Far Right Stars Are Bemoaning the Chaos They Created

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Far Right Stars Are Bemoaning the Chaos They Created"

Podcast: On the Media (WNYC Studios)
Episode Date: June 24, 2026
Host: Micah Loewinger
Guest: Zack Beauchamp (Senior Correspondent at Vox)

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Episode Overview

This episode dissects the recent trend of prominent far-right media personalities publicly lamenting the increasingly extreme and conspiratorial direction of the MAGA movement—a direction to which they, ironically, contributed. Host Micah Loewinger is joined by Vox's Zack Beauchamp to examine why these "hot dog men" are now uncomfortable with the chaos and bigotry that has flourished within the right-wing ecosystem, how the loss of control over their audiences is fueling panic, and what this portends for the future of the GOP post-Trump.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Hot Dog Suit" Analogy: Architects of Chaos in Denial

• [02:23] Zack invokes the "I Think You Should Leave" hot dog sketch to explain the phenomenon: Those responsible for the MAGA movement’s radicalization are now pretending to search for the culprit while wearing the "hot dog suit"—a metaphor for obvious guilt.
  • Quote: "You have people who have been very clearly responsible for the party's push further and further to the right and towards a conspiratorial extremist state of mind now getting really upset that people are acting like a conspiratorial extremist party." (Zack, [02:43])

2. Profiles of the 'Hot Dog Men' and Their Red Lines

Ben Shapiro

• [03:08] Once influential, Shapiro is now critical of the anti-Semitic, conspiracist turn within right-wing influencer circles (e.g., Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes), even though his hiring and support helped catapult such voices.
  • Quote: "Ben actually created some of this, and very specifically, he hired Candace Owens in sort of the late 2010s... She had already said a bunch of pretty extreme things." (Zack, [04:18])
• Shapiro can't claim ignorance about conspiratorial trends. His previous endorsement of incendiary rhetoric enabled the current climate.

Christopher Rufo

• [06:51] A chief activist on cultural wedge issues, Rufo decries explicit antisemitism and conspiracism (notably in the resignation letter of Joe Kent) despite supporting figures like Kent with well-documented extremist ties.
  • Quote: "Joe Kent was always this guy back then... and yet it wasn't for Rufo." (Zack, [09:00])

Joe Rogan

• [11:12] Rogan derides some Trump assassination conspiracy theories while immediately entertaining others (e.g., MK ULTRA mind control)—demonstrating selective judgment about which conspiracies are "acceptable."
  • Quote: "That is way dumber than thinking that the Butler assassination was staged. Like, it's way crazier... people are having unauthorized thoughts, which is funny because it's like how these people described their approach to the world." (Zack, [12:43])

Mark Levin

• [14:46] An established right-wing talk host, Levin criticizes newcomers for monetizing extremism, apparently oblivious to his own long history of vitriolic, radical content.
  • Quote: "His show is not about trying to educate anybody... that's your whole thing. And now that somebody has figured out a direction to take it in that you don't like... you're very upset." (Zack, [16:19])

3. The Limits of Right-Wing Media Gatekeeping

• [16:40] Referencing Rep. Thomas Massie’s 2017 remark, the show underscores that the conservative base prizes ever-increasing transgression over ideology or party loyalty, rendering past gatekeepers powerless.
  • Quote: "The base... are really interested in someone going further and further in a sort of anti liberal, anti norms direction. It's just not obvious where this process stops." (Zack, [17:16])

4. Trends Fueling the Right’s Internal Panic

• [09:27] Two forces are at work:
  • Failing Trump administration and impending electoral setbacks drive finger-pointing and infighting.
  • The loss of narrative control as conspiratorial and bigoted elements prosper independent of intended boundaries set by earlier gatekeepers.

