A major MAGA civil war erupted into the open in the last week, pitting Tucker Carlson and other “America First” Trump supporters against what Nick Fuentes calls “Israel First” Republicans.
This is a continuation of topics I’ve discussed in previous posts on odd alliances forged by opposition to the genocide in Gaza and reactions to the death of Charlie Kirk.
Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes on his insanely popular podcast last week. The full interview garnered 17 million views on X.com, 5 million views on YouTube, and no telling how many of his reported 2.6 million Spotify followers tuned in but Carlson was the #2 podcast on the service last week.
For comparison, the top rated show on Fox News (the most watched cable news program) drew 3.7 million viewers.
The top rated news show on broadcast television is ABC’s World News Tonight which averages around 7.8 million viewers.
Tucker Carlson IS the American mainstream media in 2025. If he is platforming the frequently cancelled Fuentes, that’s a big deal.
https://t.co/1DKklzHFSk pic.twitter.com/ht2QMXAkp8
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) November 3, 2025
It was also interesting to me because the last time I’d seen Carlson discussing Fuentes, he called Fuentes “this child, this weird little gay kid in his basement in Chicago” while interviewing Candace Owens.
But the most interesting thing about the interview was their joint condemnation of Christian Zionists.
Tucker Carlson Calling Out Neocons and Christian Zionists
Carlson had a notably tense interview with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) four months ago, but I had not expected a full throated attack on the ideology of Christian Zionists like Cruz.
Nick Fuentes: Where does neoconservatism come from? It arises from Jewish leftists who were mugged by reality when they saw the surprise attack in the Yom Kippur war.
Tucker Carlson: Well, that’s a lot of it for sure. But then like how do you explain Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and there are a lot like that: John Bolton, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, I mean, all people I know personally who I’ve seen like be seized by this brain virus and they’re not Jewish.
They’re most of them are self-described Christians. And then the Christian Zionists who are…
Christian Zionists, like what is that? And I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy and I’m offended by that as a Christian.
Christian Zionism, for those of you lucky enough not to be surrounded by it on a daily basis (there are more Israel First zionists in Texas than Israel), is rooted in Protestant eschatological ideas about “the rapture” — an idea invented by the 19th Century Irish Calvinist John Nelson Darby.
Today, the movement is led by, among others, Texas minister John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel.
About Christian Zionism
It’s impossible to understand the Israel First branch of the Republican party without understanding the influence of Christian Zionism.
I highly recommend this Tad Delay piece from Parapraxis Magazine for those who want an introduction.
But let’s get back to the blow-by-blow of the political fallout from the Carlson/Fuentes tête-à-tête.
Nick Fuentes Is Cancelled No More
Ali Breland in The Atlantic wrote a mammoth piece decrying that “The firewall against Nick Fuentes is crumbling” and bemoaning the fact that Carlson had given Fuentes “access to one of the largest audiences he has ever had.”
She also lists a greatest hits of Fuentes’ racist and anti-Semitic statements, that had Carlson himself comparing the young influencer to David Duke just weeks ago.
But most importantly, she bemoaned Fuentes’ influence on today’s GOP:
In a 2021 episode of his livestreamed show, Fuentes said he wants to drag the Republican Party “kicking and screaming into the future, into the right wing, into a truly reactionary party.” His vision is coming true. Consider the leaked group chats of Young Republican leaders that were revealed by Politico earlier this month. The messages are full of the kind of anti-Semitic and racist jokes about the Holocaust and Black people that Fuentes has made as a livestreamer. Fuentes wasn’t directly referenced in the messages, though he claimed shortly after the leak that there are “Groypers in every department, every agency.” Vice President J. D. Vance called the messages “offensive jokes” and dismissed outrage over the texts as irrational “pearl clutching.” Fuentes celebrated the response on his livestream: “I never thought I’d see it ever, but Republicans are finally learning to play the whataboutism game, and I think that’s absolutely overdue.”
Heritage Foundation President Defends Carlson
But the mess really hit the fan when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, put out a video on X.com last Thursday defending Tucker Carlson from the “venomous coalition attacking him.”
Roberts’ statement came after changes to their web site excising mentions of Tucker Carlson inspired speculation that they were preparing to disavow him.
There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.
I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025
I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic.
And, of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned.
My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology.
But when it doesn’t, 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 the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now.
We don’t take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate.
We also don’t take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support. And we’re adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public.
We will always defend truth. 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 are sowing division. Their 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 a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate.
And we have seen success in this approach, as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.
As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, “what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first.”
That’s where our allegiance lies, and that’s where it will stay.
The backlash was immediate and intense.
