and Christians would never think about Czech's notes the Roman Empire or the events of 2,000 years ago. Sure, Nick. Obviously, to many people listening to this show, Fuentes has been a known anti-Semitic streamer troll for nearly 10 years. And Tucker himself knows this. the main pushback Tucker gave Nick was on why Nick attacked other figures on the far right who were possible allies

of the America First Movement and America First Foreign Policy like Marjorie Taylor Green, J.D. Vance, Joe Kent, and Tucker himself. Why attack them? Well, in short, they attack me first. Yeah, but like, who cares? Well, let's take Joe Kent.

I mean, you attack me constantly. Tucker also advocated framing that does not allow what he believes to be popular America-first ideas like opposition to foreign influence and dual citizenship to get subverted by leaning into accusations of hate and racial prejudice, which during the interview, Fuentes nominally agreed with. Some of them, I'm sorry to be a conspiracy nut. I really try not to be a conspiracy because it's embarrassing, you know, but after January 6th, then just finally. at the number of FBI personnel in the crowd it's like, and I've just seen this. David Duke is a great example. Some of these are the Charlottesville rally. I had a bunch of feds there being like, we're white supremacist. We hate the blacks. You know, using the N. Edward, whatever. You know, it's like, that's not real. Like, there is some of that going on, don't you think?

I think that there's a lot of sincere people. For sure. I completely agree. You know, and they're just For some reason, Nick neglected to mention that he, in fact, was at Charlottesville, and the backlash to the Unite the Right rally forced him to drop out of college and propelled his streaming career. Throughout this whole interview, it mostly felt like Tucker was trying to act as a mentor figure to Fuentes, advising him to let go of past beefs and providing a sort of clean slate to allow Nick to present his political views in a more streamlined manner as simply anti-Israel as an extension of America first. During the interview, Tucker himself explained his motives for inviting Fuentes on the show. Do you hope that people who want to learn what's

happening and who you are will watch the whole thing? It's probably naive hope that it won't be reduced to whatever you're saying something naughty and me laughing and see they're both Nazis. I mean, You know that's going to happen, of course. But I'm willing to take that risk because I just think it's important to know. You're clearly ascendant. You're enormously talented. You're more talent than I am, for sure, as a talker. So, and they've, you know, there've been a lot of attempts to silence you and it hasn't worked.

So my calculation always be as blunt as I can be. It's like, sort of want to have Fuentes on. Everyone's going like, you, but you're a Nazi just like Fuentes. Okay. But then I'm like, I don't think Fuentes is going away. Ben Shapiro tried to, like, strangle him in the crib in college, and now he's bigger than ever. So it probably would just be worth hearing what Nick Fuentes thinks. I just want to be transparent about my motives here.

And I think Tucker is right in calling Fuentes ascendant. We'll talk more about that at the end of this episode. For the last 30 minutes of this interview, the two discussed pornography, alcohol, and drugs as ruining America's young men. through reality distortion, and I had a whole segment on Nick Fuentes explaining to a confused Tucker Carlson the concept of internet pornography, which unfortunately I had to cut for time, but if there's enough demand for this on Blue Sky or Reddit, maybe I can make a bonus episode next week. Rather than focusing on the substance of this interview and Tucker's motivation, a lot of mainstream reporting has just highlighted a few controversial

sound bites, like an offhand semi-troll comment about how Fuentes admires Stalin. But this interview did send shockwaves through the American conservative ecosystem, of which Fuentes was always held at a very long arm's length away. In the immediate wake of the interview, references to Tucker were curiously removed from the Heritage Foundation's donor page in partnership with the Tucker Carlson Network. On October 30th, Heritage President Kevin Roberts released a video defending Tucker, captioned, there has been speculation that Heritage is distancing itself from Tucker Carlson over the past 24 hours. I want to put that to rest right now.

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 this. conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won't start doing that now. 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. 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 the person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the violence ideas of the left.

Roberts primarily framed this as an issue of cancellation and included some pretty sketchy lines in that video. Roberts also said that heritage doesn't, quote, take direction from members or donors, unquote. This video was polarizing to say the least. Nick Fuentes fans who are called Groypers and America first nationalists rejoiced and claimed victory. While many GOP establishment figures, Jewish Republicans, and many heritage employees, were left bamboozled. The New York Post published Internal Heritage Group Chats, with staff members writing that this was, quote, the most embarrassed I've ever been to be a heritage employee. It's not close. And, quote, I'm disgusted by this and don't understand how this premeditated and orchestrated

response could come out of one of the biggest think tanks in the world, unquote. More texts read, quote, Saying we can't cancel someone is safe space wokeism. And, quote, if we are labeled on the same side as Nick Fuentes, then we deserve to lose. Talking with some of the interns, I think that there is a growing number of them who actually agree with Fuentes' views. Now, beyond employee dissent, sources close to Heritage told the New York Post that the think tank has been, quote-unquote, hemorrhaging evangelical Christian and Jewish donors.

David Bernstein, the author of Woke Antisemitism, and a former member of the Task Force at Heritage called Project Esther, a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism, told the New York Post on November 3rd that he had resigned from his position over Kevin Roberts' remarks, citing the language of a venomous coalition aligned against Tucker. To quote Jewish insider, quote, Rabbi Yaakov Menkin,

Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told Jewish Insider that Robert's message, quote, was the most tone-deaf in both its content and timing that I've ever heard from major Washington organization on any political side, unquote. Minkin resigned from Heritage's Project Esther, the group's anti-Semitism initiative, last week in response to Robert's video message defending Carlson.

