Jimmy Dore (22:18)
And then you see these reporters who you trusted saying that shit on the air. So can you imagine reading that cue card she's reading and not realizing it's the setup to a joke where you are the punchline? Imagine that, why don't you? Because here it is. Megyn Kelly talks Ben Shapiro's betrayal and the MAGA reckoning at America Fest. Hmm. And as America Fest convened, the likes of Erica Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Kelly Shapiro and other conservative stars, MAGA was anything but united. So this is from the Vanity Fair article. It says Megyn Kelly had no idea that Ben Shapiro planned to go after her when he launched into a scathing broadside against what he called charlatans and grifters in the conservative movement on the first night of Turning Point's annual conference last week. His pointed inclusion of Megyn Kelly shocked the commentator who has long considered Ben Shapiro a friend. I was flabbergasted, she told me soon after stepping off the stage. The same stage where her searing response to Shapiro was rapturously received by the crowd. I thought, who do you think you are? When more than 90,000 people gathered at a stadium in Arizona for Charlie Kirk's funeral in September, speakers at the pyrotechnic infused revival predicted a new dawn for conservative politics. The coalition, unified in its support for President Donald Trump and its horror at Kirk's killing was in harmony. This is the new territory for the Republican Party. Turning Point COO Tyler Bauer said at the time. The fusion of Christ and our politics is changing the culture. It's unifying everyone. This is our civil rights moment. Hmm. Who does he think he is? Maybe Moloch? I don't know his diet. Anyway, just a few months later, at Turning Point's America Fest gathering in Phoenix, that unity collapsed into an interseen feud between rival factions vying for to define Kirk's legacy and steer the future of right wing politics. Moments after Kirk's widow, Erica Kirk, opened the conference with a speech calling her late husband a Peacemaker. And urging an end to the squabbling, Shapiro issued a blistering jury maid that Jerry made. I never heard that word blistering Jerry maid. That recalled William F. Buckley Jr's attempted excommunication of the far right. The conservative movement is in serious danger, Shapiro said, from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair. He denounced Candace Owens, a podcaster he once employed at the Daily Wire, the media company he co founded, who has emerged as the chief purveyor of conspiracy theories about Kirk's murder. I would say she's the chief purveyor of conspiracy facts. How about that? Her video investigates everything she said has been correct. And anything she said that is incorrect, she immediately corrects. And she's exposed the people telling her to shut up as liars over and over and over again. They never mentioned that in any of these articles. They never mentioned that. Oh, by the way, Candace Owens has never once been caught lying, but she's caught the people trying to shut her up lying over and over and over. Okay, her. Her videos instigating the killing, investigating the killing, infused with all the drama of a true crime documentary, have been viewed millions of times. You know why? Because nobody else is telling us the truth about Charlie Kirk's assassination. And so that we go to Candace Owens to get some. Some truth. It feels good. Shapiro extended his criticism to those he said have refused to condemn Candace's truly vicious attacks. He named Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon, Trump's top adviser from his first term. A few hours later, on the same stage, Carlson fired back to hear calls for like, de platforming and denouncing people at Charlie Kirk event. I'm like, what? Carlson said with an air of annoyed confusion. I mean, this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk's public life, and I think that he died for it. I found it kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement. Megyn Kelly responded in her own appearance on stage the following night. It reminded me when the girl who was the head of our middle school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away from me. Yeah, I know. As if to make her point about Shapiro's diminished influence, the crowd roared at Kelly's remarks. After she left the stage, Kelly told me Ben Shapiro's attack, quote, felt like a betrayal. Betrayal by a friend, end quote. She compared the demand that she condemn Owens to progressive purity tests, saying, I never posted the black square and I never raised my fist at a restaurant, and I'm certainly not going to condemn the people Ben Shapiro demands I condemn in order to be in his imaginary club. Denounce, denounce, condemn, disassociate. F you, she said. Whoa, whoa. Like Carlson, Kelly tied Shapiro's broadside to his support for Israel. Ben is Israel first, said Megyn Kelly. She understands that Shapiro would consider such a change anti Semitic. And I'm sorry, but his behavior has proven that charge to be correct. Why would you divide the American conservative movement, which was gelling, which was becoming much more cohesive for a moment after Charlie died over Israel? She said, wow, Good for her. Kelly also took aim at Barry Weiss, the newly appointed editor in chief of CBS News. Her website, the Free Press, published an adapted version of Ben Shapiro's remarks, which Bari Weiss posted on Twitter. It's this very loud group of pro Israel activists that is trying to make this the litmus test about whether you get to call yourself a conservative. And they lack standing to do that. Megyn Kelly said Barry in particular has made her career on the anti cancel culture thing. Meanwhile, she's never been canceled and she's basically supporting Ben's attempt to cancel me from the conservative movement, of which she's not a part. What Charlie and I saw at the same time was that the country is turning, Megyn Kelly said, and young Republicans are turning on Israel. She argued that figures like Shapiro and Barry Weiss are actually fueling the rise of anti Semitism through their attempts to censor criticism of Israel. Quote, they are making anti Semites. She said. Tucker is not making anti Semites. They are. Wow, that's. Wow, that's. And here's my. So Brooke Gold. So first of all, let me just bring Ryan, Matta and Ryan. What do you. What, what do you. What do you say about. So she considers herself a Zionist, and here she is being excommunicated or someone who's the head Zionist in the conservative movement, Ben Shapiro, try. Who walks around with a yarmulke on trying to excommunicate her from the conservative movement over Israel. What, what. And what do you say to all this?