Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts on December 19, 2022

Kevin Roberts, who is president of the Heritage Foundation (the group behind the far-right Project 2025 playbook) is now scrambling to remain in his role as his organization continues to splinter.

Roberts made headlines recently when he refused to disavow former Fox News host Tucker Carlson following Carlson's friendly interview with white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes. Roberts' defense of Carlson was deeply divisive within Heritage, and prompted the group's workforce to split into camps with some pro-Fuentes staffers at odds with Heritage workers opposed to Fuentes (who regularly praises Adolf Hitler and frequently makes anti-Semitic remarks).

The conservative Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that Roberts is now admitting that he "made a mistake" when defending Carlson and regretted not taking a more vociferous stance against Fuentes and his ideology. Roberts said he felt a "moral obligation" to take back his previous comments.

"I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop," Roberts said during a recent all-staff meeting at Heritage. He also told Heritage's board of directors: "I made the mess, let me clean it up."

In his defense of Carlson, Roberts said that wouldn't be a participate in efforts to attack "friends," though on Wednesday he said he regretted not condemning the former Fox host's "softball" interview with Fuentes (who once dined with President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022) or giving him a platform to help him spread his views to millions of viewers. Roberts maintained he "didn't know much about this Fuentes guy."

"We will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda," Roberts initially said. "That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation."

Roberts faced significant pushback from Heritage staffers during the question-and-answer portion of the meeting. National Review correspondent Audrey Fahlberg reported Wednesday that one "young female staffer" directly confronted Roberts for not only standing by Carlson, but for not denouncing him sooner.

"I condemn Nick Fuentes's hateful rhetoric," the staffer told Roberts. "That being said, I would like to point out that some of the most vocal people against Tucker Carlson have been calling him an antisemite since he started to hold more anti-interventionalist views."

Click here to read the Free Beacon's full report.