Ben Shapiro turned on his fellow MAGA podcasters in a fiery display at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, amid a growing dispute over controversial firebrand Candace Owens.
Shapiro’s turn saw him tear into Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, while also blasting his “friend” Megyn Kelly over what he perceives as her “cowardice” over failing to condemn Owens.
His furious outburst was in response to Owens’ pushing of conspiracy theories about the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September.
“These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro raged at the event, which the Right Side Broadcasting Network broadcast.
Shapiro added that he had a “moral obligation to call out” Owens’ theories.
He claimed that Owens was spouting “absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder, or a cover-up in that murder.”
Currently, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson is the only suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk, which took place at Utah Valley University. Prosecutors have claimed that Robinson allegedly carried out the shooting because of Kirk’s political activism.
Meanwhile, Owens has continued to allege that Israeli government agents were behind the shooting. She claims that Kirk was moving away from his well-documented support for the Jewish state, prompting agents to kill him.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied the claims as a “monstrous, big lie.”
Owens is also currently mired in a lawsuit with French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, whom the podcaster claims was born a man.
Owens recently opened up a second feud with France, after claiming that a French official told her that their country was behind Kirk’s killing and even claimed that plans were being made to assassinate her.
Erika Kirk, the wife of the Turning Point USA founder, has also condemned Owens’ theories and held a four-hour meeting with her on Monday.
“The people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice,” Shapiro said.
He named his “friend” Megyn Kelly in his rant, criticizing her for “characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from condemning her actions or fibbing about them.”
Kelly responded on social media to what she labelled an “attack on yours truly.”
“Prob should have checked w/ @TPUSA & @MrsErikaKirk first,” she wrote, referring to Shapiro. “I’m embarrassed for them.”
Shapiro also railed against former Fox presenter Tucker Carlson for meeting with far-right commentator Nick Fuentes.
He suggested Fuentes was a “Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse” and that Carlson had “built Nick Fuentes up” by publicly interviewing him.
Tucker Carlson responded to Shapiro’s criticism during his own speech, joking that he had not watched “the first part of the program.”
He also jabbed that he did not think he missed “anything meaningful,” before adding that he did watch Shapiro’s speech and had “laughed.”
“To hear calls for like deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what?! That’s hilarious,” he said.
The Independent has contacted Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro for comment.