Along with Minkin and Coalition for Jewish Voices, several other groups have also publicly disaffiliated from Heritage's Antisemitism Task Force, including the National Jewish Advocacy Center, the Zionist Organization of America, and the young Jewish conservatives, unquote. On Halloween, Heritage President Kevin Roberts made a post summarizing a small sampling of Fuentes' most racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler views, and said, quote, our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place.

Join us, not to cancel, but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident, as I am, that our best ideas at the heart of Western civilization will prevail. For those especially young men who are enticed by Fuentes and his acolytes online, there is a better way. Roberts has repeatedly said that attempting to cancel Fuentes would only grow his audience as opposed to whatever Roberts is doing

by playing footsies with Tucker and Fuentes resulting in multiple news stories a day name-dropping Fuentes and massively raising his public profile it would not invite him to a heritage event or to my show but the point is we have to find other avenues to engage the ridiculous ideas that he's saying

rather than as many people have called for online, that you can just shun him, that you can just ignore him and that the problem goes away. My motivation for posting that video yesterday, especially looking ahead towards 2026 and 2028, is that we have to engage those issues if we want to build a movement. I understand that particularly for our Jewish friends who ought to be upset about Twintess's comments about anti-Semitism, that he's just anathema. I agree with that as well. But if we're going to actually correct the scourge of anti-Semitism, we've got to go convince those, unfortunately, millions of young men who find that appealing. I do believe that they're

convincing. I believe that people like you, hopefully people like us at Heritage, and even people like Tucker, might be able to play a role in that. Following backlash to Kevin Roberts' initial statement, Roberts' chief of staff, Ryan Newhouse, resigned from Heritage after being reassigned as a senior advisor on housing policy, opposition sources told New York Post was the quote-unquote, Siberia of Heritage. Before resigning, Newhouse reposted messages defending Roberts' video, including a post advocating that, quote-unquote, virtue-signaling employees at the Heritage Foundation should resign if they're so outraged by Roberts' statement. During Halloween weekend,

lawyer Mark Goldfetter resigned from the Heritage-affiliated National Task Force to combat anti-Semitism, writing on X-The Everything app, I cannot serve. under someone who thinks Nazis are worth debating. On November 1st, Princeton University professor Robert P. George, member of the Heritage Board of Trustees, who allegedly has been attempting to oust Roberts as the head of the foundation in the wake of this controversy, posted on X the Everything app, quote,

American conservatism today faces a challenge. That challenge comes from those who reject our commitment to inherent and equal human dignity. They are seeking acceptance in the conservative movement and its institutions. and they do so with the ultimate objective of transforming them by undermining that commitment. I cannot accept the idea that we have no enemies to the right. The white supremacists, anti-Semites, the eugenicists, bigots,

must not be welcome into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable, unquote. You sure about that, Robert P. George? This conservative commitment to inherent and equal human, dignity? You sure about that? You sure about that? Surely the American conservatives aren't restricted people's health care and pushing them off food stamps and kidnapping and uprooting families and sending them to far-off countries? Seems like all those things would breach this commitment to inherent and equal human dignity. I never thought the leopards would eat my face, Saub's Heritage Board of Trustees member who voted for the leopards eating.

People's Faces Party. We'll be right back after these ads. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker. a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here. if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I have to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. I'm Elliot Connie, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. Because he's feeding himself well, it's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook. There was this one time where we had neighbors and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and

that was like one of my proudest moments. This is family therapy. Real families, real stories on a journey to heal together. Listen to season two of family therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.

And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it. exploded i felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that i could describe in season two of rip current we ask who tried to kill judy barry and why she received death threats before the bombing she received more threats after the bombing the man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in northern california they were climbing trees and they were sabotaging

logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The conservative infighting intensive.

When on November 3rd, Monday morning, Ben Shapiro released a 40-minute video captioned, No to the Groypers, no to cowards like Tucker Carlson, who normalized their trash, no to those who championed them, no to demoralization, no to bigotry and anti-ameritocratic horse shit, no to anti-Americanism, no. That fragmentation is being caused purposefully by a splinter faction of people led by a young man named Nick Fentez. They call themselves the Groypers. They are white supremacists. They hate women, Jews, Hindus, many types of Christians, brown people of a wide variety of backgrounds, blacks, America's foreign policy, and America's Constitution. They admire Hitler and Stalin.

And that splinter faction is now being facilitated and normalized within the mainstream Republican Party. The main agents in that normalization is Tucker Carlson, who is an intellectual coward, a dishonest interlocutor, and a terrible friend. And Tucker Carlson last week was aided, abetted, celebrated for normalizing Nazism with the Republican Party by the mainstay organization of the traditional right, the Heritage Foundation. Shapiro then had to preface his comments by saying, quote, this is not about free speech or cancellation. And quote, criticisms of bad speech is in fact just a form of free speech, unquote, and went on this lengthy diatribe to explain how what he's doing isn't cancellation, which been defined as banning people from social media and publishing platforms, what would be more

accurately described as de-platforming as opposed to like social cancellation, which is not something that Ben is calling for. Ben's not calling for de-platforming. It is not cancellation to draw moral lines between viewpoints. In fact, we used to call that one of the key aspects of conservatism. It is not cancellation to refuse to signal boost Hitler supporters like Nick Flintes. It is not cancellation to criticize Tucker Carlson for rhetorically fluffing Nick Flentes and other anti-American crackpots. It's not cancellation. if you urge others to stop promoting those who rhetorically fluff Nazi apologists. Those are all elements of free speech.

