ROGER KIMBALL: The Heritage Foundation’s Meltdown.
Is there anything left to say about the Heritage Foundation’s pre-Halloween melodrama? It was quite a scary show. I am confident that when Kevin Roberts, president of that venerable bastion of conservatism, got outside his morning egg on October 30, he had no inkling that his two-minute and thirty-nine-second video clip would precipitate a seismic detonation that would rock the foundation and monopolize the news cycle for days.
The main purpose of the video, Roberts said, was to reaffirm that the commentator Tucker Carlson “remains and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.” This came on the heels of Carlson’s long interview with Nick Fuentes, the obnoxious twenty-seven-year-old antisemitic scold who, among other things, idolizes Joseph Stalin and thinks that Adolf Hitler is “cool.”
Some prominent commentators defended Roberts; many denounced him. Roberts tried several times to walk back or apologize for his initial video. It didn’t work. The rhetoric of that first video (“globalist class,” “venomous coalition”) was impossible to sanitize. On November 5, Heritage’s regularly scheduled all-staff monthly meeting turned into an embarrassing extended struggle session. The world knows this because a video of the meeting (taped for the benefit of staffers who were out of town) was leaked and posted online, where it instantly became the object of obloquy and ridicule.
As of this writing, damage reports regarding the self-inflicted wound suffered by Heritage are still trickling in and being assessed. But even sympathetic commentators understand that the damage is serious. “After 40+ years,” ran the headline to one such column, “the Heritage Foundation is collapsing.” Perhaps that is precipitate or overstated; as of this writing, the tea leaves are still swirling. Still, there can be no doubt that there is trouble in paradise.
As Scott Johnson wrote at the end of last month, “It’s a time for choosing and the Heritage Foundation has chosen poorly.”
Indeed:
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— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 6, 2025