The Antisemitism of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and JD Vance: Jeremy Boreing Reveals the Key Differences
This insider's perspective from the co-founder and former CEO of The Daily Wire warrants a thorough unpacking and analysis.
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In last week’s excessively long, embarrassingly histrionic, absurdly overwrought essay-turned-manifesto, “The 4 Reasons Why I Have Chosen to Retire from the Counter-Islamist Movement,” I promised to unpack and analyze the two interviews above which dropped last month featuring Jeremy Boreing, the co-founder and former co-CEO of The Daily Wire which is now distributing his very badass Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin miniseries.
Do watch all of both interviews—they’re entertaining and informative. But if you’re in a hurry and just want me to pull out the meat from the sandwich so you can scarf it down on the run then here you go.
And full disclosure: years ago The Daily Wire both published articles that I wrote (edited by Josh Hammer) and hired me to write scripts for a web series they produced. Jeremy’s been kind and encouraging to me when we’ve interacted over the years. I regard Jeremy’s accomplishments with The Daily Wire, his razors brand, and the films he’s created as the most successful application thus far of our shared mentor Andrew Breitbart’s directive to not just complain about leftist culture but to go and create our own cultural products based on our values.
So I am obviously biased in Jeremy’s favor and sympathetic to what he says here which is obviously why I am taking the time to transcribe and analyze it. However, I do differ on a few notable points which I will explain in the analysis below. Jeremy is more charitable and diplomatic than I am most of the time.
Lay your bias out on the table. Let the people know what they’re getting. Don’t try to hide the truth about who you are. That’s what Andrew taught us.
I have divided this analysis into four parts and I have edited together relevant excerpts from both interviews to do so. Each part will start with a question/answer from the Piers Morgan interview, followed by one from the Triggernometry interview on the same theme where Jeremy elaborates more deeply. These four topics will be:
1. The Truth of What Candace Owens Really Believes
2. The Massive Difference Between Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson
3. How to Understand Nick Fuentes’ Media Manipulation Tactics
4. The Mystery of What JD Vance Really Believes
I will provide analysis of Jeremy’s comments and also put especially important portions in bold. I have intentionally let his statements run long rather than edit them down.
1. “I Am The Voice of The People”: The Truth About What Candace Owens Really Believes
Host Piers Morgan, January 30, 2026:
“She’s unbelievably smart. She’s a brilliant debater. She’s compelling. She’s great on camera. All of these things. But I’ve watched her in the last couple of years drifting to a place where I really really have reservations about whether she believes half the stuff that she’s putting on her show, you know, whether it’s Bridget Macaron being a man or all the Charlie Kirk stuff or whatever it may be. I do think she’s now gone down a path of deliberately promoting conspiracy theories for cash. What is your assessment?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, the problem with trying to wield cynicism for clicks is that cynicism ultimately wields you. And I think that’s true of a lot of the sort of mistakes that we make in life. We always think that we’re too clever for the sort of evil that exists in the world to ever touch us.
I’ve asked Candace on two separate occasions what she actually believes. On both occasions, she said, ‘I believe what the people believe. I am the voice of the people.’
And, of course, both times, ‘I don’t know what that means, Candace.’ I’ve come to understand though, at least from my point of view, I think she’s articulating the idea of audience capture and expressing it as a positive value.
Does she actually believe the things that she’s saying? I don’t know. I do know that if you say things long enough, you come to believe them. The most convincing voice in the world is our own voice.
To your point, though, Candace is a genuine superstar. I mean, she has it, the thing that we talk about in show business. She has it in spades. I’ve never met anybody with any more of it. The camera absolutely loves her. She to your point, she’s whips smart. When she’s using those powers in service of the true and the good and the virtuous, I think there’s nobody better.
But like you, I’m very concerned about the direction that she’s that she’s taking it right now.”
Host Piers Morgan, following a montage of clips of Candace slamming the Daily Wire:
“What’s your feeling when you hear that?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, she says it on behalf of the world, so it must be true. Listen, it’s funny to hear Candace—who will do literally now, you know, over 50 episodes on the Charlie Kirk assassination—talk about other people fixating. You know, this is, it’s ridiculous. Candace is very good at what she does. She makes very compelling television, and that’s all you’re seeing in those clips.”