And anyone who says differently is lying to you and lying for the most cynical reasons to misdirect from their own defense of those Nazi apologists and their promoters. The issue here isn't that Tucker Carlson had Nick Flanthez on his show last week. He has every right to do that, of course. The issue here is that Tucker Carlson decided to normalize and fluff Nick Flantes and that the Heritage Foundation then decided to robustly defend that performance. Those who criticize both Tucker and Heritage aren't canceling.

They are quite properly drawing a moral line. Now, from Tucker Carlson's interview, you might have gathered that Flentes has some borderline views on race, a peculiar obsession with what he calls organized a jury, and a rather sad relationship with the female sex. But probably you came way thinking that, for the most part, Flentes lives on the radical edge of normality. You think that if you watch the interview,

because Tucker Carlson decided that it was important not only to host Fentz, but to smooth over his views, water them down, and make them far more palatable to a normal audience. Ben proceeded to do a 10-minute Nick Fuentes clip show, playing a select collection of some of the most offensive things Nick has said to camera, and then blamed the left for creating the conditions that let this hatred emerge, framing Fuentes as the dialectical inverse of the hyper-woke in pole left. And there's no doubt that Nick Fuentes has a lot of play these days,

That's because the left, by moving into a politics of anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-male identitarianism created its bizarro mirror image, a white pseudo-Christian in-cell identityarian movement dedicated to destroying the institutions of this country and replacing Americanism with something else. Nick Fentz's philosophy is not fully formed. It's an incoherent stew of malignity. The left did not create Nick Fentes. He is the direct product of the right-wing content ecosystem that Shapiro

himself trailblazed. It's Ben Shapiro, but taken even further with post-ironic Gen Z brainwrought. Even if Fuentes himself has been banned from many of the big tent conservative events, his ideas still festered, spread under the radar, and influenced the further radicalization of other right-wing commentators so that they could better compete with Fuentes. Tucker himself was a part of this. The 2019, quote-unquote, Groyper War, in which Nick Fuentes deployed his fans to disrupt Turning Point USA Q&A events, with leading questions pressured Charlie Kirk to adopt viewpoints further and further to the right, specifically on race and immigration. And now the White Great Replacement

is basically a mainstream conservative viewpoint. And Fuentes played a huge part in that. This is, in fact, your problem, Ben. For the rest of this 40 minutes, minute video, Shapiro directed his attention to Tucker Carlson, criticizing his defense of Russia and multipolar views, Tucker's pro-dictator comments, populist criticism of Trump, and sort dodgy anti-Israel statements. Shapiro highlighted comments Tucker made during the Fuentes interview, where he lampooned high-profile Republicans and neocons who have been, quote-unquote, seized by the pro-Israel, quote-unquote brain virus, With Tucker claiming that he dislikes Christian Zionists, quote, more than anybody, unquote, because it's Christian heresy.

Shapiro described the function of Tucker's current online platform as a safe space to bring on conspiracy theorists, fringe figures, alternative historians, and those just outside the Overton window, to then, quote unquote, gloss them, as Shapiro says. It's not about building a radicalization pipeline out of the mainstream, but bringing the actual radical ideas to the mainstream. Tucker Carlson acts as an ideological launderer for other people's evils. Tucker Carlson says many inflammatory things, always buying back just enough of it to appear as though he's not saying what he's clearly saying. He's a master of gaslighting. Tucker Carlson, for example, would never say out loud what Nick Plentes does. He wouldn't say the things many of his guests say.

And so instead, he acts as an ideological wanderer. He takes other people's hideous ideas. He softens them. He treats them with love and care. And then he provides them with a massive signal boost. He isn't merely talking to people in good faith, of course. He's promoting certain people and ideas and attacking others. This is how Tucker Carlson's ideological laundering works.

You bring your dirty, ugly ideologies to Tucker Carlson's rhetorical car wash. He mixes it with some of the vestigial respect Americans have for him from his Fox News days, and voila, hideous ideas suddenly become mainstream. And then, of course, Tucker denies he said anything controversial at all. He was just asking questions. He was just interviewing people. You don't want him to cancel people, do you? Ben continued to complain about Tucker platforming Candice Owens and her increasingly anti-Semitic

conspiracy theories. Except, remember, it was your company that gave Candice a huge platform after she left Turning Point and Prager U. Is she also a consequence of the woke left like Fuentes is? Shapiro, the call is coming from inside your own company to further demonstrate how much of this stuff is downstream from Shapiro. It's actually because of Candice that Fuentes even went on Tucker's show at all. Candice had Fuentes on her show a few months prior. And when she went on Tucker's show, she told him how great Fuentes is and argued in his defense. As for Heritage, Ben

acknowledged his long-standing positive relationship with the Heritage Foundation, working with him since he was just 17 years old, and recently had Kevin Roberts on his show to promote Roberts' latest book. Which is why what Kevin Roberts did last week is tragic and awful. He put out a statement that Heritage Foundation didn't just stand by Tucker Carlson. Kevin instead said openly and repeatedly that Tucker Carlson can do nothing ever that will sever his relationship with the conservative movement. He said that after and in defense of Tucker's glossing of Hitler defender Nick Flentes. And he added that only members of the globalist class, direct quote, a venomous coalition, direct quote, subject to the dictates of someone else's agenda, direct quote,

oppose Heritage's ongoing relationship with Tucker Carlson, which means that according to Kevin Roberts, apparently, anyone opposing the ongoing mainstreaming of Tucker Carlson is acting on behalf of a foreign power. Kevin's statement is a betrayal of the Heritage Foundation's history and principles, which is presumably by both Tucker Carlson and Nick Fulencez loved it. Shapiro still expressed the need for an organization like Heritage that focuses on ideas over personal loyalty to grifters and expressed hope that Heritage could recover from this controversy and speak out against the quote-unquote moral rot that threatens our future. But if not, conservatives may need to look for leadership elsewhere.