Zionists Speak Out at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit
Roberts immediately faced incoming fire from a bipartisan coalition of Israel first U.S. Senators, including Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Democrat Chuck Schumer.
“Now is a time for choosing. If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very cool and that their mission is to defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” said Cruz at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Summit in Las Vegas (6.4 thousand views on YouTube).
“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” McConnell tweeted.
“Last I checked, conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” he continued. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is.”
Schumer told the Associated Press he found Roberts’ remarks “deeply disturbing.”
But nothing could top the rhetoric coming from U.S. Senator (R-SC) Lindsey Graham and U.S Representative (R-FL) Randy Fine.
Lindsey Graham tells Republican Jewish Coalition not to worry about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes: "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…pic.twitter.com/dTJPy2Uvs0
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) November 2, 2025
Rep. Randy Fine, who celebrated Israel killing babies in Gaza, tells Republican Jewish Coalition that Tucker Carlson and Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene are "evil."
Carlson is "the most dangerous anti-Semite in America."
"It makes my stomach crawl that I have to… pic.twitter.com/2fXj3pVgXX
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) November 2, 2025
Graham’s repulsive outburst racked up 848,000 views on X.com where the up-and-coming Israel first Congressman Fine only got 15,000.
I can’t help but hope that the more people see Graham and Fine speaking their truth, the less support they will have.
Roberts Immediately Backpedals
The next day Roberts was interviewed by Dana Loesch and agreed, after a long, awkward pause, that Carlson was “sowing division” by calling out Christian Zionists.
Q: Is it 'venomous' to say that you hate Christian Zionists?@KevinRobertsTX: "Of course it is" pic.twitter.com/srCNracEse
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) October 31, 2025
Roberts also put out a 350 word tweet in reply to Nick Fuentes’ question “what exactly do you abhor about my views?”
But not all of the Republican response was negative as reported by Politico’s Nightly newsletter:
Meanwhile, other conservative group chats in Washington were blowing up with messages in support of Roberts’ stance. “I woke up with more texts about this last night than I did when Trump was elected,” one conservative operative, granted anonymity to discuss private messages, told Nightly. “Everything else has dissipated.”
In a message to Nightly, Carlson professed surprise at the heated reaction to Roberts’ statement. “It’s shocking to me that a principled statement in favor of free speech would be controversial on the right. But it’s also clarifying,” Carlson wrote. “Remember who opposed it.”
Laura Loomer Goes Ham on Roberts
Amusingly, the sharpest attacks on Roberts are coming from Laura Loomer, another right-winger who is frequently cancelled and officially labeled a “conspiracy theorist” by Wikipedia. The main difference between Fuentes and Loomer is there’s no question she is Israel first.
I mean, sure she’s got Alex Jones’ InfoWars and the infamous Project Veritas on her resume, but she’s now a powerful Trump 2.0 administration insider.
As the The Guardian reported in April, she can get people fired, including from the National Security Council.
So it seems likely Roberts felt a cold chill down his back when he learned Loomer had tweeted:
“What @KevinRobertsTX needs to understand is you can respect someone’s right to free speech but also condemn them and their wicked behavior that is rooted in a desire to fracture the evangelical GOP base.
Tucker is the demon who he says scratched him in his sleep.
How’s that for venom?
Loomer next zeroed in on the specific Heritage Foundation staffer she blamed for writing Roberts’ remarks on Carlson.
I’ve been told by multiple sources that @RyanMNeuhaus wrote the speech for @KevinRobertsTX that referred to everyone critical of anti-Semitism and revisionist Christianity as a “venomous coalition”.
If he did not, he’s more than welcome to chime in.
The chances of him being… https://t.co/DL0FPemMDO pic.twitter.com/nv6zngsFgN
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2025
Heads Roll at Heritage
By Friday, Roberts was sending an email to Heritage Foundation staff titled “Heritage’s Stand Against Antisemitism and for Civilizational Truth.”
Per The Hill, the email announced that chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus was vacating his role to become a “senior advisor” to the Simon Center while executive vice president, Derrick Morgan, would be acting chief of staff until the end of the year.
Steve Bannon Confronts Loomer
But this is more than a matter of “the empire strikes back” as this confrontational Steve Bannon interview of Loomer shows.
This is the clip that’s gone viral:
🚨 Steve Bannon shredded Laura Loomer live on air!
The debate turned into a full-blown meltdown — and the clip is spreading like wildfire. pic.twitter.com/UIIxbH1IcL— SilencedSirs◼️ (@SilentlySirs) November 2, 2025
Loomer accused “some on the right” of having “Israeli derangement syndrome.”
