In an era when content creators say increasingly outrageous things to stand out from the crowd and politicians must reach potential voters wherever they are, how far is too far?
This past October, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts ignited a wave of resignations at the storied conservative think tank after posting a video defending Tucker Carlson for having controversial livestreamer Nick Fuentes on his show. For those of you pleasantly unfamiliar with Fuentes, he has praised both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, denied the Holocaust, and even praised the Taliban.
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Carlson did not embrace any of these views on his show, but he didn’t push back on Fuentes when the latter praised Stalin and claimed an “organized Jewry” was trying to destroy America. Roberts, apparently responding to rumors Heritage was going to condemn Carlson over the interview, then posted a defense of Carlson on X, calling him a close friend of the Heritage Foundation, before going on to attack the “venomous coalition” trying to cancel him. Roberts went on to promise that the Heritage Foundation would “be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.”
Three follow-up statements, an apology video, and a Heritage all-staff meeting later, over a dozen staff members resigned, as did three trustees. Clearly, the conservative movement hasn’t come to an agreement about which voices should and should not be engaged with.
Democrats, however, are having their own problems with the exact same issue. Marxist streamer Hasan Piker has become the target of centrist ire in the Democratic Party after he hosted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Summer Lee (D-PA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Talib (D-MI), and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
Last month, the centrist think tank Third Way asked Democrats to “draw a line in the sand” and stop appearing on Piker’s stream due to his claims that Orthodox Jews are “inbred” and that “Hamas is a thousand times better” than what Piker calls the “fascist settler colonial apartheid state” of Israel.
Just as Roberts defended Carlson, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has chosen to defend Piker, claiming that Piker is not a “Jew hater” but is instead just an “anti-Zionist.”
“Anti-Zionism is rising as a response to what Israel is doing,” Klein wrote. “It will simply not be possible to treat it as a marginal viewpoint that can be shamed or shunned into invisibility.”
“These shows had come from nowhere and had gained millions of loyal listeners,” Klein continued, referring to podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman. “They had earned their viewerships by voicing something that made millions of Americans feel seen, heard or at least interested.”
“In avoiding those spaces, Democrats avoided contact with the kinds of voters they otherwise claimed to represent,” Klein reasoned. “This is the mistake Democrats often make when they talk about what they did wrong in 2024.”
THE REAL REASON FERTILITY IS FALLING
Klein is no doubt correct that Democrats who appear on Piker’s show are reaching new voters. But Klein ignored some of Piker’s more controversial beliefs, including the fact that Piker believes “America deserved 9/11,” that the Republican Party is “the biggest domestic terrorist” in the United States, and that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”
Politicians from both parties have always had to make tough decisions about which leaders were and were not worth reaching out to for support. And as media audiences continue to fragment, drawing those lines will only become more difficult. At least Republicans don’t worry about Tucker Carlson saying America deserved 9/11.
