The rightwing podcast-sphere is in turmoil as Ben Shapiro’s all-out feud with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Piers Morgan rages on after he accused the hosts of platforming antisemites and letting conspiracy theories go unchecked during the war on Iran.
The group traded fresh barbs this week after Shapiro accused Morgan of platforming “actual Nazis and the Nazi-adjacent,” adding that he refuses to appear on Morgan’s talk show for that reason.
Shapiro, who co-founded the Daily Wire, called Morgan’s show the “Jerry Springer of political television” as he tore into the British talk show host for inviting Dave Smith, a controversial comedian known for his vocal criticism of Israel, onto the show.
Shapiro then rolled a montage of clips from Morgan’s show of guests who invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories and praised Adolf Hitler – but Morgan responded that those snippets only told half the story.
“It’s outrageously disingenuous that the clips he showed did not include the parts of those interviews where I called out every single one of them about things I didn’t agree with,” Morgan fumed on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where he played the omitted footage from those same interviews.
“You can take the view, as many do, that interviewing people with extreme opinions is pointless. You can stick your head in the sand like an ostrich or hide behind your very big desk and wish they didn’t have an audience, but they do,” Morgan continued, after tweeting a photo showing Shapiro shrunken down to less than half his height.
Kelly came to Morgan’s defense during an episode of her show on Wednesday, arguing that he always pushes back on his guests and ridiculing “King Ben” for trying to cancel him.
“It’s very sad to me as somebody who’s known Ben forever, and made Ben. One-hundred percent – he became a star on my show,” Kelly averred. “And like, there is absolutely no cause to go run around policing the guests on somebody else’s show.”
She added that her 15-year friendship with Shapiro soured following a Turning Point USA event last December — soon after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — where Shapiro warned Republicans of “charlatans” and “grifters” who “traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair.”
He bashed Kelly and Tucker Carlson for not publicly denouncing Candace Owens – who previously worked at the Daily Wire – for spreading conspiracy theories about Kirk’s killer and saying she was suspicious of Charlie’s widow Erika Kirk.
Later on during the same event, Carlson questioned why Shapiro would call for “de-platforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event,” when “this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk’s public life, and I think that he died for it.”
“I was very good friends with Ben, and then he attacked me to my surprise, utter shock, at the Turning Point event in December,” Kelly said on her podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show” this week.
“He thought that I should be lumped in as one of the problems when it comes to, I guess, antisemitism, even though I have spent the past two and half years fighting antisemitism very, very vocally on this show.”
In a Vanity Fair profile soon after the clash at the Turning Point event, Kelly lashed out at Shapiro and CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who are both Jewish, saying: “Tucker is not making antisemites. They are.”
The jabs turned personal this week as Kelly tweeted Thursday: “Poor little Ben – and I do mean little – desperate for me to protect him. Can you imagine being this emasculated? Sad.”
Shapiro replied: “Don’t worry, Megyn. I’d never ask you to protect me. You won’t even protect Charlie Kirk’s widow from the monster accusing her of murdering Charlie” — an apparent reference to Owens.
He pushed back on Kelly’s argument that he had accused her of antisemitism, saying he never made that accusation and only called on her to speak out against Owens.
“I think that Tucker Carlson has fostered antisemitism by having on some of the worst antisemites in America over and over and then essentially laundering their views. I have never remotely called Megyn Kelly an antisemite,” Shapiro said.
“Now I see she’s taking credit for my entire career. Well, you know, congrats, Megyn, I suppose,” Shapiro added. “I disagree about my career trajectory, but that’s fine. If you want to take credit, sure.”
Carlson caused an uproar late last year for hosting notorious antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his show.
The seemingly endless feuding was poised to continue for the foreseeable future, with Carlson taking an apparently new line of attack against Shapiro.
“I don’t want to attack Ben Shapiro other than to say, that guy went to Harvard? And so did Bill Ackman?” Carlson sniped on an episode of Morgan’s show uploaded Friday. “I know them both — not geniuses, like not even close to geniuses.”