Jeremy Boreing on Triggernometry, January 28, 2026:
“But making money can never be the highest priority. When you’re ordering the priorities of a company like the Daily Wire, when you’re ordering the priorities of a business like the business you have with Triggernometry, you you have to keep the mission as your number one priority because definitionally all the other priorities will subordinate to it.
If you ever find yourself making profit or audience growth the number one priority, then necessarily the mission will subordinate itself to that priority. And that’s when you start making really cynical decisions. And in my experience, I’ve made cynical decisions. Of course, in my career, every time I make a cynical decision, it’s come back to bite me.
I think that that’s not true if you are a cynical person. I mean, there is a lane for the pure cynic.
I call it the grift industrial complex. Beware the grift industrial complex. It’s real.
It can be incredibly lucrative and it can be incredibly rewarding too in terms of the feedback that you get from the audience. If you tell people what they want to hear, they are always very happy with you. If you tell people always what they want to hear, they reward you financially. They reward you, you know, by clicking and by liking, by giving you that affirmation and that dopamine and pretty soon that becomes the thing that you serve.
Triggernometry Co-host Francis Foster:
“I mean, one of the people who is at the forefront of movement that you’ve just talked about, let’s call it the Grift Industrial Complex, is Candace Owens. When Candace worked for you, do you sometimes look back at the decision and think that wasn’t a good one when she was working at the Wire?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Yeah. Well, I certainly think that hiring Candace is probably the biggest mistake of my professional life so far.
At the time I had misgivings about Candace, but it wasn’t a completely cynical decision. I believed that Candace could be a great force for good in the world. I still believe that Candace is the most talented person I’ve ever met, not just in conservative media, but in in any media. She has it. You know, she has that star quality. You know it the moment that you meet her: Unbelievable charm, unbelievable charisma. The camera absolutely loves her. She has incredibly unique gifts and skills in that area.
And when she wields those gifts and skills for good, she’s incredibly effective. She was during the BLM movement in America. Some of the content that we made when we first brought Candace on was focused on that topic and I think she was as good as anybody in the world and made a really positive impact.
I’ve said before Candace is like nuclear energy. You know, if you harness it properly, she can power a city. If you lose control, she’ll flatten the city. And I think that’s what we’re seeing now.
Candace, all those same gifts that she has at various times used for good, she’s now using for ill.
And there’s no one better. The problem is, if what you’re pursuing is bad and you’re the best at it, you’re going to do an incredible amount of damage. And Candace is doing an incredible amount of damage.”
Analysis
“I call it the grift industrial complex. Beware the grift industrial complex. It’s real.”
Most people have no idea just how much money one can make peddling conspiracy theories on the internet.
In August 2022, one expert testified at trial that Alex Jones was worth approximately $270 million. His company that produced his InfoWars show was valued at hundreds of millions.
Those are the riches that await the one who would dare to climb the peaks of Conspiracy Theory Salesmanship.
Do you want a pile of hundreds of millions? Are you willing to be hated by most of the civilized world in order to get it?
Candace Owens certainly is. And who taught her how to do this?
Like Jeremy, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller, and myself, she too received formative career guidance and support from the late David Horowitz.
A November 20, 2023 Statement from the David Horowitz Freedom Center denouncing Owens after her choice to emerge as an antisemite, quotes her as describing her invitation to a Restoration Weekend event, that “this really is the conference where everything started for me.”
Owens said that “I started my career, my political career on YouTube making just funny, satirical videos, and I got an email from David Horowitz inviting me to this conference, and let me just tell you what a big deal it was for me. I had no connections whatsoever.”
I went to a couple of those Restoration Weekend events in the years before Owens. So many memories that I try not to think about—they’re just tucked back in my head like old clothes stored in the attic.
As I’ve expressed before, and will do so in the future, I remain very angry with David about a whole lot of things. He made way too many mistakes and was deeply morally confused about so much. Money distorted his activism too much. I will begin to unpack some of this over the course of this series, however, in doing so I can still remain balanced enough to point out where he did get it right. I still agree with David about a lot. So rather than dwell on the harsh reality of the truth of the “Grift Industrial Complex,” I’ll save that for further down the line, as David’s take-down of Candace is worth quoting more in full.
