Breaking Up Is Easy to Do

The MAGA movement has lots of moving parts, and some are starting to dislike each other.

Ben Shapiro gave two amazing speeches in quick succession last week. The first was at the Heritage Foundation, and the next day, he once again rose to the occasion at TPUSA’s “AmericaFest” event. I am partial to Shapiro, not because he is an orthodox Jew or a fellow Harvardian. I think that he has an extremely healthy view of the greatness of the United States and what is needed in order to keep the Republic strong and successful.

Shapiro did not mince words and he more than amply named names. Ben Shapiro starts with a view of the core features of the United States, such as property rights and the God-given rights enumerated in the country’s founding documents. There would have been nothing controversial about his comments 200 years ago or even in 2016, when Donald Trump won his first presidential race. But times have changed, and since the Gaza war, the 2024 election, and the murder of Charlie Kirk, various ideas have been put forth by people who in the past were considered bankable conservatives. If Rachel Maddow had suggested that the Macrons were involved in the Kirk assassination or that Islam is a peaceful religion compatible with the West, we would have shaken our heads and written her off. But when a former conservative star like Candace Owens claims the former, while sumo conservative (in the past), Carlson says the latter, then the lights flash that the conservative movement has a growing weird wing.

It’s always hard to know how many people subscribe to the ideas and beliefs of Carlson, Owens, the Hodgetwins or even Megyn Kelly, who helpfully claimed that the conservative movement was reevaluating its view of Israel. Many younger Republicans may be looking at Israel differently, but overall support is pretty much the same. Do these folks have a few hundred followers who would accept their election advice or millions? I don’t know, and until there is an election, we may never know how many are still Trump-true MAGA and how many now subscribe to the ideas of Qatar's latest homeowner, Tucker Carlson.

One point that Shapiro drove home was the need for truth. In his question time after his speech, a young fellow asked about the USS Liberty incident. This was no coincidence. I once told a friend that 99.7 percent of the time, you are a great husband and father, but they’ll always remember you for the time you blew your lid or left one of the kids unattended at the park. There are different theories about the Liberty. The official history, as repeated by Shapiro, is that it was a mistake, Israeli pilots directed a ship to aid after the error was realized and that Israel apologized and paid reparations. Go back to any war, including World War II and the Gulf War, and there was fratricide, which is an unfortunate aspect of war. The guy who brought up the Liberty did so out of his hatred of Israel and Jews. To bring up a 60-year-old event that Israel did its best to address is simply like trying to find anything bad about another. He had to go back 60 years to find a “sin”? Then they’ll mumble about genocide that never happened, according to all experts and data. But they’re attacking Christians! But nobody is. Bethlehem emptied out of Christians when it was given to the Palestinian Authority, and only Israel has a growing Christian population in the region. Carlson’s Qatari Christians are the near slave labor brought in to work for the sheikhs.

The MAGA movement is experiencing what all political movements experience: a shake-out. Some will leave or swear that Donald Trump is too pro-Israel or that JD Vance is a “traitor to his race." But others will join. The clear pivot of the Trump administration to “affordability” is timely and wise. People vote according to their condition. Let’s think about a hardcore Democrat living near the southern border. He cannot lie to anybody that things were better under Biden. The masses of humanity that took over his town are gone and new illegal aliens are not coming. He can vote Democrat because he always has. Or he might—might—realize that a closed border is good for him and Trump and MAGA are the ones who believe in the same. And the same is true for gas prices, meat prices, home prices, and the like. If the president can get people to believe that his policies are making their lives better, the new pro-Trump voters will more than make up for those bolting on the instructions of Carlson and others. 2026 and 2028 can go hard for MAGA if people think their lives are improving.

While those on the left like to call Donald Trump every name in the foul-language dictionary, the reality is that he is both pragmatic and transactional. He can put high tariffs on a country, and if the latter changes a policy to the benefit of the US, those tariffs will come down. He did not listen to the ban-all-abortions wing of the Republican Party, because he knew that most Americans are in favor of some levels of abortion, each state according to its own thinking. The "conservatives" accusing Trump of failing are the real extremists. They want no aid to Israel, though the aid benefits both countries handsomely. The attack in Iran was precise and limited and accomplished the goal of putting Iran’s nuclear ambitions on ice for some period of time. Did Tucker Carlson, who claimed that bombing Iran would start World War III, explain how Iran having a nuclear bomb would be good for the United States? You want all of us 300,000 American citizens living in Israel to come home and drive up the housing market?

It is more important for the success of the Republican Party, conservative movement and MAGA that its members be on the same page. If renegades want to leave, they have every right to do so. And while they may try to harm the movement, they might find that they have fewer followers than they believe. The revelation that many “groyper” and pro-Nick Fuentes X accounts originated outside of the US was enlightening. Megyn Kelly has tried to ride both rails, being “friends” with Shapiro, Carlson and Owens. Shapiro’s speech and Kelly’s anti-Israel response show that there is a limit to how much one can support both gravity and antigravity. There comes a time for choosing. Do you generally support Donald Trump’s policies? If the truth shows that Carlson and Owens are deceiving their followers, would that push you away from them? If you are told that Trump is a MAGA failure for not being fully “America Only," do you buy such an argument? Carlson has deceptively suggested that he and his macabre guests are being deplatformed. Such is not the case. No one has prevented them from suggesting that Hitler is cool or that Churchill was the real bad guy in the Second World War. Rather, his peers like Shapiro are holding him to account, and a lot of people are not interested in hearing his rubbish. Shapiro received frequent applause at AmFest; Carlson received silence.

Erika Kirk, while still mourning the tragic loss of her husband, needs to make some decisions. She can invite anyone she wants to TPUSA events. The question is the following: if people like Carlson and Kelly are misleading people, does their presence make TPUSA stronger? Charlie Kirk insisted on having Carlson at last week’s event, precisely as he was getting in hot water over his strange ideas. Should Erika Kirk continue in that direction or drop deadweight and move on?