And the cause of this moral rot, political horseshoe theory that is destroying both parties, with the GOP being eaten by radicals. Like the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is being eaten by its radicals. Many in the political class are too cowardly to stand up. Apparently, they're willing to play footsie with Groyper's and hug Tucker Carlson out of fear of somehow losing support. They've been bamboozled by the lies of the X algorithm and the TikTok metrics.

The left followed its radicals to electoral hell, apparently many on the right wish to do the same. Forget the morality, then, for just a moment. Let's be pragmatic. Here is the thing. Americans hate Nick Flentes' philosophy. They think it's trash. Republicans, by the polling, think it's trash. Independence think it's trash. Democrats think it's trash. And here's the other thing. Americans hate Tucker Carlson's laundered anti-Americanism. Republicans think it's trash. Independence think it's trash. Democrats think it's trash. Americans are not pro-segregation, pro-rape, anti-woman, pro-child marriage, anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-Indian, anti-Latino, anti-constitution, pro-Hitler, not jobs like Nick Fuentes. You might want to tell that to, I don't know,

Stephen Miller, Ben, and like maybe half your employees. Here's Matt Walsh's own description for his most recent Daily Wire podcast episode, quote, Somali tribal conflict. has made its way into multiple American states. A man is arrested for shouting, F the Jews at Dave Portnoy. Meanwhile, Antifa riots with no consequence. White liberal radio host kisses Jasmine Crockett's feet, unquote. Ben, the call is coming from inside the Daily Wire House.

If Republicans decide to cower before the likes of neo-Nazis and their propagandizers, they deserve to lose. and they will lose. Neo-Nazis and their propagandizers are not Republicans. They are not America First. They are not MAGA. They sure as hell aren't conservative. These people aren't to my rights.

They are not attached in any way to the fundamental principles of conservatism. I'm sorry, Ben, but they are. They are in the MAGA White House. They are on TV, on Fox News. They're getting more views than you are on TikTok and fucking rumble. Many have either worked for you or still work for you. you. And you've been completely fine with all of that, as long as they've been sufficiently pro-Israel. Here's a Ben Shapiro tweet from September 17, 2015. And Coulter tweets read Jews,

awful, nonsensical. And Coulter is also super pro-Israel and has always been, so I won't lose sleep. I never thought the leopards would eat my face, Saab's conservative podcast. who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. The same day, Shapiro released this 40-minute video, Matt Walsh posted, quote, Pat Buchanan didn't just have good ideas.

He was right about almost everything. He's the most vindicated political figure of our lifetime. Unquote. If you want a fun little 10-minute side quest, Google Pat Buchanan Nazi, Pat Buchanan, anti-Semitism. Every few months, these right-wing ghouls get a harsh reminder of the world that they have conjured into being.

Remember the H-1B visa debacle earlier this year, with Elon Musk and Ramoswamy, upset that all of their racist fans don't want to bring in immigrant workers after Elon funded a campaign about how immigrants are stealing Americans' jobs? As writer John Gans put it, quote, the GOP Civil War is between the vanilla fascists and the national socialists. unquote. At the Republican Jewish Coalition 40th anniversary summit, Congressman Randy Fine proudly announced that he canceled an upcoming event with heritage. I was supposed to do an event with heritage next week. Think on Wednesday. They don't know what I'm about to tell you. Right now we're canceling it. They will have no future in my office and I will be calling on all of my colleagues on the Republican side to do the same.

If those who support Tucker Carlson want to see a venomous coalition, all they need to do is go look in the mirror. During that same speech, he boasted about this. I've called for Zoran Mondami to be deported. The only thing I want to see here, him running for is his gate at JFK on the deportation flight to Uganda. First they came for the communists, Randy.

I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobs a Florida congressman with Twitter pronouns listed as Hebrew slash hammer, who's a member of the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. During the opening to the Republican Jewish Coalition event, Ted Cruz addressed this moment of fracture within the establishment right as a quote unquote time of choosing and said that in the past six months he's quote seen more anti-semitism

on the right than I had in my entire life this is a poison and I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and our country unquote Cruz later shared a free press article on his comments

the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition Matt Brooks told Jewish insider that he is, quote, appalled, offended and disgusted that Kevin Roberts and Heritage would stand with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and that there would be a, quote, reassessment of our relationship with heritage in light of this, unquote. On November 3rd, Missouri Senator and J6 supporter Josh Hawley denounced Fuentes' rhetoric as anti-Semitic, telling Jewish insider, quote, that's not who we are as Republicans, as conservatives. The question for us as conservatives is, are those views going to define who we are? I think we need to say no.