Let the Old Man speak from beyond the grave. This is attributed to “the editors” but it’s clearly David:
Instead of liberating the black community, Candace began giving platforms to anti-Israel voices like Andrew Tate, a Muslim convert who said that “ISIS are the real Muslims because ISIS do exactly what the book says.”
The David Horowitz Freedom Center has previously criticized Candace’s promotion of Tate. But because of our history with Candace and our hope that she would pull out of this spiral, we did not make an issue of it.
The atrocities of October 7, the appearance of ignorant mobs in the U.S. chanting “Hitler was right” and supporting the Hamas terrorists, and Candace’s moral equivalence about these neo-Nazis have changed the stakes. We have decided to issue the present statement because of her recent promotion of Hamas’ genocidal lies.
For example, she has falsely compared Israel to the “segregated South.” This is the sort of ignorant ‘Apartheid State” slander that we expect from Black Lives Matter – and the Jew-killers of the Middle East.
When Candace implied that Israel was engaged in “genocide” for defending itself against the atrocities committed by Hamas, that’s the kind of genocidal lie we expect to hear from Hamas.
And when she suggested that to remove the Hamas auxiliary — Students for Justice in Palestine — from campuses would increase antisemitism, that’s what we expect to hear from the New York Times.
It’s not what we at the Freedom Center stand for and it’s not what the patriotic movement we have been helping to build over the last 35 years represents.
Instead of focusing on the meaningful activism and defense of American values that brought her to our attention, Candace Owens has become obsessed with her own fame, stirring up drama to compensate for a lack of real achievement. Her comments about Israel and her promotion of people like Andrew Tate are part of a pattern. Candace tackles a subject she knows nothing about, never bothers to learn anything about it, and then rides the backlash by playing the victim to generate more fame and money.
What a tragic misuse of talents.
In 2018, Candace tweeted that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was clueless. She’s “programmed to hate Israel and she has no idea why.” Now she has become AOC. Candace hates Israel for the same reason that AOC does. Fame. She proved that she knows as little about Israel as AOC does when she falsely claimed that the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem is the only place that Muslims are allowed to live, thus “proving” the Hamas canard that Israel practices apartheid. It does not.
Writing the take-down piece was always what David was best at. And it’s what he seemed to enjoy the most—drafting long, elaborate articles dismantling some figure on the Left or sometimes on the Right too. They could be elaborate and baroque, hitting every single point obsessively. His whole output of books is largely variations of that.
And I suppose I’m doing something in that genre right now here with this absurd article and series?
2. The Key Difference Between Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson
Piers Morgan:
“It’s very interesting to be watching from the sidelines if you like about how it always used to be the case. The conservative right in America would line up full square behind Israel for example. But now that’s not the case. Now you see people like Tucker Carlson, you see Candace, you see Dave Smith, you see a lot of people now who are very outspoken against Israel and you’re seeing a real split I guess there.
What what do you make of that? Have you noticed this? Do you feel concerned about it? What’s your feel about the way this has gone?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, I’d be careful not to conflate Candace Owens—who is sort of the queen of the Grift Industrial Complex—with Tucker Carlson, who—like him or leave him—is engaged in an actual political project. You know, as far as I can tell, Tucker is trying to create a new American majority out of a sort of amalgamation of left-wing economic populism on the one hand and right-wing social populism on the other.
He’s actively engaged behind the scenes at the White House and staffing decisions. He wields his influence to try to effectuate a political end. I happen to disagree vehemently with him about what I perceive to be the political good, but at least what he’s doing is fundamentally political.
I don’t think what Candace is doing is fundamentally political at all. I think that she’s engaged in a kind of self aggrandizement and click chasing, audience capture—economic, cynical economic play. I don’t perceive that about Tucker.”
Triggernometry Co-host Francis Foster:
“I may disagree with Ben [Shapiro] on certain things, but I know that he’s consistent. He’s logical. The same with Konstantine [his co-host on Triggernometry]. But when you have political influences like Candace and Tucker, that’s another package entirely, isn’t it?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Yeah. Well, I’d be careful about conflating Candace with Tucker.
