Drew Harwell

It was just a complete money pit.

And even on their YouTube, if you go onto the Pendragon Cycle YouTube, it's gotten the low hundreds of subscribers.

So it was just a real, real loss.

Yeah, so I think the biggest change point was the October 7th attacks in Israel.

You know, for a time before that, the conservative movement was heavily pro-Israel, you know, by default.

And Ben Shapiro was a proud cheerleader of that because he's a practicing Jew.

He wears a yarmulke.

He's very proud of his Jewish heritage.

He is very openly pro-Israel.

And yet that moment became a huge fracture point for MAGA, definitely MAGA media online, because you had the traditional conservatives who were staunchly pro-Israel.

But then you had this rising faction that was defined by some people who were just sort of critical of Israel.

And then, you know, a side of it that was openly anti-Semitic.

And you had these people like Candace Owens, who shares a lot of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and who for a time was a rising star at the Daily Wire.

She got her fame out.

in Ben Shapiro's organization, but then left it after October 7th because her and Ben Shapiro were constantly fighting over these issues.

So there was just this bigger debate happening that was roiling MAGA, and the Daily Wire became a microcosm of it because you had these two different conservative factions fighting over where MAGA should go to next.

I think it's a little bit of both, honestly.

They were pouring a lot of money into bad business decisions.

They were gaining less money because their business model was changing.

They couldn't just make $100 million on Facebook anymore.