Sometime this week in an undisclosed location, two powerful figures sat down for tense negotiations, hoping to end a cold war that had, in recent days, turned very hot. The talks were not a success, with one participant dubbing some of what the other side presented as “fake and gay.” Tensions, it’s fair to say, continued unabated.
In this case, the combatants were Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk and far-right one-woman chaos machine Candace Owens. They met to discuss Owen’s relentless trafficking of conspiracy theories about the murder of Kirk’s husband, TPUSA founder and leader Charlie. Owens, a former TPUSA communications director and close friend of the slain leader, has continued her descent into gutter antisemitism by suggesting that his assassination was orchestrated by the Israeli state, as well as suggesting that Egyptian military planes and France also may have been involved, before eventually tweeting that it’s “likely” that “the same people who killed JFK killed Charlie.” Turning Point staff have also merited her suspicion, and she tweeted last week, “I now can say with full confidence that I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage.”
As The Bulwark’s Will Sommer wrote, all this conspiratorial churn has put Owens in the midst of an all-out war with virtually everyone else in right-wing media. Right-wing podcaster and diehard beanie-wearer Tim Pool, who is not known for consistently breaking ranks with right-wing extremists, spoke loudly for the group when he dubbed her a “fucking evil scumbag” and a “degenerate cunt.” After Erika Kirk’s four-hour meeting with Owens to try to tamp down her wild accusations, Kirk emerged describing it as being “very productive.” As CNN reported, she even brought in a lawyer to explain to Owens how the investigation of her husband’s death worked. Suspicious as ever, Owens emerged, dismissing a police affidavit outlining evidence in the Kirk shooting “fake and gay.”
Their war will likely continue, but it’s just one of dozens of feuds, internecine wars, and petty beefs rivening MAGA from top-to-bottom. As far-right British political activist Raheem Kaseem told Axios, the result of it all is a “cacophony of grifters.” The broad Trump coalition is ending its first year back in power more divided than ever. From the White House to the conspiracy media-verse, at what should be their moment of greatest strength, MAGA simply cannot stop both constant covert sniping and the occasional outright brawl.
From the White House to the conspiracy media-verse, at what should be their moment of greatest strength, MAGA simply cannot stop both constant covert sniping and the occasional outright brawl.
Aside from the ongoing Candace-Owens situation—a phrase that will surely become part of the national conversation in the years ahead —TPUSA also saw some robust infighting at their big AmericaFest gathering, where Politico reports that headline speakers Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro threw bitchy little digs at one another from onstage and off. “If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes, you ought to own it,” Shapiro said, a continuation of a particularly bleak piece of infighting on the right about how much antisemitism in the movement is too much.
Outside the malodorous confines of AmericaFest, the public squabbles and unseemly jockeying for position go all the way to the top. Chaos erupted this week after Vanity Fair published an explosive article featuring quotes from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who has, for reasons even she can’t seem to explain, been speaking to reporter Chris Whipple for eleven sit-down interviews. In those chats , which she fit in while managing various crises created by her boss, she called Vice President JD Vance “a conspiracy theorist,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” the handling of the Epstein files controversy, and said Trump himself has “an alcoholic’s personality,” an analysis the president, who famously doesn’t drink, told the New York Post he agreed with.
Wiles has responded by calling the article “a hit piece”—without exactly disputing any of its contents—and the White House has made a show of supporting her in public, even as the Washington Post reports they were taken by surprise by the splashy story. According to some reporting, Wiles may have thought she was speaking to Whipple for a book. Meanwhile, top administration officials cannot clearly explain why they posed for a photo to accompany the article, nor what they thought Vanity Fair was going to publish.
The president’s most relentless loyalty enforcer, Laura Loomer has ended her extremely a busy year of ferreting out perceived dissenters and getting people fired whom she deemed insufficiently loyal to the MAGA cause by tattling on them to the president and tweeting angrily about their ostensible betrayals. In Washington, the term “Loomered” has come to mean not just fired, but thoroughly exiled from both the government and the movement. (“Another LOOMERED SCALP!” she exulted on Twitter/X last week, celebrating the fact that the White House has withdrawn their selection for deputy NSA director.)