You know, Candace Owens is engaged in a—as I see it—Candace is engaged in a project of self aggrandizement.
I’ve asked Candace on two separate occasions, “What do you actually believe?”
And on both occasions, she told me, “I believe what the people believe. I am the voice of the people.”
Never mind that that’s a completely amoral statement. Never mind that I don’t know who ‘the people’ are in this conversation. Uh never mind that the people, whoever they are, can obviously be wrong. Candace is actually saying something profound. She’s she’s saying, ‘I will say whatever gets the most reward.’ She may not even know that that’s what she’s saying, but she’s essentially articulating audience capture as a virtue.
Tucker Carlson—I don’t believe Tucker Carlson’s engaged in audience capture. I think Tucker Carlson is part of a small cohort of people—cohort includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, cohort includes Steve Bannon, cohort includes Nick Fuentes, although I’m not saying that Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson believe all of the same things—but these are people engaged in an actual political project.
You know, these are people who are engaged in trying to create a new American majority premised on left-wing economic populism and right-wing social populism.
You can say what you want about that, whether it’s good or bad, you can say what you want about it. But it it is a political enterprise. They believe that they can create a majority and that that majority can rule the country. And it’s a new vision in terms of the ruling class in our country.
It’s not that there’s never been people who put forward that vision, but it’s never been as poised to seize to seize actual political power as it is right now in the hands of that group of people.
So, I don’t you know. Some of the sort of superficial qualities look the same, but I don’t think it actually is the same.
Candace is not engaged in a political project. Tucker Carlson is very much engaged in a political project.”
…
“When Tucker says ‘JD Vance and Marjorie Taylor Greene and I can change the foreign policy of this country,’ well, believe him. He’s telling you what his project is. He’s trying to change the sort of historic politics of the country. That’s it. Candace isn’t.”
Analysis
Jeremy has struck on something crucial here.
Who are the people on the Right now who are just in this for cash money and who is in this for POWER? Who wants to be able to use the state to inflict violence on people?
Who realizes that holding the levers of government and pulling them to change the course of history is much more exciting than merely sitting on a few hundred million dollars to spend on toys like Alex Jones?
I think he’s right that Tucker, Marge Greene, and Steve Bannon are the real deal of activist political operators who genuinely want an “America First,” right-wing “populist nationalist” movement. They’re ideologues building a movement. Candace has always just been chasing cash.
What this means is that Tucker is genuinely much more dangerous for fueling more hate in America than Candace. Tucker is growing a movement and building the infrastructure for one. He’s potentially taking over the GOP and may be the one to take Trump’s place. He is growing something significant and has deep levels of influence, whereas Candace can only grow her own celebrity cult of personality. Related, a piece I wrote from last year that was our most popular:
How Should We Understand Nick Fuentes? And What Must We Do To Deal With Him?
Piers Morgan:
“How best to deal with people like Nick Fuentes? You know, I had him on the show recently. I think five, six million people watched it. There’s no doubt there’s a huge interest in this guy. I think I challenged him pretty robustly over all his views. But, you know, his technique was to kind of brazenly just admit most of it. ‘Yeah, I’m a racist. Yeah, I’m this.’ To mock the Holocaust and so on and so on.
You know, it’s quite hard to have a serious conversation with somebody that does that kind of thing. His groypers—his followers—loved it. Of course, nobody ends up, you know, they just declare total all out victory, whatever.
I don’t feel I got much out of it to be honest with you, but you know, people like him are increasingly popular. I know that you had quite strong views about him. I don’t think he appeared at the Daily Wire, certainly not in recent years. What’s the best way to handle people like that who are phenomena out there? If you don’t platform them, they go unchallenged. If you do, they kind of use it to fuel themselves and become ever more popular.
What’s the best way, do you think, to handle this?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, I do think that it’s a a flaw in the immune system of popular media that we don’t have good tools to deal with people who aren’t playing by any sort of rules that we identify. You know, I think the Daily Wire’s position during my tenure was to ignore Nick Fuentes and not have him on, not to give him any exposure.
The problem is, of course, that Nick engages in enormous amounts of irony. You know, his his fans understand the plan. They trust the plan. They don’t even see the same interview that your average audience member sees when they watch you talk to Nick Fuentes. It might as well be a completely different show that they’re watching because Nick is not having the surface level conversation.
