Conservatives need to have a “Come-to-Jesus moment” concerning antisemitism, a former member of The Heritage Foundation told Newsmax on Friday.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder and president of the Christian Zionist group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, appeared on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America” to explain why she resigned from Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, known as Project Esther.
Heritage has been under fire after its president, Kevin Roberts, initially defended Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a man widely described as an antisemite.
That stance has triggered a wave of departures from Project Esther, which was launched last year as a conservative strategy to confront rising Jew-hatred in the United States.
Cardoza-Moore told co-hosts Marc Lotter and Sharla McBride that she concluded Roberts “was not prepared to take on the issue of the day.”
With antisemitism spiking globally after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, she warned that if conservatives fail to draw clear moral lines, “we could see a rise of antisemitism within the right, like we saw during the Nazi era.”
A lifelong defender of Israel, Cardoza-Moore’s organization mobilizes Christians and Jews to stand together against antisemitism and support the Jewish state.
She stressed that fighting Jew-hatred has always been a core part of the conservative, Judeo-Christian worldview and should not be ceded to the left or to establishment bureaucrats in Washington.
Cardoza-Moore told Newsmax she recently spoke directly with Carlson after publicly labeling him an antisemite over his embrace of Fuentes.
She said Carlson demanded a public apology, but she refused, insisting that if anyone owes an apology, “he needs to apologize to the Jewish community for the things that he has said [and] the people that he continues to associate with, like Nick Fuentes.”
She also voiced disappointment with Vice President JD Vance’s response to a question at a Turning Point USA event suggesting Israel controls U.S. policy.
Rather than clearly condemning the conspiracy theory, she argued, Vance missed an opportunity to restate why America and Israel are bound together by shared security interests and biblical values.
“What needs to happen is the Republican Party needs to have a Come-to-Jesus moment, and there needs to be a conversation about this issue,” she said, warning that extremist voices are targeting “our younger, our up-and-coming brightest leaders.”
Cardoza-Moore emphasized that conservatives must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time: defend free speech and oppose cancel culture, while also refusing to normalize figures who traffic in Nazi-style rhetoric.
If movement leaders fail that test, she said, “The Heritage Foundation needs to decide who are they. They’ve lost their moorings. They’ve lost their moral clarity in this sphere.”
Newsmax Wires contributed to this report.
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