'Watching the snake eat itself': These top MAGA podcasters are tearing each other apart

04 August

Image via Gage Skidmore / Shutterstock

A civil war is breaking out in the far-right media ecosystem, with some of the most popular MAGA podcasters now setting their sights on each other rather than Democrats.

In a Monday essay, Salon's Sophia Tesfaye delved into the right-wing podcast wars in which MAGA mascots like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are all taking a scorched-earth approach in their criticisms of each other. Tesfaye likened it to "watching the MAGA snake eat itself," calling it "one of the few silver linings in the Trump era."

Tesfaye began by recalling Carlson's most recent podcast episode, in which he interviewed Owens for approximately two hours. Both notably attacked Ben Shapiro, who is the co-founder of the far-right Daily Wire website, for his support of Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza. They also attacked pro-Israel donors for revoking their support of certain universities in response to pro-Palestinian campus protests, saying they were being hypocritical for not doing the same following Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Owens also lobbed shots at neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes — another MAGA-aligned podcaster who was once invited to dine with President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago — during her interview with Carlson. Even though Owens invited Fuentes to her home studio for an interview on her podcast, she described her encounter with the Holocaust denier and white supremacist as "entirely fraudulent."

Fuentes didn't take Owens' attacks lightly, calling her a "DEI hire" and an "Uncle Tom token Black" who "thinks she's some kind of boss b——." He added that he was "done with all the Uncle Toms," including conservative media pundit Jason Whitlock, saying that they "built their career on a grift that is now dead."

The invective against the Jewish community and the pro-Israel lobby prompted MAGA influencer Laura Loomer — also known as President Donald Trump's unofficial "loyalty enforcer" — to observe that while she previously thought antisemitism was confined to the left, she "never realized how bad it was on the right until last year." Loomer also called Carlson a "liar and a propagandist, adding that "deep down, he’s a Trump hater too."

Tesfaye wryly noted at the end of her article that watching MAGA voices snipe at each other was somewhat cathartic: "There is some fleeting comfort in knowing how much the people who hate everyone also hate each other," Tesfaye wrote. "It’s kind of like 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians.' But at least that family’s wealth provides an aesthetically pleasing background."

Click here to read Tesfaye's full essay on Salon.

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