PBD Podcast
"Why Apologize?” - Heritage Foundation CEO Opens Up About Backlash | PBD #742
19 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What backlash did Tucker Carlson face for his podcast with Nick Fuentes?
Tucker had Nick on, and they did a podcast together, and he got a lot of heat for it. Article that came out, maybe even you spoke about it, about going to your staff and apologizing. What did you apologize for?
A couple of phrases in there that I regretted. Project 2025 for young Americans. All of the elites have all of this power, and here's a plan to take it back.
You're fired.
fiery talk you gave at world economic forum idmd i said great job that was amazing and if i may i will be candid and say that the agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that's ever been proposed at the world economic forum and object all of them wholesale you get a call somebody wants to give 2 million plus but he was on the epstein island and he had a relationship with epstein but 12 years ago would you still accept the money
Chapter 2: What did Kevin Roberts apologize for regarding the Heritage Foundation?
That's all. We believe that so-called transgender surgery is bad for anybody because of what you saw in Rhode Island yesterday. Not to be clear, not that everyone who has gone through that surgery would do that kind of thing. The World Health Organization is discussing foisting gender ideology upon the global South. How do you address this? You outlaw it. You outlaw it?
Because it's bad for the human person.
So what would happen if they just said, period, you can't do it in America, full stop?
we'd become a better society.
Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point?
The future looks bright. A handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. You are a one-on-one?
I think I've ever said this before.
Great to have you on. Man, I've been looking forward to this. Thanks for having me. Yes, I remember you. First time I messaged you was your fiery talk you gave at World Economic Forum. I DMed you. I said, great job. That was amazing. And you responded back. And we reacted to it here and then from there. Obviously, a lot of other stuff has happened, which we'll talk about.
But it's great to have you here.
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Chapter 3: How does the Heritage Foundation plan to adapt to modern challenges?
And then when I went to this event, I'm like, oh, Claremont Institute. What is Claremont Institute? And then this guy invited me to his house where they would have debates. The chief of staff of Bill Clinton would debate the chief of staff of President Bush at the founder of public storages house. I think his name was Wayne Hughes or something like that.
And then I spent some time with Larry Arnn and all these other guys and then Fred Wiebe and I'm more and more, this conservative stuff is interesting and then obviously I get exposed to everybody else. So Heritage Foundation, for people that don't know, if you don't mind telling everybody what Heritage Foundation does.
We've been around 52 years, 53 years now this year, and what we do is focus on public policy problems. First of all, in the 1970s and 80s at the federal level, but increasingly, especially over the last four or five years since I've been president, also at the state level, all for the purposes of devolving power from Washington and giving it back to the states and to the people.
But the thing that made us unique in the 1980s, Patrick, was that we didn't just write white papers, which is the typical work of a think tank. I don't even use the word think tank to describe Heritage, although I think we do the best thinking in the business. We're a public policy advocacy organization because the purpose of our research is
is then to walk across the street, go to Capitol Hill, and advocate for that research to help draft legislation. We also have an issues campaign arm called Heritage Action that is able to do, under federal law, more of that advocacy work. They do our lobbying on Capitol Hill on behalf of the American people.
The other thing that we do that a lot of Americans don't pay attention to, which is okay, is that we help to connect the conservative movement around the world. We're very active in the Far East. in Europe, in Latin America, increasingly in Africa, all for the purpose of restoring self-governance. And so while we are nonpartisan, we are unabashedly philosophically conservative.
And we believe that not only is a smaller government good, but the reason that a smaller government is good is because it gives you and me and all 330 million Americans, more self-governance. That's the reason that Heritage exists.
I love it. Okay, and you guys got started in early 70s, right? 73. 73, okay. And how much, the other day I'm having a conversation with a McKinsey guy, consulting, and he's a senior partner with them, been there for 25 years. And I said, how much has the consulting business with you guys changed? And he says, I got to tell you,
He says, 10 years ago, if a client would call us, you know, half a million dollar engagement, million dollar engagement, can you write us a analysis on the industry, what, you know, SWOT analysis, what we have going on? We'd write a paper and we'd give it to him, half a million, two million dollars.
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Chapter 4: What strategies does Heritage use to engage younger Americans?
Probably in their late 70s, early 80s, this lady. Very attractive, very well put together, strong presence. Great. And then I said, huh. Charlie has to deal with making all of these guys happy. Some are Christians. Many are Jews. Some are pro-Trump, pro-business.
Some are G3 money, which means they didn't build the money, so they want to give the money away, so they're probably more liberal than conservative. Some are G1 money. G1 money are probably going to be more Trump than DeSantis. And then some are more hardcore conservative, like old school conservative Reagan. And Trump's a disruptor. And I said, what a tough job to have.
So that's why when I watch and see what you guys have to do, how do you manage all these personalities that may or may not agree with you? What do you tell them? Do you call them? Do you have the one-on-one conversations? How do you manage these relationships?
Man, I can't tell you how 100% accurate and astute that is. In fact, Charlie and I would occasionally, two or three times a year, commiserate on that. Not complaining. We're grateful, truly, for all of those people, and not just because of the material resources that they would give our respective organizations, because every single one of those people is a patriot, right?
And we're grateful for them. And so the way I manage it, I know that he did an exceptional job. The way that I attempt to manage that is to have conversations with people. I have an open-door policy at Heritage. I am on the phone a lot with a lot of different people, policymakers. donors, donor prospects, friends out in the movement.