What he’s doing is actually very sophisticated. It’s incredibly funny. I mean, I have to admit I have to mute Nick on social media because I’ll watch every clip and laugh 90% of the time. He’s very, very talented.
And if you see what he’s doing—listen, I despise what he’s doing—again, I think that he’s also engaged in a true political project. And so, I don’t want to completely, I don’t want to discount him or be dismissive of him.
I think that what Nick Fuentes is doing will have actual political resonance for the rest of our lives.
And I think it’s a thing that has to be opposed. And as someone on the Right, I believe that, you know, it’s my job to oppose it.
But I don’t think that it does any good to engage in conversation with him as though the conversation is of the sort that you and I are having right now where we’re just exchanging ideas in good faith.
Nick Fuentes is not exchanging ideas with you in good faith. When you have a conversation with him, you are a prop and he is wielding you to make all the jokes and get in all the points that he’s hoping to get in for his very select, initiated audience.
For that reason, you can’t win a debate with him.”
Triggernometry Co-host Francis Foster:
“A lot of these people in this movement are Christians. They’re very, very devout Christians or hardline, however you want to describe it. And when they talk about America, it’s almost to me like they’re talking about a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. And the only way that to deal with a Sodom and Gomorrah is what God did, which was to burn it to the ground.”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, listen, there there is a religious component to a lot of what’s happening. You know, people like Nick Fuentes like to lead with ‘Christ is King’ as a sort of tribal rally cry, right? Rallying cry.
I think that that’s anathema to—I think what they’re actually, the term ‘Christ is king’ is not anathema to Christianity or the gospel message—but what they are admittedly doing by invoking the term ‘Christ is King’ is—Nick Fuentes is very clear about what he’s doing when he uses “Christ is King.”
He chose a rallying cry that would exclude Jews.
That’s why he chose it. So therefore, “Christ is King” is a way of excluding Jews from the political project that that he’s engaged in creating. I think that is anathema to the Gospel. I think it’s using the the name of the Lord in vain. I’ve said as much publicly before.
I think one should be very careful about wielding the name of God for personal or tribal gain. Does that mean that that is a religious component to what’s happening?
And where there is religion, there is a spiritual component as well.
I say that as a believer. I’m a Christian.
I therefore believe that when one invokes Christ, they’re invoking something real. Now, whether they have the power to actually make such an invocation, your mileage may vary. But they’re certainly playing with forces.
You know, Hamlet might say, you know, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are present in our philosophy,’ right? Like, they’re playing with something that’s real, whether they think it’s real or not.”
Analysis
Now, on this point here about Fuentes, I’m actually going to dissent from Jeremy’s analysis in a key way, while still sympathizing with his general message.
Jeremy says that Fuentes is engaged in “a true political project.”
I disagree.
Horowitz was not the most important ex-Marxist who transformed my worldview. The lessons I learned from working with the late Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa—the highest ranking defector from the Soviet bloc—who taught me all about Russian disinformation and Soviet espionage has mattered a whole lot more in understanding the world and 20th century history.
I think there is more than enough evidence that strongly suggests that Fuentes is a Russian asset. The FSB likely has kompromat on him and they’ve made him their puppet as a result.
So his is not a true political project as in one homegrown and operated out in the open, but rather more likely an act of espionage committed against the American people as a deliberate war effort to exacerbate cultural divisions in America.
Russia is still waging war against us. But they don’t have the courage to do it openly.
I mean, seriously: why would some Gen-Z “America First” nationalist who is trying to be more right-wing than Ben Shapiro be so celebratory of Joseph Stalin?
How does that make any sense if he’s not being coerced and/or paid by Russia?
In December, I wrote an article about a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute which presented research suggesting that Fuentes’ reach had been artificially amplified and manipulated. I was just going to include an excerpt to the piece, but I may as well just share the full text as I think it does paint a pretty clear picture of just who we’re really dealing with when we’re dealing with Nick Fuentes and his “groyper army.”
