The MAGA movement is facing a growing rift between factions of online influencers on the new media Right. And this rift threatens the future of President Donald Trump’s populist political coalition, with many wondering whether it can survive without Trump.
This problem, which has been snowballing since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, came to a head over the weekend at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest. At the event, Daily Wire co-founder and podcast host Ben Shapiro took the stage and gave a pointed and needed speech, calling out by name Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and others who have peddled or failed to rebuke those peddling ridiculous antisemitic conspiracy theories around Kirk’s murder and beyond.
“The future of the country relies on the future of the conservative movement,” Shapiro stated. “It relies on what TPUSA defines as its core mission: freedom, free markets, and limited government.”
That’s totally in line with The Patriot Post’s mission: “From our inception, our mission has been, and remains, to sustain the endowment of American Liberty in this generation and extend it to the next by first, advocating for individual rights and responsibilities; second, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary; and third, promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values.”
Shapiro noted that conservative leaders and influencers owed their followers “five obligations”: truth, principle, responsibility, evidence, and solutions. “We owe you the truth,” he argued. “That means we should not mislead you. It means we shouldn’t hide the ball. We shouldn’t be deliberately obscure about what we are telling you.”
Addressing the biggest fomenter of deliberate misinformation since the murder of Kirk, Shapiro said, “If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here … to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a coverup in that murder … then we, as people with a microphone, have a moral obligation to call that out, by name.”
Shapiro called those conservative commentators who have failed to challenge Owens’s destructive conspiracy claims “guilty of cowardice,” adding, “The fact that Candace has been vomiting all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years on end while others fly cover for her is just as cowardly.” The Daily Wire fired Owens in March 2024.
Shapiro appropriately blasted Tucker Carlson for hosting a “Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American” Nick Fuentes without pressing back or challenging his deeply flawed and evil views. Racist and hateful views should never find any quarter among conservatives, as those views are anathema to true American values.
He also blasted Carlson for elevating a number of other problematic guests, effectively giving their odious and terrible views and attitudes the air of credibility and credence.
Carlson spoke later at the conference. Predictably, he played a disingenuous game, claiming Shapiro was calling for censorship and cancel culture, as if the highest evil were to delineate and reject views that conservatives find untruthful, damaging, and dangerous.
Obviously, Carlson has no problem calling out those with whom he has serious disagreements, as demonstrated by his contentious interview with conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Ergo, the notion that Carlson is “simply asking questions” is blatantly deceitful and misleading to his audience.
Having a healthy debate on political and social issues is a good thing, for at least it clarifies the issues and helps delineate where conservatives stand on them. However, this does not mean that bad, evil, vile, and destructive ideas, like antisemitism, should find safe harbor within the confines of conservatism. If these corrupting views are not exposed and quickly rejected and eliminated from within the conservative tent, then they will metastasize and grow like a deadly cancer. Indeed, that the problem has gotten this bad is evidence enough that these views have been allowed to go unchecked this long within the conservative ranks.
It appears America is wrestling with the manifestation of postmodernism across both political parties, where everyone has embraced the notion that they are the ultimate arbiters of truth. Having grown up within the toxic social milieu of “my truth” and “your truth,” asserting the false notion that truth is subjective rather than objective, any good storyteller becomes as much an “authority” on a subject matter as any specialized, educated professional.
In this feeling-over-facts world, Owens, Carlson, and their ilk can ply their manipulative trade by appealing to people’s distrust to sell them a bogus narrative filled with half-truths and outright falsehoods, yet crafted to win them over to believing it. Like cult leaders, they manipulate their followers to listen and embrace their own telling of history, not to educate and free, but to deceive and direct for their own aims.
Conservatives need to hold to the truth and herald what makes them conservative, not allow themselves to be manipulated into falling for the personality cult.