5. Scenarios for the GOP's Future (Post-Trump)

• [18:23] Three possible outcomes are discussed for the 2028 GOP:
  • Radicalization: The right doubles down, potentially nominating someone like Tucker Carlson for president.
  • Establishment Resurgence: MAGA infighting allows a traditional Republican to stage a comeback (e.g., Marco Rubio).
  • Perpetual Infighting: The GOP becomes a constellation of warring factions without a clear leader or ideological direction, much like current Democratic Party factionalism.
  • Quote: "The situation is just so chaotic and it's so clear that the people who want to control it don't have the power or authority to do so, and that Trump is the only one who does." (Zack, [22:32])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On GOP panic:
  "They're staring down the barrel of a really, really bad midterm. People are already starting to say that x other faction is responsible because no one can say Trump is at fault for this." (Zack, [09:40])
• On lack of leadership and uncertainty:
  "The future of the Republican Party, which is one of the two most important actors in determining the future of the United States as a whole, is unclear. And so our country's future is unclear." (Zack, [22:44])
• On hypocrisy of media personalities:
  "It's the insistent lack of self reflection... that's at the core of this phenomenon." (Zack, [06:40])

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Important Timestamps

• [02:23] — Introduction to the "hot dog suit" metaphor and its implications.
• [03:08] — Discussion of Ben Shapiro’s complicity and current discomfort.
• [06:51] — Breakdown of Christopher Rufo’s dual role as culture-war architect and current critic.
• [11:12] — Examination of Joe Rogan’s selective skepticism and conspiracy promotion.
• [14:46] — Mark Levin’s attempt to distinguish himself from new extremists.
• [16:40] — Rep. Massie’s insight on voters’ preferences for extremism.
• [18:23] — Analysis of GOP’s possible post-Trump futures.

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Conclusion

In this episode, "On the Media" illuminates how prominent right-wing personalities—having created today's fractious, conspiratorial movement—are now dismayed at their own loss of control. Their attempts to draw new red lines are undermined by a base that always demands further outrage and transgression. With Trump’s presidency faltering and no clear successors, the GOP stands poised on the edge of further radicalization, a return of the establishment, or indefinite chaos. The only certainty is uncertainty, underscoring the high stakes for America's political future.

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Transcript

[A]

On the Media is supported by USA for unhcr, the UN refugee agency in Ukraine, Sudan, and around the world. War is tearing millions of families from their homes. Despite funding cuts, UNHCR continues to provide protection, shelter, and emergency relief to displaced families in more than 120 countries worldwide. For more information, visit unrefugees.org media hey,

[B]

you're listening to the on the Media midweek podcast. I'm Michael Oinger. In advance of the midterms this fall, the man who once spoke nightly to the MAGA establishment on the movement's favorite TV channel says he's done with the gop.

[A]

I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. Not gonna support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm gonna do.

[B]

This is Tucker Carlson speaking on a right wing podcast last week, some citing frustrations over Donald Trump's handling of the economy, his war in Iran, and support of Israel.

[A]

You know, how could you support, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States, that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens?

[B]

Carlson's apparent pivot echoes the move by white supremacist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who has also disavowed the administration for similar reasons. But their turn away from the president and the party is just one form of growing discontent in the right wing podcast circuit. In a recent piece titled the MAGA Stars Freaked out by Their Own Movement, Vox senior correspondent Zach Beecham described a crop of conservative personalities who now fear that their base has grown too bigoted and too conspiratorial. According to Beecham, their disgust with maga's transgressions is ironic because they helped create the party as it is today. Zach, welcome back to otm.

[A]

Hey, I'm always happy to be back.

[B]

So you have a thesis about the current state of the Republican Party. You say that maga's pursuit of transgression has begun to spin out of control, even among some of the people who thought they were steering the ship. You say, quote, it's a real life version of the famous sketch on Tim Robinson's Netflix show. I think you should leave. Can you describe that sketch for listeners who maybe haven't seen it?

[A]

Sure. I'm so glad we're opening with us. There's a store, right? There's a car crash at the store, and the car that crashes into this clothing store is shaped like a hot dog driver's gun. Somebody call the cops. We need to find that driver.

[B]

You know what's driving me nuts?

[A]

It could literally be any one of us.

[B]

No, it couldn't.

