Far Right Stars Are Bemoaning the Chaos They Created
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What is the episode's framing of far-right figures bemoaning MAGA chaos?
Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Loewinger. 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.
I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. I'm not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do.
This is Tucker Carlson speaking on a right wing podcast last week, citing frustrations over Donald Trump's handling of the economy, his war in Iran and support of Israel.
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?
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. Hey, I'm always happy to be back. 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 for listeners who maybe haven't seen it?
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 gone. Somebody call the cops. We need to find that driver.
You know what's driving me nuts?
It could literally be any one of us. No, it couldn't. 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.
You write about a handful of people who you cheekily refer to as hot dog men 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's 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?
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 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.
And he focuses on Tucker Carlson, on Nick Fuentes, and on Candace Owens, who are three of the right's biggest personalities in podcast world.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the episode's framing of far-right figures bemoaning MAGA chaos?
0:00–10:05
2
How does the 'hot dog men' sketch explain conservative influencers losing control?
10:05–16:11
3
Why is Ben Shapiro criticized for creating controversial right‑wing stars?
16:11–22:18
4
How did Candace Owens' past provocations factor into Shapiro's complaints?
22:18–22:50