As a conservative, but also as a Christian. There is no place for anti-Semitic hatred, tropes, any of that stuff. Do we really want to be a part of what we've seen happen on college campuses? Unquote. Senator James Langford of Oklahoma, the co-chair of the Senate Antisemitism Task Force, told Jewish insider that he was, quote, a little surprised. that Heritage jumped out in support of Carlson and Nick Fuentes to say, hey, we want them in our camp. After the statements

that were made, Heritage could have just sat back and not said anything, but instead they chose to jump out on their side. I don't get that. Unquote. Like Ben Shapiro and Josh Hawley, James Langford related this to a perceived bipartisan crisis.

Quote, the left has seen an implosion of their party based on anti- anti-Semitism rising in their party. I don't want to see the same thing happen on the right. What I've tried to be very clear on is that the new right is now quoting an old wrong, unquote. Senator Rick Scott of Florida basically said the same thing. Quote, the Democrat Party, we already have a party that's for anti-Semitism and is against Israel. The Republican Party is going to stand for Israel and we're going to stand against anti-Semitism. I don't think there's any question, unquote, as if the Democrat Party is against Israel, and it's astonishing to watch all of these

senators cope with the results of years of watering down accusations of anti-Semitism to simply reflect any criticism of Israel as they're now facing of massive resurgence of genuine anti-Semitism from known anti-Semitic actors on the right. Turns out it's way easier to police campus anti-genocide protests. then deal with the anti-Semitism spread on the massive platforms of Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. But not all senators are worried. Lindsay Graham, while speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition, was less worried about Tucker, Fuentes, and the future of the party.

So I just want to say, 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 president. We've run out of bombs. We didn't run out of bombs in World War II. So to those who worry about these stupid interviews and far-off places, don't worry.

The Republican Party has figured it out when it comes to Israel. We're killing all the right people here at the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party surely the leopards will never eat my or my friends faces. On the night of November 3rd, Heritage President Kevin Roberts gave a speech at Hillsdale College on anti-Semitism and cancel culture. He first talked for two minutes about why he and heritage will continue to oppose cancellation and the importance of loyalty toward friends.

And defended his previous statement by reiterating that if you have a problem with someone's, quote, content issues or ideas, then by all means, go debate them, unquote. But then he admitted that his mistake, which was made, quote-unquote, with the best intentions, was focusing on the legitimate problem of cancellation over other problems like anti-Semitism. The Roberts then immediately justified his rhetoric as an attempt to reach out to the quote-unquote several million young men on the, quote-unquote, far fringes of the right who are increasingly anti-Semitic. And our motivation at Heritage for making that statement

was to begin appealing even more than we have to those largely disaffected young men who are looking for belonging and identity by following the wrong people. This pseudo-apology continues to frame this primarily as an issue of cancellation. Who is asking to cancel Tucker? Roberts acts as if there is nothing in between, a lifelong endorsement and total cancellation.

After Robert's comments at Hillsdale College, another member of the Heritage Anti-Semitism Task Force, attorney Ian Speer, announced that he was leaving Heritage and posted a statement calling Roberts Hillsdale College speech, a quote, strategic non-apology that doubles down on loyalty to Tucker Carlson, muses about welcoming Groypers and the Groyper Curious into the movement and continues to gaslight everyone about cancellation when that clearly isn't the issue. That same day, Tuesday, November 4th, Chris DeMuth, a Heritage Distinguished Fellow, also confirmed his resignation. And an email leaped from the co-chairs of the Heritage-affiliated National Task Force to Combat

Anti-Semitism sent to task force members with a list of demands the Heritage President Kevin Roberts. Demands including that he delete his initial video. apologize to Jews and Christians who, quote, believe that Israel has a special role to play both biblically and politically, unquote, a demand to condemn but not cancel Tucker Carlson's anti-Semitic content and statements, and host Shabbat dinners for the Heritage Interns and Junior staff.

To quote directly from this leaked email addressing Roberts, quote, you pointed out repeatedly that we face a challenge in reaching disenfranchised young men who are caught in the spells of Nick Fuentes and others. To address this issue specifically, we recommend hiring a visiting fellow, one who shares mainstream conservative views on Israel,

Jews, and Christian Zionists, who would help identify strategies and tools to win Gen Z and beyond. It is clear that there is an internal battle within the conservative movement over who is to be included. The division between no enemy to the right versus a moral conservatism

demands our attention, a conference that provides some guidelines to the movement on how to best keep unity without needing to include the worst among us, unquote. Two days later, the National Task Force decided to break ties with the Heritage Foundation,

writing in an email that it was, quote, important for us to continue the work of the task force outside the Heritage Foundation for a season, unquote. Writing that this whole incident, quote, exposed a serious problem within the conservative movement, unquote. It's been like this for a long time. They've just been so focused on campus activists protesting the Palestinian genocide that they've missed the festering anti-Semitism spreading across the

right. Quote, the National Task Force to combat anti-Semitism will also now expand our work to fight the rising scourge of anti-Semitism on the right, beyond our previous work combating the pro-Hamas movement on the left, unquote. On November 18th, the task force will be hosting a conference in Washington on, quote, exposing and countering extremism and anti-Semitism on the right, in partnership with the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel. It could happen here. We'll return after these messages.

All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve,

this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that. other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match

and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people

in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of RipCurrent, we asked, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why?

She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees. They were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture.