[A]

You're dressed like a hot dog. And my basic take here is like, this is really what's going on in the Republican Party right now. You have people who have been very clearly responsible for the party's push further and further to the right and towards a conspiratorial extremist state of mind now getting really upset that people are acting like a conspiratorial extremist party.

[B]

You write about a handful of people who you cheekily refer to as hot dog men who, who are prominent right wing commentators, activists, personalities who had their own personal red lines here or there crossed by the MAGA movement and are sort of squirming as they see their audiences embrace things that they don't like. You point to Ben Shapiro. He is the conservative far right content creator who's kind of started to fall out of favor recently. His audience has dropped off and his media company, Daily Wire, has had to lay off a bunch of staff. Why is he a hot dog man?

[A]

So when I was thinking of examples for this piece, I wanted to be pretty strict about who qualified. I wanted to be somebody not just who was on the right and generally upset about the state of the right, but whose actions and past statements had, in very specific and concrete ways, contributed to the problems that they are now bemoaning. Right. So you can draw a straight line between this person's past behavior and what's going on right now. And I thought Ben was a really good example because he's been on this tear recently. And one of them, I think is actually like really righteous in a lot of ways about the rise of a kind of influencer class that takes sort of a conspiracist, anti Semitic view of the entire world. Right. And he focuses on Tucker Carlson, on Nick Fuentes, and on Candace Owens were three of the right's biggest personalities in podcast world. And I think his critiques of all of them are right. The problem is that Ben actually created some of this, and very specifically, he hired Candace Owens in sort of the late 2010s, Candace Owens was making a name for herself as a right wing provocateur. She had already said a bunch of pretty extreme things in 2020. For instance, she claimed that Bill Gates was doing secret experiments on people in Africa and then said at one point that the problem with Hitler was basically that he tried to do stuff outside of his borders, which is ignoring the whole like, you know, killing German Jews en masse. And in a New Yorker interview recently, he says that he actually liked most of the inflammatory stuff that said back then in 2021, what we saw was a fairly, I would say, mainstream conservative who said inflammatory things, obviously, and who had been telling us that she. Inflammatory things. That you liked some. That I. I would say most of them. That I liked some of them not as much. And that seems to be part of why you hired her, Right? She got attention. They're saying inflammatory stuff.

[B]

So you're saying that Shapiro can't feign ignorance about Candace Owens past flirtations with antisemitism and claim, oh, this is a new thing, because she has been saying anti Semitic stuff all along.

[A]

Anti Semitic. Sort of. Not quite. She's sort of pushed in that direction, but not quite. But conspiracism, which is much of his current critique of her. He's really upset with Candace Owens, for example, for her sort of dark insinuations that Erica Kirk was behind her husband's assassination in league with Israel. Somehow, Candace Owens, as you may have heard me refer at the top of the show, is an evil, twisted human being. Now, the reason I say that today is because Candace has spent the last several months attacking the widow of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk. But Owens has always been a conspiracist. She's always been someone who pushes the boundaries in an extreme direction. And yet it's the insistent lack of self reflection, of acting like they're all trying to find the guy who did this when he's wearing a hot dog suit, you know, that really is at the core of this phenomenon.

[B]

Okay, let's talk about another hot dog man, Christopher Ruffo.

[A]

