Kevin Roberts: I’m just a script-reader, so don’t blame me

The New Neo Posted on by

How did Kevin Roberts get to be the head of the Heritage Foundation in the first place? Is it an example of the Peter Principle?

He now seems to be saying some version of gee, don’t blame me for my boneheaded comments; I didn’t do my own research, I didn’t compose them, and I was just told by an aide to read them.

You think I’m exaggerating what he said? You be the judge [emphasis mine]:

“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts told the staff of the conservative think tank on Wednesday …

Roberts said he was willing to resign but felt a “moral obligation” to repair the situation and had told the organization’s board of directors: “I made the mess, let me clean it up.” …

While Roberts stated unequivocally in his original video that the Heritage Foundation would never cancel “our friends,” he said Wednesday he should have made clear there was a “limiting principle.”

“You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone … while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said, you’re not endorsing softball interviews, you’re not endorsing putting people on shows, and I should’ve made that clear.”

One limiting principle would be to research the issue before issuing statements on behalf of the organization. Admitting that he still “didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy,” Roberts explained that he simply trusted his now-former chief of staff to do his thinking for him. “This is an explanation, not an excuse,” Roberts told Heritage staff:

Roberts said his former chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, who has since resigned, wrote the script for the video and deceived him into believing colleagues had approved the message. “Our former chief of staff had the pen,” he said. “When the script was presented to me … I understood from our former colleague that it was approved, it was signed off on by the handful of colleagues who are part of that. Still my fault, I should have had the wisdom to say, ‘Time out, let’s double check this.’”

The other day, after watching Roberts being interviewed by Dana Loesch, I wrote this:

I watched the Loesch interview with Roberts last night. I found him extremely unimpressive; she was quite good. He kept going on and on with his strawman about not “canceling” Fuentes or Carlson. Meanwhile, he ignored the fact that the real objection was that Carlson gave Fuentes only a little pushback and the interview mainly functioned to legitimize the vile Fuentes rather than challenge him. …

In the interview with Loesch I got the distinct impression that Roberts had not watched the Carlson interview before he gave that pro-Carlson statement. He looked utterly stunned when Loesch mentioned what Carlson had said about detesting Christian Zionists more than he detests anyone on earth.

And now I’m convinced that not only had Roberts not watched Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, but he probably hasn’t watched any of Carlson’s “the Jews are purposely killing Christians!” interviews, or his “Hitler was an okay guy and Churchill was the villain” interview, or paid much attention to anything his good buddy Carlson has been doing for the last couple of years.

What does Roberts pay attention to?

Kansas checks its voter registrations, and finds something curious

The New Neo Posted on by

The mayor of a small town is not a citizen:

The mayor of a small south-central Kansas town has been charged with committing fraud by voting in elections since 2022 even though he is not a United States citizen, the state’s attorney general and secretary of state said Wednesday.

Attorney General Kris Kobach said Joe Ceballos, who garnered nearly 83% of the vote Tuesday for a second term as Coldwater mayor, was charged with three counts of voting without being qualified and three counts of election perjury. Both are felony offenses. …

During a news conference in Topeka, Kobach and Secretary of State Scott Schwab said the state is actively pursuing cases like this by using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, which can be queried by states to determine a voter’s U.S. citizenship status.

According to The Center Square, 26 states are using the database to verify voter registration information. Schwab confirmed Kansas has begun using the SAVE database to check voter registrations, but also said the case against Ceballos was not compiled using the database. …

Kobach said he expects there will be hundreds of people on the voter rolls who are not legally eligible to vote. Although that may be a small number compared to the 2 million registered to vote in Kansas, it matters, he said.

Indeed it does. And I assume that Kansas has a lot of company in this and is hardly the worst offender. It’s taken an awfully long time to do effective checking, even in a red state like Kansas.

Mamdani’s victory gives impetus to those who would purge Israel-supporters from the Democrat Party

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Barry Meislin.”]

No surprise at all.

No surprise at all:

Zohran Mamdani ally Linda Sarsour called for the ouster of Israel-supporting “corporate Democrats” in fiery remarks Thursday at the SOMOS political conference.

Sarsour, the radical, hateful left-wing activist, and Alexa Aviles, a Democratic Socialists of America member of the City Council, made the incendiary remarks during a panel at the annual multi-day conference in Puerto Rico.

