Megyn Kelly is joined by Ben Shapiro at “Megyn Kelly Live” to talk about the full backstory to Ben’s takedown of Tucker this week, the relevance of the Nick Fuentes interview, the actual texts between the two after Charlie’s assassination, how Israel factors into the disagreement, and more.

BEN SHAPIRO: The reason this has come up in recent weeks is because Tucker [Carlson], your guest last night, decided to have him on last week and to completely gloss him [Fuentes], in my opinion. And you can make up your own opinion as to what you think Tucker was doing during that interview, but I know what it looks like when Tucker Carlson decides to be an aggressive interviewer, or when he decides to ask difficult questions of people. Tucker is eminently capable of doing that. He did it to Ted Cruz quite thoroughly, but he decided, for any number of reasons, and I try not to attribute motivations to people, that he was going to treat Fuentes with kid gloves, that he was going to not ask him about any of the things that I’ve just mentioned, literally any of them, and to essentially normalize Fuentes act as a sort of gateway drug, or as a what I’ve called Tucker is an ideological launderer of bad ideas over the last couple of years. And this is not coming from a place of animus for Tucker on a personal level. I’ve known Tucker for a very long time. Tucker, whenever we’re in personal situations, we get along great. I saw that Tucker talked about how we were at Charlie’s memorial in the Vice President’s box together, and he’s correct. We saw each other. We said, Hello. We talked. It was very friendly and all of that. And it’s also true that a couple of days after Charlie’s murder, he reached out, and he called me and he said, Listen, I know that we’re at odds, and we’ve been at odds for a number of reasons, mainly political. Again, on a personal level, I’d go fishing with Tucker any time. The real question is, for me, I got into this business because I care about the ideas and I care about the ideals. And so when you are determining what is conservatism, what should the future of America look like, and where do you draw the lines? Those are the questions that I need to answer in my job. For me, my business is really not about friendship. I have lots of friends, people who I love, with whom I disagree in politics and don’t believe they should be leaders in the conservative leaders in the conservative movement, for example. And that, to me, is the real question. In any case, Tucker reached out. He said, You know, we’ve had a bunch of disagreements, and you know what if we could put those aside and align toward the DSA in particular, is what he mentioned. And I said, you know, Tucker, you’re totally right. Let’s do that. That would be great… BEN SHAPIRO: The reason I’m taking out my phone is because I like to evidence what I’m saying with actual evidence. So I texted him, and the text exchange was very nice. I mean, here’s what the actual text exchange went like after the call. So I texted him, and I said, Thanks so much for calling. It means the world. It truly does. Should we do a show together, talking about the DSA threat, (Democratic Socialist of America threat), and orienting in the same direction, happy to do whatever it takes to bring everyone back together for the fight that matters. And Tucker then wrote back, Thanks, man, I appreciate it. I’m going to spend the next week or two thinking about how to be most effective. The country is clearly on the brink. I reached out repeatedly after that, nothing happened, and again, I thought it was a good idea at the time. I think I felt differently after I saw what he did with Nick Fuentes, and after he proceeded, in my opinion, to spend the subsequent weeks doing literally nothing to fight the left. Again, I say this with sadness, because Tucker used to be, I think, a deeply important part of the conservative push to win. The number of times that Tucker Carlson has mentioned Zohran Mamdani since October 5 on his show is once, and it was in the context of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson talking about the appeal of Zohran Mamdani, just by way of contrast, not because I’m a perfect representative here, but because you talk about Zohra Mamdani, a lot, a lot of us have since October 5, I did 17 separate shows on Zohra Mamdani, including four in the last week before the election. Because when you’re orienting against the left, you really should orient against the left. MEGYN KELLY: So a lot in there, I think, just to be clear. So the breakdown from the like detente after Charlie was him interviewing Fuentes, like, was that the next thing that happened that led to the blow up? BEN SHAPIRO: Yes… I had not spoken a word… I don’t care about people attacking me and I don’t think Tucker cares about people attacking him. Again, we’re professionals. We’re in a business where people comment on what we say publicly. This is why I think you and I differ on our angle with regard to, for example, Candace Owens. I think that what Candace Owens is doing right now is evil. It is evil what she’s doing right now. MEGYN KELLY: I don’t opine on whether it’s evil or not, but my position is it’s really none of my business. BEN SHAPIRO: But I have a question, why is it