Yes, another good example. Chris Ruffo, if you're not familiar with him, is probably the leading right wing activist on cultural issues. He's behind a lot of the push against DEI and against critical race theory, if you can remember that panic from a few years ago. He's very sort of effective at pushing discourse to the right, and often it plays very fast and loose with the facts in doing so. For instance, he attempted to validate the lies about Haitians eating cats and dogs in 2020 during the campaign and wrote some long investigations claiming to find evidence of it that did really nothing of the kind. So Rufo recently has been, like Shapiro, very upset about the rise of this sort of anti Semitic conspiracist influencer class. And I want to be clear. I think it's right for both of them to be upset about this My concern is not with the substance of what they're saying, but the deeper logic that underpins it. And so earlier this year, when Joe Kent, who was a high level counterterrorism official in the Trump administration, resigned, Rufo wrote a piece critiquing Kent's resignation letter. Which was pretty out there, right? For instance, Kent describes the recent US and counter ISIS campaign as somehow being a war for Israel, which makes no sense whatsoever and very much smacks of anti Semitic conspiracy theorizing. And Rufa was right to seize on that as a problem. Except in that very same piece where Rufo is bemoaning Kent's state of mind, he notes that he campaigned for Joe Kent when he ran for Congress. Right. Kent ran for Congress twice in 2022 and 2024 in Washington state. But Joe Kent was always this guy back then. He called Nick Fuentes for social media advice during his campaign. He hired a proud boy as a campaign consultant. He did an interview, a neo Nazi podcaster. That's where he comes from. It's what his base was, and it's part of why he lost both of those elections to Congress. Right. In a conservative Washington district.

[B]

It was beyond the pale even then.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's just too crazy. And yet it wasn't for Rufo.

[B]

How much is this new tone from Christopher Rufo and Ben Shapiro a reaction to a genuine ratcheting up of bigotry and conspiracism versus how much of it is just this sort of anxiety about the vibes in the MAGA movement right now where it feels like it's. It's not as fun as it was maybe during the campaign.

[A]

You know, I mean, I think there's sort of two interrelated strands here. Like, one is a sense of failure, as you suggest, Right? Like the Trump administration's not going well at this point. That should be obvious to basically everybody. Trump's approval rating, I saw a poll where he was at 30% recently, which is astonishingly low, though that's not an average or just one poll, but his numbers are really quite bad. There's not any real policy accomplishments that you can point to and be like, look at this really impressive thing that they've done. And they're staring down the barrel of a really, really bad midterm. People are already starting to say that x other faction is responsible because no one can say Trump is at fault for this. Right? So there's a certain level of infighting between people blaming each other for what is ultimately like the result of the Big gu decisions. The second part of it, I think, is a sense of a loss of control and an uncertain future. Right. I do believe that both Ben and Chris are genuinely upset, but it's not just that it bothers them on a moral level. It's that the success of people like Carlson and Owens and Fuentes and their ability to win an audience and get some supporters and congressional GOP delegation, or at least people who are aligned with them broadly, is indicative of an inability of people like Rufo and Shapiro to be the gatekeepers in the conservative movement to say, okay, we've come here, we've gotten to this point with Trump, but we're not going to go any further than that. And that loss of power says something very troubling about the post Trump future.

[B]

And I want to talk more about what this tells us about the GOP in 2028, but let's talk about another example. Joe Rogan. In your piece, you write about a recent episode of his podcast where he starts fretting over conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign.

[A]

It's funny, when you listen to this episode, Rogan gets very upset about the idea that anyone could believe that, that Trump there was some kind of conspiracy involved in the Butler shooting.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And it's not clear exactly what about it that makes him upset about it. He seems to say it's dumb. Like, how could anyone who understand guns believe anything like this? And then there's a photo of a bullet whizzing by his face. Anybody that thinks that that's staged is out of their mind. And I'll grant him that the problem is, like, within roughly a minute in the tape, in the audio, he goes on to talk about how may maybe the guy who tried to shoot Trump had been programmed by MK Ultra, like mind controlled by the government. Well, Tim Burchette, who I had on the podcast, Congressman, Yeah. He thinks that guy was like some sort of an MK Ultra type deal. And he says he thinks they still do that. He thinks someone's still doing that. I've always thought that I'm not trying to steal. MK ULTRA was an old defunct program the government tried out during the Cold War to try to manipulate people's mental state.

[B]

This is the famous, like, LSD mind control operation. Yeah.