Bannon pushed back hard on the Israel first Loomer:
Steve Bannon: “Well, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on a second. If Netanyahu and the Jewish—hold on, if the Israeli government had dealt straight with us, you wouldn’t have had this problem. They’re liars. They’ve been stone-cold liars. They gave bad information. So I’m not going to let that go unchallenged. That’s just bullshit. OK?”
“Do not—don’t sit there all innocent about what Netanyahu’s—Netanyahu’s government has been atrocious, and we should have regime change in Jerusalem, and we should have it immediately. They’ve lied to the American government. They’ve lied to the American people consistently.”
These divisions on the right may be pitting one loathsome crew of racist reactionaries against another, but it is extremely novel to see the American Republican party and broader right wing tearing itself apart over whether or not to put Israel first.
This was not seen in the Bush-Cheney years that launched the endless “Global War on Terror” and maybe, just maybe it’s a sign that the neoconservative reign of terror may be running out of steam.
UPDATE
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) responds:
The recent speeches given at the RJC conference were filled with hateful rhetoric and lies about not only myself, but my colleague Thomas Massie, my good friend Tucker Carlson, and Americans who sincerely mean it when we say America FIRST.
No other country’s interest should come…
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 3, 2025
Full text:
The recent speeches given at the RJC conference were filled with hateful rhetoric and lies about not only myself, but my colleague Thomas Massie, my good friend Tucker Carlson, and Americans who sincerely mean it when we say America FIRST.
No other country’s interest should come before our own.
But when actual Republican members of Congress and Senators and influential figures take to calling us “dangerous threats” or even dare to call Tucker “Hitler” and publicly announce to cancel us, they are not only doing exactly what Democrats did by calling Republicans “Nazis” and Trump “Hitler” but they are also trying to get us killed.
And what purely disgust me is that they know it.
They know exactly what they are doing and they are doing it on purpose.
Me and my very serious fellow America Firsters are not against anyone, we are only sincerely for our own country, America.
In all the most well intentioned ways.
And that includes every single American citizen and their children and their children and future generations.
It’s not identity driven at all no matter how much the haters trying to get us killed claim.
We are winning and our movement is growing and I thank God for that because my children’s generation deserves hope for their future and their opportunity to live the American dream.
Confusion to my enemies. Go at it!
I needed good news today. It’s not much, but better than nothing!
The ADL, AIPAC, et al. have sown the wind by claiming opposition to Zionism was anti-Semitism, and I don’t think Fuentes is even the ultimate whirlwind. I feel bad for Katie Halper, the Mates, Max Blumenthal, Finklestein, etc. They are doing their best to counter this “Hail Mary” effort to keep things Israel First, but it’s an almost impossible task. The horrific statements coming out of Israel’s cabinet about the genocide don’t help.
When the economy crashes and we get undeniably wrecked in one of the wars we start, shit is really going to hit the fan and yes, then we will see things get VERY ugly and I fear that all the wrong Jews will be punished for the sins of the zionists.
This is absolutely, very likey, unfortunately, non-Zionist Jews being cast guilty by association.
I’m not so used to the word for word output from the hard right but my god, it’s worse than I thought. And Graham, how someone can proudly make a public statement like that is mind boggling.
And never forget, he’s DC neo-con establishment, not some kind of MAGA outsider firebrand.
Thank you for this, a rational deconstruction of the situation is in order. First, I will not forget that the Gazans are still starving, huddled in the rubble of their homeland. All of historic Palestine is their homeland, but that is not exactly, or even necessarily part of the discussion here.
Pandora’s box has been opened, all the evils of world have been released, the last spirit still hiding on the bottom is hope. I will maintain it for the Palestinians.
A cynic would maintain that Pandora’s Hope is the last and greatest curse.
Probably the only and greatest positive for the Gaza Palestinians is that Gaza will be upwind of the sources of the atomic fallout.
I really think at this moment that it will come to that.
Stay safe.
My fears run along the same lines. Religious fanatics with nukes trapped in a desperate situation….
Without hope, there is only revolution.
True, but I maintain that Revolution(TM) is itself a form of Hope. The hope that ‘things’ will be better after the dust settles. That is why I have always empathized with the anarchists. Most of them I have met do not delude themselves anywhere near as badly as the “average” citizen does.
Remember the days of “The Ongoing Permanent Revolution?” If we could replace some of the religious fanatic politicos with existentialist politicos….
Stay safe.
One account in Greek lore had the gods denouncing Prometheus. Specifically, this time, for helping humans to forget the looming inevitability of our fate. He did this by giving us hope.
Ever since, humans were freed from living with despair, having traded it in for the ignorant bliss of a false sense of security.
Now let’s see the corresponding Dem schism on the current and plausible Israeli government. I’m not holding my breath.