none of your business? You comment on these things for a living… But if this were on the left and somebody were accusing Charlie Kirk of his wife having murdered him, I assume that you would be talking about it. MEGYN KELLY: Is that what Candace is accusing Erica of? Of murdering her own husband? BEN SHAPIRO: She’s accusing TPUSA insiders and other members of the right wing, including Seth Dillon, of being involved in the murder of Charlie Kirk. Yes. MEGYN KELLY: Okay, like I said, I don’t take in that content, which is an honest statement. I don’t have time to watch. BEN SHAPIRO: I believe you. I believe you… But even with Tucker, friendship should not Trump our manifest requirement to speak out when people do and say things that are both detrimental to conservatism and morally wrong. MEGYN KELLY: I don’t totally disagree, but I think the way of handling that, at least for me, is much different. So I saw things go south between you and Tucker, at least from my vantage point when you disagreed on Israel. That was obvious… So he was saying things that were critical of Israel and our policy towards Israel. And then you did one show where you did what I thought you should have done if you disagreed with him, which clearly you did, which is say what you believe and what you think is factual, and like, educate your audience on what you think are the real facts and give them the evidence for it, but you named him, and it felt like an attack. And that, to me, was the beginning of the end where he was like, now it’s on because he felt personally attacked by you, as opposed to just challenging his idea. I think You named him, and you kind of diminished him. And he’s an 800 pound gorilla, and if you mess with the gorilla, he’s going to fight. And to me, that’s where it started to go south. And because I remember that day being like, oh shit, I don’t want to see this. BEN SHAPIRO: I would urge everybody to go back and listen to the show that you’re referring to, where I criticize Tucker’s ideas, not Tucker as a person. Tucker then responded by claiming that I do not love America. That is a direct quote, that I do not love America because I was spending too much time covering the October 7 attacks, and then proceeded in January to then say that I wanted his children to die in a foreign war. MEGYN KELLY: Okay, so those are a different rhetorical. BEN SHAPIRO: No, it’s not. I’m sorry. An attack on motivation is a very different thing from an attack on an idea. MEGYN KELLY: His point was that you were sounding like a neocon and he’s upset with anybody who wants us to get too involved in Israel’s conflict because he feels it endangers America… BEN SHAPIRO: The idea that I want the United States to be directly involved in Israel’s conflict is not true. I’ve been urging Israel to get off of American aid for literally as long as I have been active in politics … My point is that that’s not his point… We disagree on the interpretation of what Tucker has been doing for the past two years. And it’s very difficult for me to believe that Tucker is merely anti-Israel when, for example, today in his newsletter, I can directly quote it, if you’d like. In his newsletter today, he claimed that Zohran Mamdani is not anti-Semitic. This was his newsletter today, this morning. I’m happy to read the text. It’s pretty extraordinary, because, again, it is. It is kind of shocking stuff. So here’s what Tucker Carlson wrote in his newsletter today, or what his newsletter says under his name. He said: Is the incoming Mayor a fan of Israel? Does he want America to fight its wars? Not particularly but a Jew hater? That’s a different conversation. We’ve never seen anything to suggest he falls into that ugly camp. If we’re talking about fighting the left, defending Zohran Mamdani, who literally said that he has no opinion whether Hamas should disarm, who posed alongside the 1993 World Trade Center, unindicted co-conspirator… who suggested that whenever there is in a New York Police Department boot on somebody’s neck, it’s an IDF lacing the strings, to suggest that that’s not anti-semitic in any way. No way. MK: I want to give you a defensive Tucker here, and I don’t need to defend Tucker in general, because I’m not Tucker. But I’ll say I think in general, know him, and I listen to him, and I listen to him, and I understand generally where he’s coming from. He would say his problems are with Israel, and he would say that shot that Mamdani laid against the IDF is a shot against the IDF. And Israel, and how he thinks they’re prowar, it’s not against Jews. And I think… Tucker is in in a place right now of the same place that Charlie was getting to toward the end of his life, the same place that some people have tried to drive me, which is you’re under withering, non-stop accusations of being something you know you’re not. But from some people who you love and who you’ve been protecting, at least in my case, in Charlie’s case, for two years, who you’ve been completely defensive of. And Charlie and I both felt because we talked about this on my show, like, what’s happening here? Why are they dropping charges of anti-semitism against us when we love Jews and we’re both open Semites? We’re Zionists!

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