[A]

And Rogan is saying that maybe the remnants of this program programmed someone to try to want to shoot Trump. And it's just that is way dumber than thinking that the Butler assassination was staged. Like, it's way crazier. And yet he seems to think there's some kind of like, smell test that this conspiracy theory passed, that the butler was staged by Trump. One doesn't. And I think what he's upset about is in this case, I mean, I'm reading between. The line here is that people are starting to believe a conspiracy theory that is not Joe Rogan approved, that does not fit with whatever his idiosyncratic view of the world is about, what does and doesn't make sense sort of on a gut level. And as a result, he gets real mad. Right. Again, this goes back to the lack of control. Right. It's that people are having unauthorized thoughts, which is funny because it's like how these people described their approach to the world.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like, oh, the mainstream media won't let you think the kind of things that we are saying. You, we're telling you the truths that the man has hidden. Right. And then all of a sudden, when there are quote, unquote truths that are being aired on social media or alternative platforms that they don't like, they get very upset about this.

[B]

There's like this kind of trope now of referring to Joe Rogan as speaking out against the Trump administration, as kind of breaking with the Trump administration when it becomes too extreme. Last month he said he didn't like the idea of the White House hosting an outside UFC event. And then he appeared on camera as an analyst at the event. So I guess he changed his mind. Many in the press like to use him to prove a point about how MAGA is contradictory, how Trump is failing at his agenda.

[A]

It just doesn't seem like he has any appetite for courting a sustained break with the White House that would be difficult for him. I'm going to be a little, little mean here, but I think sort of warranted. Unless and until it becomes good business for Joe Rogan to break with Donald Trump, he's not going to do it.

[B]

What about Mark Levin? You say he's a hot dog man. Who is he and what has been his red line?

[A]

So Mark Levin is an old school talk radio host on the right who has a very long history of saying extremely provocative stuff and has been a hardline MAGA guy. Right. Really, really on board with what the Trump administration has said. And if you've listened to Mark Levin shows, it's just the most vitriolic, ang, over the top, mean, biting commentary on anyone who disagrees with him.

[B]

He's got a kind of like Rush Limbaugh vibe to him. Yeah.

[A]

You know, when I first heard him, I thought he was like Timu Rush Limbaugh, basically. I mean, actually when I first heard him, Teemu didn't exist at that point. So I mean, this is a long time ago, but now that's the language I would use today. Right. You've got the sort of imitator. And then recently he's on this podcast and or radio show and he's talking about how there's this new breed of Republican or conservative aligned podcasters and influencers who make their money by just being crazier than anyone else and they do it for the financial incentives. And it's just like, have you listened to your own show? I could kick Tucker Carlson's ass. He's not that smart. Do you listen to yourself talk? I'm going to get into the gutter with these guys because that's where they are. I can't debate them. I'm not interested in debating them, I'm interested in exposing them. And I said, and I'll see. His show is not about trying to educate anybody. It's about trying to be an ideological extremist who castigates his opponents in the most aggressive possible terms. That's not trying to educate people. That's political infotainment. That's your whole thing. And now that somebody has figured out a direction to take it in that you don't like, that you don't approve of, you're very upset, you. It truly beggars belief that he could say this with a straight face.

[B]

You start your piece with this quote from Representative Thomas Massie in 2017, who, describing Trump's rise, said that his supporters weren't voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, he's right. And he, he knows it better than anybody at this point because he just lost his reelection bid to a Trump backed candidate. And this despite the fact that Massie had gone out there all the time saying he voted with Trump 91% of the time. He didn't oppose Trump or really try to get in his way. He just sort of bucked him on a few issues like the Iran war and the Epstein stuff. He was really out front talking about Jeffrey Epstein and the files. And yet he still lost because voters couldn't tolerate that kind of breaking with the President's agenda and anything that smacked of cooperation with the Democrats. It seems like that's kind of the logic on which the conservative political sphere operates. The base who determine primary outcomes are really interested in someone going further and further in a sort of anti liberal, anti norms direction. And it's just not obvious where this process stops. And I don't think that media voices have the level of authority necessary to prevent or change the basic orientation of so many of these voters.

[B]

So when you're looking at 2028 and this scramble to succeed Trump and take the reins of maga, or what's left of it, how does this thirst for transgression inform your understanding of the current players?