It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jenna World, Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video, and the Valley, is a new podcast about the history. history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, host of Heidi World the Heidi Fly Story, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild ride through adult films. We get paid more

than the men. We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our life. In the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson crossed over into mainstream culture, redefined stardom, then left it all behind. I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a man. With a cast of hundreds of actors and comedians playing key figures, we'll take a look at how adult films became legal in the 70s, hugely profitable in the 80s and 90s, and fell off a financial cliff in the 2000s.

Listen to Geno World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, fellow seekers of the dark. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me in Nocturno? Tales from the Shadows. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends and lore of Latin America.

Take a trip from ghastly encounters with evil spirits to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. and experience the horrors to have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. At this point, Heritage went into complete damage control. Roberts apologized during a Heritage All-Hands meeting last Wednesday, November 5th.

Quote, I made a mistake and I let you down, and I let down this institution, period, full stop, unquote. Roberts claimed that it was the since-resigned chief of staff, Ryan Newhouse, who wrote the script for Robert's initial video entirely himself and lied about the script being approved by a handful of colleagues. Roberts called the use of the phrase of venomous coalition, a quote-unquote terrible choice of words. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Roberts said he was willing to resign but felt a quote-unquote moral obligation to repair the situation and had told the Heritage Foundation Board of Directors, quote, I made the mess, let me clean it up. During the All Hands meeting, Roberts explained that the video came to be because Heritage was

under pressure to make a statement that Carlson was, quote, no longer part of the conservative movement, unquote. Later in this meeting, Roberts acknowledged that there could be a, quote, limiting principle to no cancellation. Long time Heritage Research Fellow Robert Rector went on a tirade against Tucker and Fuentes, likening Tucker's show. to stepping in to a lunatic asylum and advocated for a return of right-wing cancellation. Because if you don't have boundaries

on who you regard inside the movement, the movement will destroy itself and it will create a PR nightmare for everybody in it. And the boundaries that he set forth, William Buckley, in early 1960s, were twofold. You have to expunge all anti-Semitism,

all of it. But that's just part of it. from the conservative movement. The other is you have to expel the lunatics, okay? The lunatics who think that Eisenhower was a communist, okay? And a whole bunch of, and we have them back now, okay? They are both here back just the way they were in 1959. And we have to go back and set the general parameters.

You say, oh, we don't cancel. We do cancel. Did we cancel David Duke? Yes. You don't even know who David Duke was, probably most of me. I'd say, you know, yes. Do we cancel the John Byrd Society? Yes, okay?

Because they were harmful, because if they're in your movement, you look like clowns. This highlights so much of my frustration around this whole controversy with all of these conservatives at the Leopards eating people's faces party, trying to say that obviously the leopards who are eating people's faces aren't actually conservatives, despite them being all part of the Lepard's Eating People's Faces Party. Bircherism has achieved a near total capture of the modern-day Republican Party, especially under Trump. You can't remove the John Birch Society element from the modern-day Republican Party without the whole party collapsing.

They won. That's what the party is now. That's what Heritage's Project 2025 is. Kevin Roberts responded to Rector's tirade. By continuing to advocate that heritage should attempt to bring some of Fuentes' audience into the conservative fold. If there's a segment of that audience who might be with us and they really are not Nazis and anti-Semites, then maybe we can eventually bring them into the fold.

I think we have to think that way. None of these people can be allowed to distance themselves from the leopards-eating people's faces party. To quote a write-up from the Right Wing Rag National Review, quote, the heritage staff meeting exposed something of a generational divide within heritage. As one staffer who claimed to represent the perspective of the foundation's younger employees, said that she did not have a problem with Robert's initial defense of Carlson and wanted to make sure that the viewpoints of her generation,

who she said were generally more critical of Israel, would still be welcome at heritage. The Heritage Tucker Fuentes debacle has come in a time where the right was already in the middle of a debate over how to handle infighting, conservative anti-cancel culture, and the newly adopted principle of no enemies to the right,

after years of suffering from liberal-led de-platforming campaigns during the quote-unquote woke era. This debate really came to a head last month after the young Republican pro-Hitler racist group chat scandal dropped, which was subsequently brushed off by people like Matt Walsh,

and Vice President J.D. Vans, who dismissed the texts, telling people who are concerned about it to, quote-unquote, grow up, while referring to the chat as a college group chat, calling the members kids and young boys when the group chat in question was made up of men in their 30s. Don't put things on the internet. Like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm. But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives. And at some point, we're all going to have to say enough of this BS.

We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old's group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. that's just not okay. Like we live in a digital world. This stuff is now Etzgen Stone online. We're all going to have to say, you know what? No, no, no. We're not doing this. We're not canceling kids because they do something stupid in a group chat.

And if I have to be the person who carries that message forward, I'm fine with it. To quote, Matt Walsh, quote, I said a few weeks ago that we all need to band together in the wake of Charlie's death. And the answer I got back from a lot of people on the right was basically, no. Well, okay, then, guys, we'll just lose and say. Instead, the left will keep the united front and defend their guys no matter what, while we keep throwing each other to the wolves at every opportunity. Great plan. The left actually wants me dead, like specifically and personally. They're the reason why I need security at my house,

why I worry for my children's safety. We've had to make major changes to the way we live our daily lives to account for this danger. So when I say that I want to stop the infighting and unite against this threat. That's the context. I'm sorry if the squabbles among right-wingers just kind of pale in comparison for me. If you have the luxury to care more about that, I envy you. I truly do. Last week, Megan Kelly interviewed Tucker and Shapiro across a two-day event where she asked both about the possibility of uniting the right. Is there any way that you and Ben Shapiro can actually find your way to detente. I'm not against Ben Shapiro.

