BREAKING: MAGA Implodes (Again!)

Bible-quoting chaos engine Candace Owens seen holding a match

To hear the media tell it, MAGA is not a political party or a movement or even a redneck cult anymore; it’s basically a sea squirt—the quirky, potato-shaped marine creature that famously digests its own brain once it settles into a permanent home.

“MAGA Eats Itself Alive Ahead of Candace Owens’ Erika Kirk Expose,” the Daily Beast roared. (Conspiracy friends: are they trying to normalize cannibalism here?)

Apparently, MAGA has been into autophagy for a while now.

The metaphorical flesh-eating gripping the press has to do with (increasingly unhinged) Candace Owens and the sensational, salacious, soap-opera-adjacent trailer she just dropped for her upcoming “Bride of Charlie”… Erika Kirk investigative series. The ninety-second teaser has it all: pedophilia, pageantry, glittering pantsuits, merch, tears, tents, lies, Zionists, child trafficking, shell companies, and the Prime Minister of Israel. If the hopeful reaction was “Wait, what?” then kudos to the production team.

Part of a tweet by journalist Elizabeth Lane shared by Owens in Bride of Charlie.

The internet, as one might suspect, detonated on impact. Right-wing flamethrower Laura Loomer unleashed a tirade on Owens, peppered with a string of insults that included evil woman… horrible person… phony religious bigot… batsh*t… fraud… vengeful… malicious… crackpot… and morally bankrupt. Political commentator Mark Levin, never one to under-deliver, declared that Erika Kirk possessed more beauty, class, and virtue in a single eyelash than Candace has in her entire soul—and Candace knows it.

Dan Bongino, newly-former FBI Deputy Director and professional rage turbine, sprinted past “disapproval” and straight into a full-blown exorcism, cursing Candace and anyone defending her with a level of biblical fury typically reserved for plagues. Apocalypse hobbyist Stew Peters accused Bongino of trying to get Owens killed. Catturd2, MAGA’s unofficial sewer-mouthed hall monitor, declared her a demon from hell.

And all of this went down before the documentary even aired. Journalism school should add a course called “Managing Adults During a Conservative Internet Meltdown,” because clearly no one is qualified.

Owens was crowned 2024’s Antisemite of the Year by watchdog group StopAntisemitism.

Here’s the hilarious part: the media insists this fight is (more! more convincing! unequivocal even!) evidence that the conservative movement is combusting in real time. What’s actually happening is considerably dumber: A highly polarizing influencer, who has never once met a spotlight she didn’t immediately try to commandeer, decided to produce a forensic docuseries about the widow of a murdered man she claims was her best friend. A bunch of equally controversial personalities reacted with roughly the same emotional regulation you’d expect at a sixth-grade slumber party. The left sees ideological warfare. Those of us with eyes see a catfight with Old Testament overtones.

Let’s talk motive for a moment—because Candace didn’t wake up one day and accidentally wander into this mess. Candace is many things, but subtle is not one of them. She is a content machine built on conflict, fueled by attention, and stabilized only by her own belief that she is the protagonist of American politics. Losing the Daily Wire platform hurt—financially, algorithmically, and egotistically—and she’s been trying to recenter herself ever since. A dramatic, conspiratorial deep-dive into the inner workings of TPUSA fits like a glove: scandal, murder, mystery, screenshots, widow intrigue, and moral righteousness all packaged into a YouTube multipart series.

She may believe some of her theories; she may even think she’s serving justice. But she also knows a spectacle when she sees one, and this one comes preloaded with a self-starting internet bonfire.

Plenty of MAGA circles adore and defend Erika Kirk, others are quietly wary, and some think she’s way too polished, too performative, too PR-ready for someone newly widowed.

I’ll be flat-out honest: something about her definitely feels… off. Not just the she didn’t grieve hard enough stuff or the weird that a mourning widow is joyfully tossing out merch but okay subjectivities. Wild, unproven speculation aside (think secret first husbands and Romanian sex trafficking allegations), there are the let’s-call-them-inappropriate texts she allegedly shared with a 15-year-old, the claims that she “never dated” (that netizens were quick to disprove with photographic evidence), the touring with a man who is actually facing child sex abuse and trafficking charges connected to Romania. There’s the fact that she rubber-stamped the ridiculous Tyler Robinson narrative faster than a White House intern trying to get out of the office by 5 p.m. Smoking guns? Hardly. Eyebrow-raising? I mean, kind of.

But does any of that justify a painful public autopsy of a woman’s life while she’s raising two young children and trying to run her late husband’s organization without collapsing under the weight of it all? Yes, she’s preternaturally perky. Sure, she once awkwardly, intimately, touched J.D. Vance’s hair. Fine, she wore—gasp!—white to her husband’s memorial service. I’m still going to have to go with no on that one.

All I know is that this isn’t a political schism. It’s not a theological crisis. It’s not the final battle for the soul of conservatism. It’s one very smart, very ambitious woman pushing a sensational angle because she knows millions of people will watch—and several other very loud personalities reacting like she slapped their grandmother.

The media wants you to believe this is proof the right is devouring itself. What it really proves is that online ecosystems, left or right, always contain at least one person willing to launch a Molotov cocktail just to juice their engagement.

Left-wing podcaster Kyle Kulinski got major heat for posting this.

Part one (A Wrinkle in Time) of Bride of Charlie dropped last night. I watched it live. (As of this morning, it has already racked up 2,566,294 views.) Here’s what I can say: Candace is undoubtedly compelling. She’s provocative. She’s articulate and at times, convincing. She makes some reasonable points (public figures are subject to public scrutiny; it comes with the territory) and some far-flung accusations (suggesting Erika Frantzve Kirk was a victim of trauma-based mind control).

She spoke to ex-boyfriends and former classmates, scoured Erika’s great-grandmother’s illegal gambling history, and diagrams and dissects the Frantzve family tree with surgical precision. (Get a load of this bombshell: a man Erika refers to as her “uncle” online is technically her “father’s sister’s husband’s previous wife’s daughter’s husband. No blood relation whatsoever.” Related: Hand to heart, I have a “cousin” who is actually my father’s sister’s son’s ex-wife’s sister. Sometimes brevity is the soul of sanity.) Love her or loathe her, Candace does her homework.

Whether any of it is meaningful or just smoke-and-mirrors—look over here! not over there!—is another question entirely.

From Bride of Charlie: A Wrinkle in Time (Episode 1)

In the end, Candace’s docuseries may unearth something explosive. It may reveal absolutely nothing. Or, most likely, it will expose exactly what this whole fiasco has already shown us: that personal dramas dressed up as political crusades are irresistible to people who make a living peddling drama.

Candace will get her views. Her critics will get theirs. The media will get to pretend they caught the conservative movement going Hannibal Lecter on itself. And the rest of us will get (if we’re lucky) a brief intermission before the next scandal breaks.

P.S. I had the great honor of being invited to share my thoughts on all things MAHA/glyphosate this week on the fabulous Why Should I Trust You podcast. You can watch here (or if you’d rather not see my flailing arms—it’s a thing—you can also listen on Spotify or Apple).

[shouts in jazz hands]

P.P.S. I know some of you do not believe that Charlie Kirk was, in fact, murdered—because in your worldview nothing is real, everything is theater, and the rest of us are gullible extras in the Great American Psyop. I see you. I acknowledge you. No need to take on the agonizing burden of enlightening the rest of us in the comments. Really. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Signed books available here.