Amid ongoing debates about the rise of antisemitic voices on the US political right, recent investigations into social media activity suggest the potential involvement of inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
On Monday, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released new research showing the techniques used by overseas operatives to promote the authoritarian ideologies of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
Titled “America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,” the 23-page report dissects how the 27-year-old influencer “consistently amasses far more retweets than any comparable figure, including Elon Musk, despite having a fraction (<1%) of the follower count.”
The report was co-drafted with the support of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab. Previous research collaborations between NCRI and Rutgers have also explored how far-right influencers hijacked the religious phrase “Christ is King” to advance their ideology and how Tik-Tok content promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s international objectives.
The researchers reviewed Fuentes and compared him with other prominent accounts. They discovered that “within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.” The report explains that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
The accounts are characterized as entirely anonymous and seemingly single-purpose for promoting Fuentes.
While Fuentes has grown most well-known for his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and pre-Vatican II, Catholic-reactionary antisemitism, the report highlights the podcaster’s endorsements of terrorism and enthusiasm for sexual violence. He has stated that he seeks a 16-year-old wife, desiring an underage woman “when the milk is fresh.” This aligns with his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation which has now seen the return of child marriage. Fuentes also claims that rape within marriage is impossible, since he believes that a wife’s body belongs to her husband.
Fuentes also “praised Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, expressed support for China taking Taiwan, and described the Taliban’s victory over US forces as a positive development.”
The researchers in their analysis seek not to explain Fuentes’s views but rather to “assess how synthetic engagement, real-world events, and media incentives converged to elevate a fringe figure into a central subject of national attention.”
Looking into Fuentes’s history and disclosures from former insiders within his organization support the suggestion of artificial engagement.
“Additional evidence shows that Fuentes has a prior history of coordinated digital manipulation. In 2022, two former associates described internal group chats where Fuentes directed interns and loyalists to carry out online tasks on his behalf, and a former technical aide alleged that viewer counts on his streaming platform were artificially inflated using a built-in multiplier,” the report states.
The researchers explain that “Fuentes did not deny the inflation itself. These documented practices demonstrate a willingness to orchestrate controlled teams and manipulate digital metrics — behavior entirely consistent with the coordinated amplification patterns observed on X.”
The report features images of “America First” Fuentes appearing on different foreign TV networks including the Iranian regime’s Press TV and Russia Today (RT). On the former he sided with Iran during an American attack in support of Israel, and on the latter, he claimed that support for Ukraine was based on “Russophobia.” He also reportedly stated that he would “fight on the side of China against America.”
Another picture shows Fuentes in 2022 at the America First Political Action Conference, where he stated in his introduction to US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying he’s Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing. Can we get a round of applause for Russia?”
The analysts describe how “Fuentes’s defense of authoritarian adversaries — Russia, Iran, China — is not a minor contradiction. It represents a coherent pattern in which his anti-American worldview aligns more closely with America’s enemies than with its interests. His self-proclaimed patriotism crumbles in the face of performative contrarianism, where any regime that resists liberal democracy becomes, in his eyes, preferable to the current United States.”
According to NCRI, the Russian and Iranian media’s approval of Fuentes “underscores the broader point: the figure elevated by algorithmic manipulation and mainstream media grooming as a voice of nationalist revival is, in reality, one of the most reliable public defenders of America’s geopolitical foes.”
4. What is the Future of MAGA After Donald Trump? Is It JD Vance? What Does He Really Believe?
Piers Morgan:
“When it comes to MAGA itself, this extraordinary revolution in many ways that’s twice propelled Donald Trump to the White House, it feels quite fractured at the moment. And we’re seeing more and more examples of this where how does America First sit with decapitating Maduro in Venezuela or attacking Iran or whatever it may be.
You know, when you see the Minneapolis shootings with ICE, I’m seeing a lot of people on the Right now condemning it. I’m seeing others vehemently trying to defend it and so on. You’re seeing a lot of desperate voices in the MAGA base or certainly the conservative right incorporating it. How profound is that getting and what does that mean for it going forward?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“Well, MAGA is probably like ‘Yes We Can,’ which was Barack Obama’s famous line, right? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. ‘Si Se Puede’ of course has a long history, particularly in Latin America on the left, but in America, popularized by Barack Obama. I don’t think MAGA as a concept really outlives Donald Trump. I think it’s something that he embodies. He’s has said that and I think that he’s right which is why you see this division happening on the Right today because we’re going into the midterms right now.