“You do the right thing, you keep your job. You don’t do the right thing, you don’t keep your job,” Sarsour said during the event called “Colonialism, Resistance and Solidarity: Puerto Rico and Palestine.”

Puerto Rico and Palestine. It has a certain alliterative ring, but that’s about as far as the shared history goes. But leftist intersectionality, and the chance to exploit useful idiots, dictate the connection.

The malevolent Sarsour has been around for a long time; she came to some prominence in 2017 in connection with the Women’s March, but she was active in the whole anti-“Islamaphobia” push prior to that. It’s no surprise – I know, I’m repeating myself – that she would be a big Mamdani supporter and ally.

More from the article:

Aviles, who is exploring challenging incumbent Manhattan Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), said activists need to root out “corporate Democrats” backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

That’s AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that’s been treated by so many people (on the left, but also on the right) as though a lobby is unusual and pernicious when it supports Israel. Looking at Goldman’s Wiki page, I see a description of someone who’s a typical leftist progressive except for his support of Israel (he’s Jewish). Here’s that position, which includes the more leftist “2-state solution” bit but otherwise is indeed quite pro-Israel:

Goldman supports the two-state solution. He opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, calling it a “thinly-veiled demonstration of antisemitism.” He voted to support Israel following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. In 2024, he signed an open-letter expressing “disgust” at South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with operating with intent to commit genocide in Gaza. In September of the same year, he identified himself as a “proud Zionist and steadfast supporter of Israel” in a press release for his official House subdomain.

In July 2025, Goldman blamed Hamas for the starvation in the Gaza Strip, stating, “Hamas could end it today if they wanted to. Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposal, Hamas has rejected it. Release the hostages and end this travesty.”

No wonder he’s got to go.

More:

Mamdani is set to attend a reception at SOMOS — where New York politicos are hobnobbing after Tuesday’s election — hosted by embattled state Attorney General Letitia James later Thursday.

Poor “embattled” Letitia James.

The battle for the hearts and minds of disaffected, lost, and angry young men

The New Neo Posted on by

Young men – especially young white men, but it’s not completely limited to them – are tired of being demonized as toxic. A great many are depressed, aimless, and searching. And when a great many young men feel on the outside looking in, they’re ripe for the picking by people up to no good, or for being inspired by people who really can help them.

The upshot is that there are many people and groups vying for influence with this cohort, and although some of those people and groups are friendly and benign, some are malevolent exploiters. Among the former are Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk (when he was alive) and Turning Point USA; among the latter are Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Mamdani, Antifa, violent trans activists, and various incel “influencers.” I’m sure I left some out, but you get the picture. The competition exists on both right and left, but the struggle on the right is highlighted at the moment.

Charlie Kirk’s accused killer was definitely part of this group that was searching (I’m going to assume that Trump’s would-be killer was, too). Tyler Robinson is a young disaffected white male who spent an inordinate amount of his time gaming, and seems to have immersed himself in the violent trans activist movement as well as using some Antifa memes.

I’ve been thinking about all of this lately, and a few days ago I began wondering whether Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had ever gotten together for a chat, and if so did they ever discuss this sort of topic. Sure enough, I discovered that they had, about six months ago. In the following YouTube interview, it’s also mentioned that Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had met back in 2016 when Kirk was early in his career, and Kirk says he was inspired by Peterson. Not surprising, actually.

The following interview occurred six months ago, as I noted. But since then, Peterson has become gravely ill starting in August, although he’s said to be recovering. And of course Charlie Kirk was assassinated early in September. The whole interview is of interest, but I have cued up a 9-minute clip in which they begin by discussing the phenomenon on the left but Peterson immediately says it’s a growing problem on the right too and he was certainly correct. The phenomenon is the growing popularity of “influencers” with what’s called Cluster B traits and the dark triad or tetrad (see this for an explanation). They also talk about what it means to use the Lord’s name in vain:

Because he appears to be an example of this Cluster B dark triad type, please do not ignore the essentially “performative” and mocking nature of Fuentes. He’s like the Joker. It’s impossible to know what he really believes; perhaps nothing. His goals seem to be destructive and narcissistic: attention and power for himself, but perhaps mostly the power to destroy and to make people angry and uncomfortable, as well as to be admired by other Cluster B dark triad types, or just people who are lost and searching and happen upon him.

