Copyright The New York Times
A task force dedicated to fighting antisemitism is leaving the Heritage Foundation as the conservative think tank grapples with the fallout from its president’s defense of a Tucker Carlson podcast interview with a prominent white nationalist. In an email obtained by The New York Times, four leaders of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism wrote on Thursday that it was “important for us to continue the work of the N.T.F.C.A. outside the Heritage Foundation for a season.” The Heritage Foundation, a pillar of the conservative movement for decades, had helped create and support the task force after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, and the Israeli army’s subsequent destruction of Gaza. The group was founded to address antisemitism on the American political left. But the foundation emerged last week in the center of a fierce debate about antisemitism in right-wing politics, after its president, Kevin Roberts, challenged the criticism of a mostly friendly interview Mr. Carlson conducted on his popular streaming show with Nick Fuentes, an avowedly racist antisemite with a large following. The task force’s departure underscored a deepening rift on the right between conservatives who have long embraced Israel and supporters of President Trump who oppose U.S. support for the country, seeing it as anathema to his “America First” ideology. The tension is playing out at the Heritage Foundation, which has worked to meld its traditional conservatism with populist elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda. In a video posted to social media last Thursday, Mr. Roberts said that “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.” He described Mr. Carlson as a “close friend” of the Heritage Foundation and said that “the venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division.” The video drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, with critics accusing Mr. Roberts of perpetuating antisemitic tropes. It also prompted indignation at the foundation. At least five members of the task force reportedly resigned, and some think tank staff members expressed outrage. Mr. Roberts apologized on Wednesday in a video and at a staff meeting, where he said that he was willing to resign but that he wanted a chance to repair the damage, according to a video obtained and published by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. While the task force leaders indicated in their email that they were encouraged by the efforts to address the controversy, they wrote that the episode “exposed a serious problem within the conservative movement.” The email was reported earlier by Jewish Insider. In an interview, Luke Moon, one of the task force’s co-founders, said its initial focus was “antisemitism largely on the left with college campuses and on the streets.” Mr. Moon, a pastor and the executive director of the Philos Project, a nonprofit group devoted to rallying support for Israel among Christians, said that after President Trump took office again in January, there were “groups within the right that have become very aggressively antisemitic, and I don’t appreciate that.” He added that “there are millions of Christians and Jews who love America and love Israel. We’re not part of some grand venomous coalition trying to wreck MAGA. We’re part of the tent.” The task force includes more than 100 conservative groups, Mr. Moon said, though a number of them severed ties after Mr. Roberts’s defense of Mr. Carlson. The task force will now be housed inside of the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel, a coalition that includes the leaders of Christian advocacy groups, Mr. Moon said. Cody Sargent, a Heritage Foundation spokesman, declined to comment on the task force’s move. In an email, he pointed to Mr. Roberts’s apology video and a social media post in which Mr. Roberts had disavowed Mr. Fuentes’s “vicious antisemitic ideology.” Mr. Sargent wrote that “our posture on the need to fight antisemitism is very clear.” The other task force leaders who signed the email separating from Heritage were Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor who leads a group called the Latino Coalition for Israel; Victoria Coates, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump White House; and Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in the first Trump administration. In the email, they announced that the task force would help host a conference in Washington this month with the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel, an event they said would expose and counter extremism and antisemitism on the right. “We cannot allow the conservative movement to be corrupted and destroyed by those consumed with attacking America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and values, thereby distracting us all from the real challenges facing our nation,” the email read.
