It is rare that a two-minute statement from a think tank president becomes major news, but Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts achieved that this week with his social media video defending Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview and thereby promote the racist, Jew hating, and misogynistic views of Nick Fuentes.

Roberts opened his video by stating, “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” as though Carlson has become a controversial figure for denouncing Israeli government policy, such as the conduct of the war in Gaza. Carlson, like anyone else, is free to criticize the way Israel defends itself. Literally millions of Jews do that every day. So Roberts’s first words were beside the point, a deflection.