Wednesday night, Ben Shapiro offered a sustained attack on Tucker Carlson who he described as someone who is no longer a conservative. Last night, he extended this to others including Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly. He described it as breaking the “omerta” among leading talkers on the right.
First off, I should break the omerta here, and just be clear: The notion that people in our industry are close friends—like we all take holiday breaks with each other—is generally untrue. We’re business colleagues, the same way that everybody else has business colleagues. We don’t attend other hosts’ graduations, or hang out at each others’ houses for Thanksgiving. We see each other at conferences and talk on the phone with each other and all the rest. But even if it were true that other public figures were our best friends, that does not relieve us of our duty to speak out of principle, and not cover up evil or shy away from addressing it out of friendship.
So no, Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA, or to mirror her insane line of questioning, because you “love” Candace personally. 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 or fibbing about them. That’s simply a nonstarter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. So is Ilhan Omar, for that matter.
And when Megyn says that “my goal and my job here is to try to understand—yes, where Candace is coming from on this,” as she did this week, and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself “into this on one side,” that’s a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here: Erika’s side. The side of the widow with two children whose husband was shot live on camera in front of the whole world. Friendship with the person accusing TPUSA of a cover-up of Charlie’s murder is no excuse for cowardice…
Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories, and “just asking questions” is lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. So when Candace Owens says, “I don’t know know, but I know,” that’s retarded, and we are all more retarded for having heard it.