The ideological civil war inside the conservative movement exploded on the AmericaFest stage Friday night when Steve Bannon unloaded on Ben Shapiro, accusing the Daily Wire co-founder of being anti-MAGA, anti-Trump, and aligned with foreign-policy priorities that, in Bannon’s telling, put America last.
Bannon’s blistering takedown capped a chaotic, multi-day feud at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest, where Shapiro had spoken the night before.
During his Thursday address, Shapiro castigated conservatives who declined to publicly condemn Candice Owens, saying their silence amounted to “cowardice,” and widened the blast radius by swiping at Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon as well.
BREAKING:
Ben Shapiro dedicates his speech at @TPUSA‘s America Fest to talk about “how to discern those attempting to speak truth, from grifters and fraudsters.”
Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/hFwZJqnQag
— Evan Kilgore (@EvanAKilgore) December 19, 2025
Shapiro also criticized Tucker Carlson for an interview with Nick Fuentes. Carlson responded with his own counter-punch moments later, and Kelly followed with a swipe of her own the next day.
Tucker Carlson took to the stage and immediately began responding to Ben Shapiro calling him out earlier in the night. pic.twitter.com/spG7OWPy4b
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) December 19, 2025
Megyn Kelly responds to Ben Shapiro: “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.” pic.twitter.com/RgSV2zLL0a
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 20, 2025
Shapiro also took aim at Bannon directly:
“When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country…he’s simply maligning people he disagrees with. Which is indeed par for the course for a man who was once a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein. Check the record.”
Then Bannon took the microphone the next day:
“Now, Benji Shapiro sat up here last night, and he was all, you know, “It’s all about the truth.”
Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth. Let’s face it, Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA. Let’s be blunt. He is a hardcore never-Trumper. He’s a hardcore never-Trumper. In the spring of ’16, he tried to upend Breitbart. He walked off the job, made a big deal about some incident in Mar-a-Lago with Corey Lewandowski.
He tried to turn it to Ted Cruz from Donald Trump because he hated Donald Trump. In the general election, he barely supported Donald Trump.
The first sign of– when President Trump gets sent back to Mar-a-Lago, the very first individual that jumped on the Ron DeSantis train, the Israel First train, was Ben Shapiro.
[…]
Shapiro called Breitbart “Trump Pravda.” When he left, he called it Trump Pravda—and he was right. We had to be. There was no other news site that was supporting President Trump.
When poor Megyn Kelly came out in that first debate and made what now look like some innocuous questions about Trump’s Facebook page or his Twitter feed about Rosie O’Donnell and others, have Jack Posobiec ask her how it turned out. We unleashed the dogs. We were maniacs.
Why? President Trump had no backing. He had no backing at Fox. He had no backing at National Review. And in ’16, that would have driven him out of the race. So we had to be there.
But Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads. It’s a cancer, and it metastasizes. He tried to take over Breitbart, and I ran him out of there. He tried to take over David Horowitz, who was his mentor. Don’t ask me—ask the guy who’s associated with David Horowitz what he did there. He tried to take that over.
And mark my word: he will make a move on Turning Point, because he’s always been envious of Charlie Kirk. Envious of Charlie Kirk.
This is not about speech. It’s not about deplatforming. This is about power politics and what Charlie Kirk believed in to the core of his being—that America makes decisions for America, and Americans make decisions for America. That was Charlie Kirk.”
WATCH:
STEVE BANNON: Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads. It’s a cancer and it metastasizes. He tried to take over Breitbart and I ran him out of there. He tried to take over David Horowitz, who was his mentor.
Mark my word. He will make a move on Turning Point… pic.twitter.com/qyvbPYr9p8
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) December 20, 2025
The post Steve Bannon UNLOADS on Ben Shapiro at TPUSA’s America Fest: “Ben Shapiro is Like a Cancer, and that Cancer Spreads” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.