Loomering is the most targeted of MAGA infighting, as opposed to the more chaotic, impulsive set of feuds and implosions that are more commonly on display. In the ultimate conflict between giants that you’ve probably already forgotten about, Donald Trump and Elon Musk declared their friendship to be null and void earlier this year, and the current status of their bromance remains uncertain. Although Musk recently reappeared at a formal White House dinner to celebrate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (No one in the U.S. government is feuding with bin Salman, despite his reported approval of the brutal execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2021; some things apparently aren’t serious enough to merit a squabble.)
Meanwhile, one of Donald Trump’s strongest foot-soldiers, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced that she’ll be stepping down in January, after Trump dubbed her a “traitor” and a “lunatic.” Her unforgiveable transgression was that she objected to the administration’s handling of the Epstein files. “Loyalty should be a two-way street,” Greene declared in her resignation announcement. And elsewhere in the Trump administration, the FBI’s deputy director Dan Bongino is also stepping down, having made it clear that he hopes to return to a far more comfortable job as a right-wing talking head attacking the Deep State instead of working for it. Bongino spent much of his tenure feuding with Bondi over the handling of the Epstein files, when he wasn’t complaining about how hard it is to be required to go to an office.
Bongino and his boss, Kash Patel also found time to feud with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who accused them of trying to ferret out and punish a whistleblower at the FBI. Massie—who has been unusually independent for a GOP member of Congress (which is not saying much, and should not be interpreted as praise, but still)—has said that the whistleblower has been trying to make a disclosure regarding the bureau’s ongoing investigation into pipe bombs that were placed at the Republican and Democratic national headquarters on January 5, 2021. A suspect in the case was arrested on December 4; Massie has made it clear that he believes the FBI arrested the wrong person, tweeting that his FBI source has no confidence that the suspect is “capable or motivated” of having committed the crime. Massie is one of several House Republicans who have baselessly suggested the pipe bombings were an inside job. As evidence, Massie shared a now-retracted story by The Blaze accusing a Capitol Police officer of being the bomber.
Outside the Trump administration and in the wilds of right-wing influencers, Charlie Kirk’s death has been the catalyst for a brushfire of altercations, far beyond the confines of the one between his widow and Owens. His absence has opened up a power vacuum that other far-right figures have been unsubtly jockeying to fill. Longtime Kirk nemesis Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and vile weirdo, is attempting to expand his own influence, sitting down for a friendly interview in October with Tucker Carlson that immediately incited a broad and ongoing MAGA civil war. After the Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts defended the interview, the staff and board of the organization revolted; two more board members quit this week. As evidenced in the Shapiro-Carlson smackdown at AmericaFest, the hard feelings over Fuentes’ presence in the movement have not abated.
Needless to say, that’s not all.
In September, Owen Shroyer, one of the top hosts on the conspiracy network Infowars, left the company due to disagreements with founder Alex Jones. Shroyer, who previously served two months in prison on misdemeanor trespassing charges after being on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, said he argued with Jones about whether Shroyer was “too anti-Trump” and “too negative.” But despite the acrimony, Shrowye said he will always respect the Infowars founder.
Jones did not agree, and has been posting wounded tweets for months, accusing Shroyer of just “mailing it in” when he’s not calling him an “evil agent.” Similarly, multiple staff members working for MAGA gossip blogger Jessice Reed Kraus, a.k.a. Houseinhabit, quit earlier this year and have been trading social media barbs with her ever since. (The drama that has frankly been both too boring and convoluted even for me to consider covering, but according to one former staffer named Emilie Hagen, it allegedly involves disagreements over how Kraus covered and befriended disgraced former New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi, who was involved inher own, extremely serious public feud recently.)
The names, allegations, fights, and feuds pile up; alliances shift, re-form, and then immediately collapse. And yet, somehow, MAGA staggers on, laying waste to the American political structure and doing horrifying real-world harm: children have died of cholera in South Sudan after devastating USAID cuts. Whooping cough and measles cases have surged in the United States amidst RFK Jr.’s continued campaign to install his friends and ideological fellow-travelers in positions of power at HHS. The siege on immigrants and Americans of color continues, with ICE and DHS presiding over a viciously, gleefully cruel set of mass deportations and various forms of broad-scale discrimination and psychological torture, with an able asisst from the Supreme Court. MAGA’s constant infighting is as hilarious as it is pointless —and yet, unlike their friendships, the true and lasting damage this exhausting group of people have wrought shows no signs of ending.
