When Tucker Carlson conducted a softball interview with Hitler-loving racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, Christian nationalist, fascist, white nationalist Nick Fuentes last month, a collateral controversy erupted when Heritage Foundation's MAGA president Kevin Roberts rushed to release a video defending Carlson and insisting that conservatives should not be trying to "cancel" Carlson or Fuentes.
As a result of Roberts' video, the Heritage Foundation quickly found itself wracked by conflict as staff revolted, allies cut ties, and board members resigned. The person responsible for the whole debacle, according to reports, was Heritage's chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus, who was demoted as a result and eventually resigned from the organization entirely.
On Tuesday, Neuhaus appeared on Tim Pool's podcast, where he defended Roberts' and the Heritage Foundation's initial response to the Carlson/Fuentes interview.
"I don't think I need to explain anything for Dr. Roberts," Neuhaus asserted. "I think he's a good man. I don't think he's necessarily apologized for the statement. I think he stood by the fact that we should not engage in cancel culture."
"There are people behind the scenes that are trying to do that, that are trying to tell people who you can and cannot platform, and trying to police speech," he continued. "Maybe that post-World War II liberalism sentiment prevails in some circles, but those of us who are actually conservatives and are trying to conserve the ideals of the American founding, one of those is primarily free speech."
"When there's bad ideas, you hash them out and you point out what's bad about them and then you point out what's good and you redirect people towards what's correct," he continued. "I think President Trump put that in his own way the other night. President Trump said it himself, 'Why would I tell Tucker Carlson who he can or can't have on a show?' Ironically enough, [if] you want to talk about who's on people's shows; nobody was freaking out when Patrick Bet-David had Nick Fuentes on his show a month before. That doesn't mean that everyone's endorsing Nick Fuentes's idea."
When co-host Elaad Eliahu compared Carlson's interview with Fuentes, which was a friendly chat seemingly aimed at whitewashing Fuentes' radicalism, to the hostile and contentious interview Carlson conducted with Sen. Ted Cruz earlier this year, Neuhaus dismissed the concern by insisting that "Ted Cruz is a presidential candidate" whereas with Fuentes, "Carlson [was] interviewing some random internet guy with an internet following."
"There's no reason to make excuses or arguments for why Tucker did what he did or didn't do," Neuhaus said. "All of that's up to Tucker. And Tucker, at the end of the day, it's his show. How he performs it and how he does it; either his viewership will decline or it will increase based upon what he does and who am I—some random guy in America—to be like, 'Tucker, don't do that'? He's not going to care what I think and he doesn't need to care what I think."
When Eliahu wonder if "the MAGA coalition is sustainable" given all the infighting that is taking place, Neuhaus issued a dire warning.
"I think it has to be," he said. "I think if not, then you lose 2028 and you go to the gulags."