Midterms typically are not good for the party of the president in this country and once you’re through the midterms we’re going to be back in a new presidential cycle and it’ll be the first presidential cycle in the last decade in which Donald Trump isn’t seeking the office of president of the United States. And so what that means is everyone on the Right who wants a hand in defining the future of the party sees a non-Donald Trump-centric future just right within reach. And so for that reason there’s going to be a lot of disparate voices trying to seize the mantle of MAGA or seize the mantle of conservatism or seize the mantle.
But all of those are in some ways going to be a redefinition because Donald Trump himself was a—MAGA itself—was a departure from traditional American conservatism as we’ve understood it since say Ronald Reagan through the Tea Party etc.
And so I think that it’s a real moment of ideological uncertainty on the right. That’s why people like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes (in his own way) are trying to create a new sort of American Right. Again, as I said, blending left-wing economic populism and right-wing social populism. Other people are trying to move the party maybe back toward that Reagan revolution, Tea Party sort of ethos that it’s had for most of my life certainly. And you know, how is all that going to shake out?
You know, that’s what politics is all about.
We’re going to discover that through the midterms and certainly going into the next presidential. You know, right now, I think that the coalition that ascended Donald Trump to the presidency, you know, both in 2016 and 2024, no one is actually grabbing that mantle. Everyone’s trying to redefine it in desperate ways. And that could mean that our chances as Republicans going into 2028 are not particularly good. If someone can’t find a way to keep that coalition together, then I think that we’re we’re looking at pretty strong headwinds.”
Triggernometry Co-Host Konstantin Kisin:
“But do you you see JD Vance as a champion of that movement and potentially taking over and implementing that vision? Is that what you’re saying?”
Jeremy Boreing:
“I don’t know. You know, I think that JD Vance is a unique figure in my lifetime in American politics because he plays it incredibly close. I don’t know and I think very few people know what JD Vance, what his actual political North Star is.
You know, Tucker Carlson claims him when he says ‘Marjorie Taylor Greene, JD Vance, and I will change the foreign policy’ or can change the foreign policy of this country.
You know, that’s one side claiming JD Vance. Now, do they actually have a claim on JD Vance? I don’t know that they do. I think one has to look at the fact that JD has an apparently a very close relationship with Tucker, that he has not repudiated Tucker as Tucker’s rhetoric has gotten more and more and more outside of any sort of traditional American conservatism and ask themselves why does JD remain so close to Tucker?
I think it’s premature to say it’s because he is a part of that new political project. I think it’s just as likely that it’s a sense of loyalty. JD owes a lot of his political career to Tucker. Tucker took a bet on JD Vance when very few other people would both in his run for Senate and in helping—by all accounts—helping point Donald Trump toward the the idea of selecting JD as his running mate. It may be out of you know—and listen I on some, I respect that. Friendship is actually a really important concept to me, I think. And gratitude and loyalty. Gratitude and loyalty are very important values.
I don’t think that we should, you know, there’s sort of this other debate on the Right and people who I normally align with very much. You know, people who I respect greatly like Dennis Prager, Ben have made the case recently that that friendship should not trump people who are in our business actually holding other people to account for the things that they say. And I think that is—I understand why they’ve taken that view. And I think there’s a lot of truth to the view, but I don’t think that the view is entirely true. I think friendship should cause us to give people a lot of latitude, a lot of rope to try to deal with things privately before we try to deal with them publicly. I mean, friendship is an incredibly important virtue, right? And of course, friendship can’t ultimately prevent us from being publicly critical when we’ve exhausted all these other mechanisms. So probably I have a more nuanced perspective on that maybe than some others.
But all of that to say, yes, maybe that’s why JD Vance seems so aligned with Tucker and and if so, understandable. There’s also a political reality. JD Vance has to keep together the Trump coalition in order to have a chance to be president in three years. And that means that he probably politically—from his point of view—needs all the people who listen to Tucker just as much as he needs all the people who listen to Ben Shapiro. Donald Trump particularly in 2020 and 2024 did a great job of building that coalition, I think and others have said as much. So this is not an original thought.
