Right-wing talking heads like Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin once reserved their sharpest slingshots for liberals, immigrants and Joe Biden. But suddenly they throw their biggest bombs at each other.
Kelly, a former Fox News anchor and NBC host, has engaged in an increasingly nasty social media spat with her former Fox News colleague Mark Levin, the longtime host of the syndicated show. The Mark Levin Show and star of Fox News’ weekend staple Life, Liberty and Levin.
The two veteran anchors have been feuding since a Turning Point convention in mid-December, when Ben Shapiro’s keynote attacking right-wing conspiracists like Tucker Carlson sparked a mini meltdown in the MAGA world. After going after Shapiro and seemingly aligning herself with Carlson, Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec, Kelly took heat from former friends and supporters who accused her of trading credibility for clicks. But what began as a debate over principles and tactics has taken an increasingly personal turn in recent days, with Levin denouncing his former Fox colleague as a “degenerate” and a “laughing stock,” and Kelly dismissing Levin as a “bitter and irrelevant man.”
Tensions between the former colleagues escalated Tuesday when Levin’s latest anti-Kelly rant appeared on Today show in 2018. “See, she’s always been a degenerate bigot. That’s why she’s cool with Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec. That’s why she drools over Qatarlson. She’s part of the Woke Reich – the queen of the modern Klan. More to come.”
But Kelly said he was unfazed. “You’re just upset because I’m not afraid of you or your baseless insults,” she quickly responded to her former Fox News colleague. “You’re an irrelevant, bitter, angry old man who never made it to prime time Fox News. We used to make fun of you there for your red-faced tantrums about…everything.”
Growing ideological divisions within the MAGA movement came to light at AmericaFest, Turning Point USA’s annual conference, when Ben Shapiro took the stage and denounced what he called “crooks” within the conservative movement. “The conservative movement is seriously threatened by charlatans who claim to speak for principle but who actually traffic in conspiracy and dishonesty, who offer only anger and despair,” he said in a speech that earned him a standing ovation from the crowd.
Shapiro also criticized Kelly, as well as Carlson and Bannon, for their failure to renounce conspiracy podcaster Candace Owens, who repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Charlie Kirk, the late co-founder of Turning Point, was murdered in September as part of a global conspiracy that may have involved the Israeli government, the FBI and Kirk’s widow, Erika. (Owens responded to Shapiro’s remarks by calling him a “midget” and accusing Jews of being responsible for the slave trade. Kelly claimed that critics like Shapiro and CBS News President Bari Weiss were motivated by their support for Israel.)
At Fox, where Kelly was once a popular prime-time anchor, the network’s usually talkative anchors have remained silent while their former colleagues clash. No Fox News personality, other than Levin, addressed the setback. “It’s like crazy person versus crazy person. Who you gonna root for that fight?’” a longtime Fox News producer said wryly The Hollywood Reporter. The big names at Fox News aren’t taking sides either. Representatives for the network did not respond to our request for comment.