He did like a 40-minute thing yesterday, calling me dangerous and all this stuff. It's like, I didn't watch it because why. But I got a lot of texts about it, and it's like, I'm not, I don't think Ben Shapiro was driving a lot of this stuff. I don't consider him like the world's greatest force for evil. I don't feel that way at all.

I don't actually think about him ever. So I don't want to have a war with Ben Shapiro. I don't know. does he really think that me doing an interview in which I explain that anti-Semitism is wrong to one of the lead purveyors of anti-Semitism if that somehow makes me a Nazi?

What is the argument here? I'm going to ask him tomorrow night. I don't even understand what the argument is. All I know is that the right, and I've been on the right since before Ben was born, is acting like the left in such an amazingly precise way that I'm like, what the hell is going on?

I agree with Tucker that the right is in fact acting life the left, by again, massaging its radicals in the name of some sort of foe unity. I agree with him. Because, because, again, I'm not, again, trying to turn this personal is a mistake. I know, but can it happen? During the fallout of the Tucker Fuentes interview, far-right influencer Mike Sternovich said, quote, there's a lot of bad faith going on.

So this is for those few of you perplexed about the reluctance of mega people to ever disavow anyone. We are old, and we know it never stops. They will always demand more. Hence, we draw a hard line. It's not our job to be internet cops, unquote. After trailblazing this rhetoric for the new right, now Walsh and Vance find themselves in an uncomfortable position.

Walsh, due to his employer, Ben Shapiro, and Vance because of his future political prospects. In the midst of the Fuentes controversy, Walsh posted, quote, We have a very short window of time where we control Congress and the White House and we have the power to push our agenda forward. We're going to waste this window fighting with each other.

We're going to squander everything. I'm furious, honestly, unquote. I have just about had it with Matt Walsh. Matt, you work for this fucking guy. Whose side are you on already? Cut the shit. Matt Walsh, every day on his show, He goes on Twitter and his show and says, this is all just gossip and drama.

It ain't gossip and drama. This is the war. Might not be the one you wanted, but this is the one that's going on. So Wallace wants to recuse himself from this and say, hey, man, I just care about America. Hey, fucker, it's happening in America right now. Tucker's an American last I checked. This is going on here. We didn't make anti-Semitism the wedge issue.

They did. we didn't make fighting Israel's wars the wedge issue, they did. And Wallace wants to get on Twitter and say, I just don't want to talk about it. I just want to keep taking a paycheck from the worst of the worst Shapiro. You got to pick aside, and nobody can let him get away with this. As long as you're America first, you need to be in his reply saying, no, Matt, you work for Ben Shapiro, cuck. Vance's only statement about this debacle reads, quote, The infighting is stupid.

I care about my fellow citizens, particularly young Americans, being able to afford a decent life. I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about these things too, let's work together, unquote. Compare that to Mike Pence, sharing an article critical of Fuentes by the Wall Street Journal editorial board

titled The Rights New Anti-Semites. Meanwhile, Nick Fuentes is bragging that he has Vance caught in his groipers squeeze, threatening to send Groyper's to 2028 primary states to disrupt Vance's campaign, much like the Groyper War of 2019 targeting TPSA. He's getting squeezed because the Groypers are on the one hand,

saying, hey, listen, fat boy, we want America first. You want to run for president? We want to hear you say America first. And on the other side, he's got his donors. And they're saying they're horrible anti-Semites. You have to disavow them. You have to forcefully condemn them. Condem Tucker. Condem the Groypers. Now, with Vance condemns the Groypers, we are deploying to Iowa. raise your right hand i swear i'm going to move to iowa and new hampshire and nevada and south carolina and one primary after the next and we will go to every town hall we will go to every meet and greet where there's four or five people and we will be there and we'll do it for free nick has since laid out a more clear three year strategy for his fans to shape the

upcoming presidential primary and infiltrate the next Republican White House. In some ways, I think Ted Cruz is right. This has been a time of choosing. The only problem is that the choice has already been made. The Fuentes interview is already Tucker Carlson's fourth most popular video ever, just two weeks after its release. Fouentes' quote tweet of Shapiro's taked down video ratioed Shapiro by 120,000 likes. Fuentes' last 10 live streams have had an average viewership of over 800,000 people on Rumble, beating Shapiro's average YouTube view count by hundreds of thousands. The New York Times has put out seven pieces on Fuentes, both articles and opinion since the Tucker interview, plus other related news stories about

Heritage and Tucker, which obviously mention Fuentes. Other outlets from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post have followed suit. CNN did a five-minute and 30-second segment on the fallout of the Heritage Tucker Fuentes situation and what it means for the future of the Republican Party. CNN has since done more segments on the issue, including one with Ben Shapiro. Multiple Fuentes segments have also aired on MSNBC. Here's a sampling. For once, Donald Trump has remained silent on an issue as well as J.D. Vance, who is reportedly personally close to Carlson.