I think that Tucker is doing an enormous amount of damage to the Trump coalition.
And I think that that will become a political liability if left unchecked for JD Vance. But right now, if I’m JD Vance, I can understand politically why you wouldn’t want to get into the business of dividing up the coalition, drawing lines, which makes it harder presumably to become the next president.
Or he’s actually a part of their political project.
It could be any of those three things. And I think that only time is going to help us understand which of those three things it is.
But I think it would be cynical to assume right out of the gate that just because JD Vance is is friends with Tucker Carlson and just because Tucker Carlson claims JD Vance—that’s politically advantageous for Tucker Carlson to do, right—that doesn’t mean that JD Vance is a part of Tucker Carlson’s political project.
And obviously, I certainly hope he’s not. I think that, you know, sometimes it’s easy to say, well, ‘Donald Trump, poor Donald Trump, what a buffoon that he chose JD Vance and JD is actually part of this project to take apart his coalition and he only picked JD Vance because Tucker Carlson told him to.’
That’s sort of like saying George W. Bush only invaded Iraq because the Jews told him to. It’s like, you don’t become the president of the United States and not have your own judgment and your own opinions.
I like to think that probably Donald Trump isn’t some puppet that can be wielded by other nefarious political actors. He chose JD Vance in the end. Maybe on Tucker’s recommendation, but he chose him. I’d like to think that he believes therefore that JD Vance can be a good steward of the coalition that Trump built.”
Analysis
Now, as with Fuentes, I take a much harder and less ambiguous line on Vance than Jeremy does.
Jeremy said “I don’t know and I think very few people know what JD Vance, what his actual political North Star is.” He said “I think it’s premature to say it’s because he is a part of that [Tucker Carlson’s] new political project” and “You know, that’s one side claiming JD Vance. Now, do they actually have a claim on JD Vance? I don’t know that they do.”
Vance’s political North Star is Peter Thiel.
And Peter Thiel’s North Star was Jeffrey Epstein.
And Jeffrey Epstein’s North Star was Vladimir Putin.
Jeremy said, “I like to think that probably Donald Trump isn’t some puppet that can be wielded by other nefarious political actors.”
I’d like to think that too but at this point the evidence is overwhelming that Putin has whatever compromising information on Trump that Jeffrey Epstein was able to produce. And it’s probably a whole lot.
This is what I learned politics is really all about. It isn’t about how great of an argument I can publish in a blog post at Andrew Breitbart’s Big sites to try and persuade someone to vote Republican. It’s about espionage agencies using international criminals to blackmail wealthy people into doing their bidding. Fun.
Conclusions
Jeremy describes the movement that Tucker and Bannon are building as “blending left-wing economic populism and right-wing social populism.”
In political science we have a term for this:
FASCISM.
Yes, the F-word.
I’m going to say this very simply and bluntly:
Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, Nick Fuentes, and JD Vance are all fascists (not mere “populists”) who are likely compromised in some way or another by Russia.
They are not “conservatives.” They do not believe in “conserving” the Constitution and the principles of our founders. They believe in something else. And Stephen Miller described it quite openly when advocating for an imperial conquest of Greenland:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
The Iron Laws of the World.
That’s what fascism fucking is. That’s what it’s always been no matter which label you stick on it. Raw force. Raw power. Raw violence.
A boot to your fucking skull.
Coming Next in Right Wing Book Club:
I’m going to explain why Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus—the official, authorized biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. that took a quarter century to write—is one of the most colossal failures in the history of biography. It’s embarrassing and practically criminal what Tanenhaus does here. I’ll unpack it all and explain what he does get right.
I’ll also lay out the list of related books about Buckley and conservative movement history that I’ve been exploring to fill out the gaps from Tanenhaus’s irresponsible, shoddy scholarship. If you have any titles you think I should check out here then please leave suggestions in the comments.
Absolutely stellar analysis.
I do not trust Vance at all, as much as I acknowledge his political skill. I don't trust his foreign-policy instincts. He has a spiteful hatred of Western Europe (that admittedly is nearly, but not quite, warranted). And he seems too slick by half. But I think it premature to call him a Russian asset, or actively antisemitic.
I hope that more evidence does not come to light in that vein, because the consequences would be rather terrible.