Christopher Rufo seems to understand this, too:

Rather than engage in the surface-level debate, conservatives should seek the deeper ground of reality and deconstruct the “metapolitics,” or underlying rules, of this conflict. Conservatives should do this by treating Fuentes as an essentially fraudulent phenomenon. He is a manipulator who pretends to believe in every evil in order to drive clicks, cause chaos, and achieve celebrity, even as a villain.

I think that this is the best way to look at someone like Fuentes that I can find so far, and Fuentes is hardly alone although he’s the flavor du jour.

I also came across this video by Dinesh D’Souza speaking of the same phenomenon; he also discusses the “groypers” and their online activities. The section I’ve cued up is about 7 minutes long; if you’re impatient like me, though, I suggest speeding it up by changing the speed setting:

ADDENDUM: I decided it would be instructive to add this short clip. Kirk detested Fuentes and thought he was dangerous, not only didn’t ally with him but discouraged anyone from platforming him by debating him. Fuentes was extremely harsh in his criticism of Kirk. He also was quite open in his rivalry with Kirk for this group of young men they were both trying to reach:

The Mamdani victory in New York City

The New Neo Posted on by

The first thing I want to say is that, if Mamdani had to win at all, I’m glad he got there with a tiny bit over 50 percent. That indicates it’s likely that, even if Sliwa had dropped out, Mamdani probably would have beaten Cuomo. Sliwa did do worse than expected, indicating that many of his supporters went for someone else in the end. Or perhaps the polls were wrong, although they didn’t seem wrong on either Cuomo or Mamdani.

I wonder, if a less-hated candidate than Cuomo (or Adams, for the matter) had been opposing Mamdani, whether the latter would still have own. Sliwa or any GOP candidate wasn’t going anywhere, so it was always going to be blue on blue.

I think Mamdani’s victory was mostly due to three things. The first is, as I already said, he faced poor candidates. But I think what was more important was that he is a charismatic sort of candidate, especially to the young, especially to women. Also, the demographics of New York City have changed. There are many more foreign-born voters, and they mattered; I’ve seen a poll (don’t have time to find it now) that indicate he did not win over Cuomo with native-born voters. Jews – including many people who are only ethnically Jewish – only voted for him to the tune of a third or so, voting overwhelmingly for Cuomo. But a strength of Mamdani’s was turning out so-called “Desi” voters:

Zohran Mamdani owes his spectacular political rise to one New York City demographic above all others: South Asians.

And while they make up only 5% of the city’s population, this rapidly growing ethnic group is making itself heard.

South Asian turnout in June’s Democratic primary increased by 40% compared to 2021.

This was no accident. Mamdani’s strategy included a series of direct appeals to Desi New Yorkers — underscoring the increasing importance of these voters to the future of both NYC and the country. …

How did he do it? With relentless, culturally sensitive outreach to the city’s South Asian Muslim communities — particularly its Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis.

A great many of Mamdani’s plans are required to run through Albany, which might decide to tie his hands somewhat in order to not tick off too many rich people, ruin the tax base, and alarm midterm voters. But not if Mamdani has anything to say about it. Take a look or listen to his victory speech:

But it wasn’t just the economics that made Mamdani’s speech so chilling; it was the unmistakable tone of moral absolutism. His rhetoric wasn’t that of a mayor; it was the rhetoric of a zealot. It echoed Biden’s Independence Hall address, where he condemned “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to democracy while standing before a blood-red backdrop flanked by Marines. …

Mamdani’s victory speech was more of a declaration of ideological war — a crusade, if you will. He didn’t speak about cooperation so much as conquest. He sees his election as a revolution in miniature, a model for how the far left can reclaim power so that government can rule over us instead of serve us.

New Yorkers should take him at his word. Mamdani isn’t hiding who he is. He’s an unrepentant socialist, openly hostile to capitalism, obsessed with Trump, and ready to remake the nation’s largest city in the image of his ideology, and have it metastasize across the country.

That’s his goal. But reality? Time … will … tell …

SCOTUS hearings on Trump’s tariffs

The New Neo Posted on by

Sounds like SCOTUS is getting ready to rule against Trump’s sweeping use of tariffs:

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday expressed skepticism about the legality of aggressive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump against most of the world’s nations.

Conservative and liberal justices sharply questioned Solicitor General D. John Sauer on the Trump administration’s method for enacting the tariffs, which critics say infringes on the power of Congress to tax.

Lower federal courts ruled that Trump lacked the legal authority he cited under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the so-called reciprocal tariffs on imports from many U.S. trading partners, and fentanyl tariffs on products from Canada, China and Mexico.