It also has opened up an uncomfortable discussion for the GOP about what place people like Nick Fuentes have within the MAGA movement. And now to the brewing war within MAGA over the future of the American conservative movement. It comes as far-right influencer Nick Fuentes recently recorded a cordial interview at the invitation of Tucker Carlson that more than five million people have viewed. The latest op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by our next guest is highlighting this growing division. Contributing writer Matt Lewis contends that some Trump loyalists are now objecting to MAGA's quote, white power element. Matt joins us now. He's an author, columnist and

conservative writer. Matt, the fact that we're even talking about a quote-unquote white power element is, I think, concerning on its face. But this is also something that's persisted within MAGA over the course of the last 10 years. I mean, I remember covering when Trump himself had dinner with Nick Fuentes at the invitation of Kanye West just a few years ago, November 22 at Mar-a-Lago. Why was this not a conversation then? And what's changed now? Look, yeah, I think you're totally right.

I mean, part of it is that Donald Trump has actually been a really good friend to Israel. I never thought the leopards would eat my face, Saab's conservative columnist, who voted for the leopards-eating people's faces party. even calling Fuentes a quote-unquote white power figure shows how outdated and out of touch the talking heads and many journalists are it's not the 80s anymore white power what are you talking about that's not what Fuentes is doing if you can't recognize that you shouldn't be talking about it these talking heads are completely ill equipped to understand gen z politics or the lack thereof we saw this in the reporting on tyler robinson and the past few mass-killing fandom school shooters. Here's MSNBC again. According to some sources at the Heritage Foundation,

a lot of their interns, something like 40 to 50% or something, agree with Voizus, which is really stunning, if you were around the conservative movement, let's say, in the George W. Bush era. The fucking George W. Bush era. Unbelievable.

Nick Fuentes' politically vulgar obscenity is exactly what push his clips into people's social media feeds, cutting through the dry, neo-conservative boomer slop of older Republican content creators. As Trump 2.0 continues, and MAGA becomes the establishment again,

it's not going to be cool to listen to Benny Johnson, whoever's hosting the new Charlie Kirk show or Ben Shapiro, to the extent to which listening to any of those is even still cool or countercultural. Fuentes doesn't have this same problem. He can ride the cultural vibe shift of the 2024 election

and still appeal to the reactionary tendencies of some young men but is outside enough to continue benefiting from the Gen Z thirst for anti-establishment populism. At the end of last month, there was a short article in the Atlantic titled, The Firewall Against Nick Fuentes is Crumbling. The white supremacist influencer is, entering the MAGA mainstream.

And yeah, that's correct. The tact agreement against talking about covering or platforming Nick has slowly fallen apart the past few months. Google trends graphs of search popularity has Nick Fuentes high above Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, or Candice Owens. And considering Nick's newfound fame, he isn't trying to slow down or moderate his views to appeal to a bigger audience, and he doesn't need to. The audience is coming to him.

To explain why his audience is growing so much, it's not that he's gotten less ideologically dogmatic as of recent. It's that the Zoomer world has caught up to the anti-ideology behind Nick Fuentes, the void of animosity that animates Fuentes, which is underneath his gesturing to relics of tradition and culture, to offer a North Star through the grievance-inspired nihilism, he actually embodies. Nick Fuentes is a meme.

His clips spread like a meme. His Groyper movement is named after a meme. And Nick is ready, willing, and able to seize the spotlight he has been gifted. To Nick, this controversy demonstrates that the prestigious Heritage Foundation is territory ripe for Groyper infiltration. What this signifies is that heritage, the accreditation, the brain, the priestly class that promulgates the Republican dogma, if that institution says that groiperism is up for debate, it's on the table, it's not canceled, we should talk about

the ideas, and we should defend the people that defend the groipers or talk to the groipers. It signifies that, one, that place is a safe harbor, as I said before. so a groiper could go to work at Heritage and maybe feel welcome and comfortable and he won't be fired. And you might have a Groyper at Heritage who is going to be writing a policy paper about who knows foreign policy, education, immigration. They might be considered like an expert. And maybe they'll go on to be a legislative director for a senator. And they might be writing laws for the U.S. government. It's conceivable.

If the president of heritage says Tucker is in the big tent, then that means that Tucker and Nick Fuentes sympathizers are allowed to be employed at heritage. And thus, they might be in the position to determine the dogma.

They can write the doctrine. Conservative writer Rob Drear has claimed, based on BC contacts and talking with Gen Z staffers, quote, Between 30 to 40% of the zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes, unquote.

Writing that this is emblematic of a generation, quote, willing to revel in transgression, such as they tear down the pillars of civilization, just for the fun of seeing those who have been gate-kept away breaching containment. The Groyper thing is real. It is not a fringe movement in that it really has. has infiltrated young conservative Washington networks to a significant degree, unquote. After the young Republican racist group chat story dropped,

Nick Fuentes said on his show, quote, groipers are all over the government, and everyone knows that. There's groipers at Harvard. There's groipers in all the Ivy League schools. I talked to all of them. There's groipers in government. There's Groyper's in every department, every agency, unquote.

There's no reason to believe Nick is exaggerating. This is something he has advocated his followers do for years. And stories like the young Republican pro-Hitler group chat are evidence of this. Nick Fuentes is mainstream now. Nick Fuentes is a legitimate part of the mainstream conservative movement. even if he doesn't become the quote-unquote successor to his longtime nemesis Charlie Kirk Fuentes is already on course to be the main figure

to have gained the most from Kirk's death and emerged advantageous. This has been It Could Happen Here. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season, ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Jenna World. Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video, and The Valley. is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild trip through adult films.

We get paid more than the men. We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our life. Listen to Jenna World on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know the shade is always shady. It's right here. Reason six of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. I'm Eli Akani, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. I've always wanted us to have therapy, so this is such a beautiful opportunity. Listen to season two of family therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.