AI-Summary – News For Tomorrow
Internal strife within the MAGA movement is intensifying, fueled by events like Charlie Kirk’s murder and controversies surrounding figures like Candace Owens. Key figures, including Ben Shapiro, are criticizing others, like Tucker Carlson, for platforming extremist voices like Nick Fuentes. These divisions expose a deeper struggle within the Republican Party about the boundaries of conservatism. J.D. Vance’s ambiguous stance on controversial figures like Fuentes at AmericaFest highlights this tension. The conflict has also impacted institutions like the Heritage Foundation. Some suggest the infighting is driven by a desire for attention and engagement within the right-wing media ecosystem.
News summary provided by Gemini AI.
The strain on maga has been growing for months, accelerated by Kirk’s murder and the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. The disputes may seem like petty recriminations among a maga media elite that is much more comfortable in opposition than in power. But they also reveal a broader fight within the Republican Party. As the right begins to look past Mr Trump and debate the party’s future, they are brawling over how big the conservative movement’s tent should be.
Consider two different spats in conservative influencerland. After Kirk was murdered Candace Owens, a right-wing podcaster, spread conspiracy theories about his death. She has implicated the French Foreign Legion, Egyptian planes and Turning Point employees, among others. Erika Kirk (pictured above), Charlie’s widow and the new boss of Turning Point, begged her to stop spreading such lies. It didn’t work. Ms Owens was not at AmericaFest, but her name was on everyone’s lips. “The people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks—and some of them are speaking here—are guilty of cowardice,” said Ben Shapiro, a co-founder of the Daily Wire, a conservative media outlet. He mentioned Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, specifically, two of the most popular podcast hosts in maga’s orbit.
A second fight also involves Mr Carlson, who recently hosted Nick Fuentes on his show. Mr Fuentes is a Hitler-loving white nationalist whom Kirk long tried to keep on the fringes of the conservative movement. Yet he has gained influence as the right, including Kirk, embraced ideas like the “Great Replacement” theory, which asserts that elites want more immigration to try to diminish the power of whites. Mr Shapiro’s speech at AmericaFest decried the willingness of Mr Carlson and others to give racists a platform and let conspiracy-thinking fester. The fight among influencers has bled into broader Republican politics. Dozens of employees at the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank, quit after their boss defended Mr Carlson’s friendly interview with Mr Fuentes.
J.D. Vance, Mr Trump’s heir apparent and a friend of Kirk, addressed the conference on December 21st after other speakers had made the fissures plain. The vice-president seemed to suggest that the conservative movement could include the likes of Ms Owens and Mr Fuentes. He declined to criticise racism and antisemitism among the movement’s rising stars. “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” he told the crowd. Yet days earlier he had told UnHerd, a news outlet, that antisemitism has “no place in the conservative movement”, and that Mr Fuentes could “eat shit”. Perhaps Mr Vance thought it best not to insult groypers, Mr Fuentes’s followers, at AmericaFest lest there be some among the crowd.
In many ways, the conference felt like Mr Vance’s coming-out party. Mrs Kirk endorsed him for president in 2028, and speakers and attendees alike echoed his idea—laid out during the Republican National Convention last year—that America is a homeland, not a concept. “We are in a real argument about what America is, what it stands for,” said Donald Trump Junior. “America is not just an idea,” he continued. “It’s a place with borders, with land, with history and battlefields.” Few would argue with that, but those fluent in maga code would recognise a nod to the concept that some Americans are more American than others.
The infighting also shows the gravitational pull of the right’s powerful media ecosystem. Sean Miles, an 18-year-old who started a Turning Point chapter at his high school in Illinois, likened the rift to a “civil war”, but acknowledged that the principal instigators were also entertainers. “They’re trying to be edgy”, he says, “because that’s what’s getting likes. That’s what’s getting views.”