Sauer, who is defending the tariff policy as grounded in the power to regulate foreign commerce, said “these are regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs.”

That’s the gist of it.

From Jonathan Turley:

It was an interesting oral argument on tariffs (at least for us dysfunctional law nerds). My view has not changed. I think that the odds favor the challengers. Sauer did a brilliant job, but he faced an obviously skeptical and discomforted Court…

…Justice Barrett and Gorsuch had some doubts about the other side but repeatedly returned to the sweeping authority claimed by the President. Even Chief Justice Roberts states repeatedly and categorically that the tariffs are a tax…

…That does not mean that the majority cannot shift or splinter during conference and drafting. However, Sauer knew he had a tough case to make and found one today before the Court.

…Keep in mind, as noted by the challengers, the Administration has a great deal of alternative options to maintain tariffs. However, given this argument, Congress may want to address the tariffs if it wants to avoid what Justice Barrett called “a mess” of reimbursements.

There’s quite a bit of disagreement with Turley there in the responses to his tweets, however. They range from people saying the non-liberal justices weren’t so hostile to Sauer’s arguments for the tariffs’ legality, to others saying that stopping Trump from instituting tariffs would end up stabilizing the economy and helping Republicans in the midterms.

Thoughts on yesterday’s election

The New Neo Posted on by

One problem I see is when races that really are not competitive for Republicans are covered in the media as though they are, it sets up high expectations that lead to depression if they’re not met. That’s part of what happened in yesterday’s elections, especially in Virginia – home of the federal worker – and New Jersey.

I didn’t expect wins. But nevertheless the magnitude of the losses distress. Even the sadistic fantasizer Jay Jones won, if not in a landslide, certainly in a race that turned out to not even be close. And here’s what supposedly is in store for Virginia:

We lost 13 House seats. No Republican won outside deep-red districts. …

So, what happens now? When the General Assembly convenes in January, Democrats will have full control. Here’s what we can expect:
•Gun Control: Restrictions on semi-automatic rifles, bans on magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and limits on concealed carry reciprocity with other states.
•Right-to-Work: Expect attempts to abolish Virginia’s right-to-work protections, paving the way for mandatory union membership and higher local taxes through collective bargaining mandates.
•Taxes: New taxes on services like dry cleaning, handyman repairs, and digital services.
•Energy Costs: Re-entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), meaning higher power bills for Virginia families.
•Transportation: Re-adoption of California’s vehicle standards — by 2035, only electric cars can be sold new in Virginia.
•Elections: A new redistricting amendment that will let Democrats redraw congressional lines — creating 10 blue districts and just one red.
•Education & Culture: Full reinstatement of transgender bathroom and sports policies in public schools.
•Immigration: Virginia will move toward sanctuary-state status by reversing cooperation with ICE.
•Criminal Justice: Passage of “Second Look” laws allowing violent felons serving life sentences to seek release after 15 years.

Democrats will treat last night’s results as a mandate to advance this entire agenda — and much more.

That’s just Virginia. You can say many of the GOP candidates were less than stellar, you can say it’s an off year, you can say the shutdown and the federal layoffs mattered, but the trend everywhere was in the wrong direction. That will encourage the Democrats’ leftward trend – not that leftists need such encouragement. But they’ve gotten it. Will that backfire nationally? Perhaps.

I’m going to write a separate post on the New York mayor’s race.

In Minneapolis, a tiny bright spot – although “bright” isn’t really the correct word. It was a mayor’s race that featured leftist versus corrupt third-world-aligned even more leftist, and the leftist incumbent won. I submit it was because Omar Fateh, the loser, is not nearly as telegenic and charismatic as New York’s Mamdani.

The four years of the Biden administration were very difficult, but in July of 2024 things seemed to start turning, with the assassination attempt on Trump that failed. Trump won handily in 2024, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into much of anything for 2025 and beyond. In September of this year when Kirk was assassinated, I felt it was like a mirror-image bookend to the failed attempt on Trump. It seemed to auger something bad. Whether this perception is correct in the long run remains to be seen.

In closing, I agree with this from Gad Saad. He’s written books on the subject:

The ethos of a society is rooted in its shared and agreed upon values. American exceptionalism embodies a set of foundational values. These are going to be erased in 1-3 generations as a result of the policies rooted in Suicidal Empathy.

