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Welcome back to False Flag, where FBI director Kash Patel’s jet debacle is only getting worse.
After facing criticism for taking a government jet to see his country-singer girlfriend perform at a wrestling match, then flying to Nashville where she lives, Patel fired a senior FBI official in charge of the bureau’s planes. It’s not clear why Patel would do that, since his appearance at the wrestling match was first made public by his girlfriend, who posted a picture of Patel on X (reposted, in turn, by Patel himself). I guess she doesn’t have a social media manager Patel can sack?
On Sunday, Patel, who is supposed to spend most of his time investigating criminals, uncovering foreign spies, and fighting terrorism, posted a bizarre, ChatGPTesque defense of his 27-year-old girlfriend, calling her a “country music sensation who has done more for this nation than most will in ten lifetimes.”
But I was most intrigued when Patel made a remark about “our supposed allies staying silent” as the critics went off on him over his romance-fueled jet-setting amid a government shutdown. Because it’s true! Republicans have been mostly quiet as Patel takes this heat.
In fact, some on the right are piling on. InfoWars host Chase Geiser tore into Patel on Sunday in crude language for essentially blowing MAGA’s big opportunity to root out the deep state in favor of fun trips with his girlfriend. And worse, one whose singing career Geiser isn’t impressed by!
“Name one song she’s ever written or sang, other than the national anthem!” Geiser fumed.
For today’s newsletter, however, I’m following a different internecine right-wing feud. While the Patel imbroglio may provide a fat slice of schadenfreude, the bigger story is the unfolding war between the conservative establishment and Tucker Carlson over Nick Fuentes. I wrote about it last week, and it’s only gotten uglier as the stakes have gone up since then! To support my work, and that of my Bulwark colleagues, sign up for Bulwark+ today!
–Will
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Heritage Americans Turn on One Another
BEN SHAPIRO DID SOMETHING UNIQUE on Monday. Not only did he open his show with a fiery intervention in the right’s roiling feud over white nationalist Nick Fuentes—he devoted his entire show to the topic.
“No to the groypers!” Shapiro said at one point, defiantly.
The conservative commentator’s exhortation was the latest shot to be fired in the civil war that has been roiling the right since last week when Tucker Carlson welcomed the racist, antisemitic, Holocaust-denying Fuentes into the conservative mainstream with a friendly interview. It’s a conflict that has consumed the MAGA movement, unnerved activists, drawn in top lawmakers, and left some conservative institutions in a state of upheaval. Shapiro, taking his turn on Monday, called it “the most important thing happening in the country.”
Shapiro focused most of his fire on Fuentes, playing clips of the young far-right podcaster praising Hitler as “really fucking cool” and promoting rape. And he attacked Carlson, saying he had betrayed Charlie Kirk, the assassinated conservative organizer, by giving Fuentes, Kirk’s archenemy, a platform with virtually no pushback.
“Tucker Carlson has seen fit to launder Nick Fuentes, the person who hated Charlie most and who wished him destruction,” Shapiro said. “That’s not an act of friendship, it’s an act of sick evil.”
But Shapiro had a third target that would have seemed baffling just a week ago: the Heritage Foundation, the monolithic conservative think tank that serves as one of the main pillars of the Republican establishment.
In his broadcast, Shapiro suggested Heritage president Kevin D. Roberts had made a serious error in his handling of the Carlson-Fuentes fallout and was failing to lead the American right.
“I hope Kevin Roberts and Heritage show us they can still be those leaders,” Shapiro said. “But if not, we’ll have to look elsewhere.”
This broadside was just the latest that Heritage generally and Roberts specifically have taken in recent days.
The think tank finds itself at the center of the Groyper War because it is one of the advertisers on Carlson’s online show. Curiously, in the aftermath of the Fuentes interview, Heritage edited a page on its website meant to generate donations from Carlson viewers, removing any mention of Carlson’s name. Close observers speculated that Heritage might be preparing to cut ties with Carlson.
But in a video posted last Thursday, Roberts made clear that Heritage would not be distancing itself from Carlson. Instead, he blasted critics of Carlson’s promotion of Fuentes, saying they were part of a “venomous coalition” out to divide the MAGA movement.
“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” Roberts said, though he added that he does “abhor” some of Fuentes’s beliefs.
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