The right-wing manosphere and its conservative influencers have long served as the yapping chorus for the Trump administration — so much so that President Donald Trump elevated two of it’s more vocal members to positions in the FBI.
But Salon reports former Fox News regular, grievance podcaster and now FBI head Kash Patel has been drawing rancor from the right-wing media ecosystem that once elevated him, “mocking his missteps and … openly calling him a liar.”
Now the FBI’s investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is drawing new fire.
The 84-year-old mother of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie was reported missing on Feb. 1, but while prior administrations have traditionally remained tight-lipped on details until they had solid results Patel was quick to report on Fox News’ “Hannity” that the FBI was investigating “persons of interest” and had made “substantial progress.” Hours later, authorities detained innocent delivery driver Carlos Palazuelos at a Tucson traffic stop before releasing him without charges.
“I felt like I was being kidnapped, bro,” Palazuelos told reporters.
Nearly two weeks since Guthrie’s apparent abduction, law enforcement still hasn’t apprehended a suspect, and Salon reports the MAGA world is boiling with frustration.
“The conservative One America News Network aired a debunked report on Friday claiming the Pima County Sheriff’s Department had refused to cooperate with Patel’s FBI,” Salon reports. “Candace Owens, who called for Patel to ‘step down’ after revelations that he was using his legal team to support lawsuits filed by his girlfriend, suggested the director was complicating the Guthrie investigation.”
“Goes without saying that there is something wrong with the Savannah Guthrie story,” Owens posted on X. “The issue is it’s Arizona which is a political cartel. And Kash Patel is racing over there to play hero.”
Salon reports it does not help that Patel frequently barks at premature leads.
“In September, mere hours after Charlie Kirk was killed, Patel prematurely announced a suspect had been apprehended — only to have to backtrack when authorities had taken the wrong man into custody. He repeated the mistake in December, touting how the FBI had detained a person of interest in the shooting at Brown University who was later cleared of any connection to the deadly crime,” Salon said.
Additionally, Patel’s handling of the Epstein files (long a rallying cry for MAGA influencers hoping to trap Democrats in the Epstein sphere) has proven Patel’s “ultimate undoing with the MAGA base,” reports Salon. Patel’s earlier claim to Congress that the FBI has “no credible information” on Epstein trafficking kids to anyone beyond himself is more and more undermined by the steady drip of new information from the Epstein files.
“Everyone in the world now knows that there was 100 percent a human trafficking operation where Jeffrey Epstein was procuring girls for wealthy and powerful people. Everybody knows that,” said conservative podcast host Tim Dillon, while torching Patel as a “big fat liar” and demanding he resign.
That takedown drew praise from manosphere leader Joe Rogan, who both promoted and voted for Trump.
“Over the past year, right-wing media had been learning a hard lesson: that the institutions it spent years attacking don’t magically become infallible when they are run by loyalists,” reports Salon. “Some MAGA influencers are realizing — far too late — that competence does, in fact, matter.”