I’m not sure where this chart came from, although I’ve seen it in a couple of places. So I present it with that caveat. But I think the general trends are true:

Election results: blue states remain blue

The New Neo Posted on by

In Virginia, all the Democrat candidates – including Jay Jones – have been been declared victors. Jones’ contest for AG was the closest, probably due to the revelations of his venomous statements about Republicans, but not enough voters cared. Then again, many people in Virginia voted early and before the news of Jones’ texts came out, so perhaps if voting had all occurred on Election Day it might have gone differently.

Virginia’s results were said to have been affected by the fact that many federal workers live there, and they’re not happy about Trump’s cost-cutting layoffs as well as the shutdown (although why they wouldn’t blame the latter on Democrats is beyond me). Current Republican Governor Youngkin’s victory in 2021 was in part because of backlash about trans issues, but that ship has sailed and no longer motivates voters there (he was term-limited and couldn’t run again, at least not for consecutive terms). And Donald Trump lost there in 2024 by about six points.

In New Jersey, Sherill the Democrat has been projected as the winner. Trump also lost there in 2024 by about six points.

Not good news, and I certainly don’t expect the NYC news to be good, either. The polls there closed at 9 PM.

UPDATE 9:25 PM: Mamdani seems on track to win, as expected.

I didn’t anticipate good news tonight, except perhaps in the Virginia AG race. And I didn’t get any.

Fuentes and power

The New Neo Posted on by

People you may not have heard much about until a few days ago, like Nick Fuentes (and perhaps Candace Owens, although I’ve certainly written about her before) are now the focus of tremendous attention. It doesn’t really do them justice to call them bigots, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, or crazy people. They’re all that and more, and suddenly an especially bright spotlight is shining on Fuentes, mostly because of his interview with Tucker Carlson and then the own goal committed by Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation.

The problem is that there are a lot of young people who follow Fuentes and subscribe to his viewpoints, which makes him and them a sort of mirror image of the Jew-hating, America-hating, race-is-everything left.

It’s hard to convey how awful Fuentes is, like a caricature of a neo-Nazi crossed with a vicious provocateur who will say anything for attention. How many of his followers are real people? I don’t know, and although I bet that a goodly portion are either bots, paid operatives, or even leftists wanting to swell the ranks of his followers in order to make the right look bad, I also believe that a great many are real.

If you want a compendium of some of Fuentes’ “greatest hits” just to get a flavor of what’s meant when he’s described as a vile bigot, you’d do well to watch the portion of this Ben Shapiro video that I’ve cued up. It’s about nine minutes long, and it’s very very disturbing. If you look at Fuente’s affect, you might think he’s joking, because his demeanor is often so light. But his followers take him very seriously, and there seem to be lots of them in the comments to that video:

Fuentes – and Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with him – are the greatest gifts the left could possible receive. They validate every stereotype the left has about the racist, evil, Nazi-esque right. Plenty of people on the right have condemned him most vociferously, but he nevertheless taints the right at this point.

What’s his motive? The best explanation I’ve seen so far is in this comment at Legal Insurrection:

There is something seriously “off” about Fuentes. Before watching the interview I assumed he was a neo-Nazi, as so many people do. But neo-Nazis walk a far steadier path than this guy.

My best guess is this: Fuentes wants complete control over MAGA, the Trump movement, post-2015 conservativism, whatever you want to call it. *Total control.*

That means he wants to control Donald Trump, too. …

If Fuentes can’t get total control, he’ll settle for total destruction, of everybody and everything that he wants to control and can’t. He’ll try to destroy Trump, too.

We’re looking at a man who will say anything and adopt any disguise in his quest for power. He never raised his voice or uttered a real threat during the interview, And he scared the hell out of me.

I have no idea whether Nick Fuentes hates Jews as such. What he hates is people who stand in his way. Some of them are Jews (to hear him tell it, his first pissing contest was with Ben Shapiro). To push other people out of his way, he will cloak himself as anti-these or anti-those.

You can’t expect a man like this to be consistent in his hates. *Everyone* ought to be very afraid of Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes was at war with Turning Point and Charlie Kirk, too. You may recall that, before Tyler Robinson was identified as Kirk’s probable killer, the left was saying that the killer was a groyper – a term for a follower of Fuentes – who hated Kirk. At the time that seemed an absurd notion to me, but after watching a lot of Fuentes I can see why it would be very plausible, although it turns out to have been untrue.