Dem support for Israel seems mostly driven by AIPAC money, which is becoming politically toxic.
The clearest battle lines on the Dem side this year came in the NYC mayoral race. We’ll find out how that turns out tomorrow.
I suspect an alternative route to channel funds to Dems can be found, assuming it hasn’t already.
Right now Harris has moved ahead in polls for 2028 at Newsom’s expense, but it’s early.
They’re already facilitating donors contributing directly to candidates through semi-sophisticated online passthrough links.
This early polls mean nothing. At this point in the 2008 primary, Joe Lieberman was way out in front IIRC.
This contest in the GOP is between the neocons and the not-neocons for leadership of the party in the upcoming (next pres election) succession to the T presidency. Thus, the rancor. / my 2 cents
One should point out that many prominent Jews were against the creation of Israel and predicted the outcome we have now. Assimilation–the thing that Netanyahu says is worse than the Holocaust–is the true “all men are created equal” measure of humanism. This is why the founders made freedom of religion a cornerstone and a break with all those European wars using religion as an excuse.
So we should of course distinguish Judaism from the villains who hide behind it. And the Dems these days have plenty of those same villains.
America was meant to be a secular republic and therefore a self styled Judaic state has nothing to do with us. Oir current grotesque embrace of fanaticism is all about boiling the frog. That frog may be about to leap out of the pot.
And money, like time, heals all wounds….and heals them faster. So yes, we’ll see….
Bari Weiss https://x.com/bariweiss/status/1985387656134430845
Zei Squirrel replies:
https://x.com/zei_squirrel/status/1985408891627184626
You love to see it. Thanks for the good news.
At this point I don’t see it as “tearing MAGA apart” but it certainly has raised the temperature of speech. Mostly what I see is those distrustful of the whole Israel program are becoming more vocal. It the past you might see “well, we have to agree to disagree”, but now it’s “you’re an Israel Firster”.
But there is a much larger group in the middle who aren’t interested in pre-millenialism or the 144k remnant but do see Christians as in a long-term war with Islam that only ends with triumph for one or the other. From this POV if Israel is eliminating Muslims in Iran or in Arab countries, that’s fine. That extends to what’s going on in Sudan and Nigeria and other places.
So-called Sharia law or “no go zones” in the US are much more important to this MAGA faction.
I would like to point out the importance of the use of the Scofield reference bible among conservative Christians. My husband, who grew up as a conservative Baptist, used this specific bible (KJV translation plus Scofield’s reference notes) in church. He’s noted that it was widely used in conservative Christian denominations. This specific reference bible popularised dispensationalism in America.
https://www.wrmea.org/2015-october/the-scofield-bible-the-book-that-made-zionists-of-americas-evangelical-christians.html
An excellent point. I thought about bringing that up but it’s a whole ‘nother rat hole. It’s notable that the publication of the Scofield Bible (in England) preceded the Balfour Declaration by just a few years. All stuff I dismissed as conspiracy nonsense pre 10/7 and no longer do.
”We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.”
Away from me, Satan!
I was torn on whether or not to include that but it’s so repulsive I had to. Also he brags about how Trump has already run out of bombs…not seeming to realize that’s got more to do with our degraded industrial capacity than Trump’s bellicosity.
There is a sort of irony if not inevitability going on here. You have the MAGA movement whose core belief is putting America first which has thoroughly soaked through the electorate. But there has been a concerted effort to high-jack this movement and try to make Israel first a priority of MAGA and they are not having it. Tucker Carlson seems to be at the forefront of all this. Whatever his faults, he makes no secret of the fact that his identity is of a proud American and a loyal christian and he would be typical of American conservatives last century. The effort to jam Israel into MAGA and corrupt 1st Amendment laws for theiris benefit is something that MAGA is chocking on and it does not matter if Trump himself is trying to make this happen. In fact, Trump saying that he is the spiritual head of MAGA is something that I believe a lot of MAGA supporters do not believe. Carlson may be the true leader here. To be frank, there is no I(srael) in Make America Great Again. And with all the footage of the massacres and slaughters that Israel has done over the past two years, it may be that MAGA supporters are now seeing the Albatross that MIGA people are trying to tie around their neck and they are not having it. It’s MAGA they will tell you.
one thing that is coming up frequently on Twitter is reminders that Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Graham and others were not early adopters of MAGA and some of them were never-Trumpers at one point.
I do hope that this bears some fruit.
Before reading the post, I was prepared to doubt. It felt like MAGA was just as impotent as progressive movments in team Dem, after AoC won.
First letting Elon walk all over them on the visa issue, then seeming to roll over on demanding the Epstein list. It would be nice if now we could actually see some change effected by popular (not campaign-donor) demand.