Far-right influencer Nick Fuentes

Virtually all of the gains the Republican Party made in the 2024 election could be wiped out ahead of the 2026 midterm elections due to the growing influence of "overt racists" within the GOP, according to conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen.

In a Thursday column, Thiessen laid out how Republicans were able to secure both a popular vote and Electoral College majority in 2024 for the first time in two decades thanks to making inroads with Black and Hispanic voters. He argued, however, that the GOP's activist base includes "morally reprehensible" people like neo-Nazi podcaster Nick Fuentes, whose growing influence could turn into "political suicide for the right."

"Conservatives cannot build a lasting majority without appealing to minority voters — and that won’t happen if they embrace white nationalists," Thiessen wrote.

According to Thiessen, (a MAGA conservative who recently advocated for President Donald Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize) Trump’s 2024 voting coalition was "significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than it had been in 2020 or 2016," and he had increased his vote share "almost every key demographic." This even included 47 percent of legal immigrants, which was a nine-point improvement compared to 2020. And among new U.S. citizens who didn't vote in 2020, Trump was the clear favorite with 57 percent of the vote.

However, Thiessen warned that gains are now in jeopardy due to Fuentes' increasingly prominent role in Republican politics. Fuentes – who is the at the heart of the ideological civil war currently consuming the influential conservative Heritage Foundation think tank — is a known Holocaust denier who regularly demeans racial minorities and has called for the "death penalty" against Jewish people and practitioners of all non-Christian faiths.

However, because Fuentes has such a large following (and even dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022) many prominent conservatives have been slow to distance themselves from him. Thiessen pointed out that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts was subjected to a wave of criticism after refusing to disavow far-right commentator Tucker Carlson over his friendly interview with Fuentes. This directly led to Princeton University professor Robert George resigning from Heritage's board.

"The wrong man stepped aside," Thiessen lamented. "A conservative movement that has room for Fuentes, Carlson and Roberts, but not for Robby George, is no longer conservative — and no longer politically viable."

"Wouldn’t it be ironic if we allowed a bunch of white nationalists to destroy the coalition Trump built because they chose to copy Democrats with their own nativist brand of identity politics?" He added. "Allowing overt racists into our movement is a sure way to do just that."

Click here to read Thiessen's full column in the Washington Post (subscription required).