[A]

I think it means that the field is completely open.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The truth is that Trump is this almost unique disciplining force on the conservative movement. Nobody has his charismatic authority with MAGA voters. And that's what is holding this, this fractious group of people who, many of whom really hate each other or have very, very different views of the world together. So what happens afterwards to me is honestly a complete mystery. Right. If the pattern holds that we've been seeing and that we've been talking about so far, the most logical next step would be ideological radicalization, would be the right going in an even more openly conspiratorial and bigoted direction, maybe nominating someone like Tucker Carlson for president. And that's possible. Right?

[B]

There have been rumors that he's positioning himself, but do you really think that he's going to make a bid or is that just kind of like a media gossip narrative?

[A]

It's hard to say. Right. He recently said that he's not a Republican anymore, that he can't vote for the Republican Party, which certainly seems like a dumb thing to say if you want to run for the Republican nomination

[B]

or if you want to appeal to some kind of like growing disaffected non party aligned voter base.

[A]

You got it right. That's the other possibility. Right. Is this is actually just setting oneself up for being able to say in 2028, I told you this was going to be a disaster. I was right. I can swoop in and come back and save the party. Right. That's certainly something that he could do. And I can't dismiss that out of hand. But it's not just him. It could be somebody like him who fits that general profile. So that's one thing. That's one possibility. Another is that basically MAGA infighting opens up the door to a return of the Republican establishment. This is like the reverse scenario of what happened in 2016 when there were like 12 establishment friendly candidates and Donald Trump. Roughly. And Trump won in part because the establishment guys all thought Trump was going to lose and so spent a Bunch of time fighting each other and no one person getting out of the race. Rather than competing against Trump, you can imagine a version of that in reverse happening that there are so many different MAGA voices claiming to be the sort of true spokespeople for the movement that they end up getting in each other's way. And there's somebody who's like wearing a sort of populous skin suit, but nonetheless really reflects pre2016 Republican Party sensibilities. And there are quite a number of those people in hiding in the GOP right now.

[B]

Marco Rubio.

[A]

Marco Rubio would be a great candidate for this kind of thing. That depends on how much Rubio has authentically converted to MAGA ism. Tough to say. Again, I don't have good enough sourcing in Rubio world to be able to say one way or another on that front. And there are arguments I could make both ways, but he certainly would be a good candidate. And then there's a third possibility which I think is actually quite similar to what's going on in the Democratic Party right now, which is a kind of like a low boil internal conflict forever. Right? Like in the Democratic Party today, since Hillary Clinton's defeat, there's been no unifying narrative or story that has explained what the party stood for other than being against Trump. And that's been enough to win one presidential election and be a very effective force in midterm elections. But it's not enough to establish a new identity for the party or an ideological narrative it wants to cohere around. So you've got a bunch of different factions, you've got moderates, you have sort of people more focused on social issues and identity politics. You have the Bernie type socialists, all sorts of different wings that you can talk about, and no one of them has been able to consolidate control or authority. And I think that could happen in the Republican Party. You get a lot of different groups in different subgroups with different interests, and they fight each other in perpetuity over control and over individual elections. But no one contest is decisive. And so you have a GOP that's ideologically adrift for quite some time in the absence of Trump. And I think that's a possibility, too. And there may be something else, honestly, that I can't foresee. The situation is just so chaotic and it's so clear that the people who want to control it don't have the power or authority to do so, and that Trump is the only one who does. And like, eventually he has limits, right? He has to die. At one point. He can't last forever. So we don't know. We just don't know. That's the ultimate lesson of all of this. The future of the Republican Party, which is one of the two most important actors in determining the future of the United States as a whole, is unclear. And so our country's future is unclear.

[B]

Zach, thank you very much.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Zach Beacham is a senior correspondent at Vox covering the crisis of global democracy. Thanks for listening to the on the Media midweek podcast. If you want to hear more from us, just search on the Media on Instagram and TikTok where Brooke and I are now posting videos which give you a sort of behind the scenes of the show. You can see clips from some of our interviews and and hear us reflect on things that we're following in the news. Don't forget to tune into the big show on Friday. I'm Michael Lowinger.