But I will tell you that there are two things that are really key. Actually, three, I would say. The first is, and I try to lead with this, articulate a very clear vision about where we're going.
Because that means that in almost every gathering of the center right of conservatives, libertarians, people like free market, people who are social conservatives, almost every gathering, there's going to be 80 to 90% agreement on that aspirational vision.
And so at Heritage, what we're doing to that end is focusing on the American family, on the dignity of work, on free enterprise, on national security, on citizenship, what it means to be an American, including an American who immigrates and assimilates here into our culture, right? And so that aspirational vision is key. But the second thing is to be transparent.
And I think the new cycle that Heritage went through over the last few months, which we didn't just weather, but we flourished through, is because of that ethos we have of transparency. But the third thing is we have to recognize that leaning on not just my particular faith, but I think almost anyone of faith would say this, we're called to do what we do, not just to win elections.
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Chapter 5: What factors are contributing to the declining birth rate?
And why do we do this? And I'm like, oh my God, attendance is going to go down next Sunday. Boom. skyrocketed. Why? They just want to know that you, you know, authenticity, authenticity that you wanted to, you're, you're allowing people to be heard. Okay.
Let's talk about something that's probably, by the way, I'll just say, we'll take that for action. So the next time we talk, I'll give you a progress.
Great. I can't, I agree entirely. I can't wait to hear about it because I want to see you guys succeed at the highest level. So next one, I have four kids. Okay. Birth rate right now is 1.58.
Chapter 6: What role do federal policies play in family dynamics?
Everybody I meet, I tell them, have a lot of kids. Okay. What can we do? to get the youth to start thinking about having a family, having kids, or maybe the crisis is so massive that it's going to take decades to fix. But how would you address it?
It's going to take a generation to fix. For people who are interested, we just published what we call a landmark paper, a long, long social science study on family policy. And people know the diagnosis well. They're cultural, economic experts. religious, social factors that go into this.
But what we're saying in this bottom line is while those need to change, and I'll come back to a couple of them that I think in particular need to change, there may also be a role for federal and state policy.
And so we have proposed, even as a conservative organization, that you invert some of the existing policies in federal law that disincentivize marriage and probably disincentivize the birth rate and actually incentivize young Americans before the age of 30 to get married and to have children.
We're saying, to be clear, though, that's downstream from some bigger factors, what's going on culturally and economically. And just like you say to young people you encounter, get married, have a lot of children, our institutions, which are upstream of the institution of the federal government, have to do a better job of cultivating among Americans the desire to be married and to have children.
Our religious institutions, our other cultural institutions.
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Chapter 7: How can cultural institutions influence marriage and family?
And so these things have to occur in tandem. The good news is... While the data is admittedly mixed in some cases, in some countries that have done this, particularly Hungary and Israel, there have been modest improvements in the marriage and birth rates. And so we at Heritage are sober about the timeline we think that it will take to reverse this, a generation, 20 or 25 years.
But we believe we're not yet at the point of no return, although probably there are some societies in the West that are.
Okay, while we're speaking, I just wrote this down, and I appreciate that. We have some case studies of where it's working, where it's not. Okay, question for you. What hurts Or hell, what affects birth rate the most? One, I have affordability. Two, policies from the top. Incentives for me to say, let's have three kids. Let's stay married. Let's do this, right?
Chapter 8: What examples exist of successful family policies in other countries?
Instead of the Lyndon Johnson 1964 policies of single mothers. Let's give them more welfare. Let's give them more incentive to not get married. I'm getting all this money from the government. Why would I get married? It's cheaper. It's better for me to keep having these kids. Media. who we're turning as heroes, okay, and then manipulation feminism.
So out of those five, I got affordability, policies, media, who we sell as heroes, and feminism. Who's impacting that birth rate to be at 1.58 the most?
I'm going to be abusive and help this multiple choice and add a sixth, which is culture. I'm going to put those last three in the same. Beautiful, let's do that, yes. Because, and it is a little, I mean, it actually is hard from a social science point of view to disaggregate exactly the percentage of blame for each of those. But culture broadly, I think, is the most important.
Having said that, what we argue in the paper, and a lot of people who didn't think they would be convinced by our argument have become convinced of it, is that if you have upstreamed these cultural trends that you outlined so well, and in 1965, the misnamed war on poverty aggravates that by disincentivizing marriage and at least
in some segments of the population, birth, then you have the situation that we're in.
And then what's happened, especially over the last 15 to 20 years, as health care and higher education costs have skyrocketed, we've foisted upon that really bad context, the impossibility from the standpoint of many young American men and women who want to be married and want to have kids of believing financially they can make it happen. And so what we're trying to do is...
is addressed in that paper, the last two of those, the federal policy and economic policies that need to change. We at Heritage, even though we have a little bit of cultural influence, we'll have to rely on Americans and American leaders to do their part. For example, we even say this in the paper,
American policymakers using the bully pulpit, not just to push a particular policy, but to talk about this positive vision of what it is to be married and have children can in fact help culture and those trends reverse.
Have you seen any incentive that's been done for folks to want to stay married and have kids? Are there any countries that you look at and you say, those guys did it right. They dropped at one point. We know China right now opened it up. Their birth rate is horrible. When they say they got 1.4 billion people, I don't even know if that number is accurate because when you do the math,
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