After Daily Wire co-founder and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro criticized his friend and colleague at AmericaFest on Thursday, Megyn Kelly took the stage at the conference and issued an angry response.
“I found it kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement, which shows a willful blindness about his position in it,” said Kelly, formerly of Fox News and now host of the “Megyn Kelly Show,” on Friday evening.
On Thursday, Shapiro accused Kelly of cowardice for not condemning podcaster Candace Owens, who has peddled unsubstantiated theories surrounding Charlie Kirk’s death. He also called her out for her defense of Tucker Carlson.
“I don’t think we are friends anymore,” Kelly said. “I’ve been a very good friend to Ben. Nobody knew who the heck Ben Shapiro was when I started putting him on my shows on the Fox News Channel and I helped make him a star.”
Kelly was the headliner for the night at the Turning Point USA-sponsored conference. Other speakers included former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, actor Rob Schneider, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and commentator Jack Posobiec.
On Thursday, the first night of the programming, Erika Kirk did her best to showcase unity as the speakers on the evening’s lineup — including Shapiro, Carlson and comedian Russell Brand — openly criticized one another. Even though Carlson denied the narrative of a “Civil War” erupting within the Republican Party, the biggest conservative voices keep revealing the fractures.
And according to many of the speakers, Israel is central to the infighting, as are charges of antisemitism.
Kelly and Bannon said that the foreign policy should be “America First” and not “Israel First,” a common talking point in the so-called “MAGA Civil War.” They also painted Charlie Kirk as someone who defended Israel but was willing to ask hard questions.
“Charlie was with young people every day,” said Kelly, noting that Kirk observed Generation Z’s changing sentiments on Israel.
What happened between Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro?
On Friday, Kelly admitted that while on tour, she butted heads with Shapiro over whether “Carlson should be excommunicated from the conservative movement,” which she said she didn’t agree with.
A few days after that event in the summer, they talked over text and both Shapiro and Kelly concluded they valued their friendship.
“The next thing I saw was him attacking me on stage last night like a coward,” she said.
On Thursday, Shapiro spent most of his time criticizing his colleagues in the industry for spreading conspiracy theories and antisemitism.
“Friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter,” Shapiro said. “So no, Tucker Carlson is not an excuse to go silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA.”
Shapiro was referring to Owens’ unsubstantiated claims related to Charlie Kirk’s death.
But some in the conservative movement, including Carlson and Kelly, have come to Owens’ defense. They also were criticized in Shapiro’s remarks.
“The same holds true of Megyn Kelly, a person I consider a friend, characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from condemning her actions,” Shapiro added.
That is a non-starter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. Ilhan Omar is a young mother. That doesn’t matter. And when Megyn said this week, quote, “My goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes, where Candace is coming from on this,” and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself, quote, “into this on one side,” that is a moral and logical absurdity.
There is only one moral side here, Erika Kirk’s side. You know, the side of the widow with two children whose husband was shot live on camera in front of all of us. Friendship with the person accusing TPUSA of a coverup of Charlie’s murder is no excuse for cowardice.
— Ben Shapiro, AmericaFest, Phoenix, on Dec. 18, 2025
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said Shapiro “delivered a barnburner” of a speech and reiterated his statements about cowards tolerating conspiratorial thinking.
In a post on X Thursday night, Kelly said that Shapiro and Weiss attacked her despite not knowing “what has been going on behind the scenes for months.”
She said Shapiro and Weiss should have checked with TPUSA and Erika Kirk first before wagging their fingers, adding, “I’m embarrassed for them.”
Hours before taking the stage, Kelly posted another message on X: “Only cowards take to the national stage or X to attack their ‘friends’ without so much as a phone call to discuss it.”
At AmericaFest, Kelly said that none of the back and forth is about Kelly or Erika Kirk.
“It’s about Israel. Those two are very pro-, ardent Israel activists, which is fine, but they don’t get to dictate how the rest of us feel about Israel or what we do with respect to our friends and our friends’ opinions on Israel,” she said.
Shapiro reserved most of his criticism on Thursday night for Carlson for platforming white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
“If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes … you ought to own it,” he said.
Vivek Ramaswamy: ‘What is an American?’
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, who is running for Ohio governor, asked a broader question about what it means to be an American and a conservative.
Ramaswamy rejected the idea of a Heritage American, a recently popularized concept among alt-right circles that differentiates a “legacy” citizen from someone who was previously an immigrant or is the descendant of recent immigrants.
“I think the idea of a heritage American is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up,” he said, later adding, “It leads you to believe that Donald Trump is less American than Joe Biden because Donald Trump’s mother was an immigrant and his grandfather was an immigrant.”
Ramaswamy also asserted that both his parents were legal immigrants when they came to the U.S.
He said the GOP supports protecting girls in girls’ sports and meritocracy. It is also the party that condemns the admiration of the likes of Hitler or Stalin and the normalization of hate toward whites, Blacks, Indians and Jews, he said.
Ramaswamy didn’t assign blame like other speakers at AmericaFest. Instead, he told attendees a bit about his faith before diving into what the conservative movement needs.
“My Hindu faith teaches us that God and his divinity reside in each of us. … But sometimes good people do bad things,” he said. “The job of a true leader is to understand why and then to step up and actually fix (the) issue.”