Christopher Rufo, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and author of “America’s Cultural Revolution,” comments about Candace Owens “jumping the shark” with her conspiracy theories about the murder of Charlie Kirk, and a recent Channel 5 roundtable featuring Hunter Biden and Nick Fuentes. “What I’ve seen is that, fundamentally, a lot of the people who spew this garbage not only marginalize themselves politically, but they actually burn out psychologically,” Rufo said. “This is all a fantasy. I don’t think it’s actually politics. I think it’s a form of tabloid entertainment.” “I just don’t think it’s sustainable for this kind of personality to be amping up the conspiracies, amping up the kind of anti-Israel sentiment. Eventually, that kind of personality will burn out.” “The reality is that Nick Fuentes does not have a voting bloc. Hunter Biden does not have a voting bloc. Candace Owens does not have a voting bloc. These are social media personalities making bids for attention,” he said. “I think the right needs to have a realistic, calm, and collected approach to some of these fringe personalities and just recognize them for what they are.” “These are people who are not meaningfully engaged in the political process. They’re meaningfully engaged in the kind of tabloid spectacle. You can think of them as Jerry Springer.”

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Since the very first weeks after the Charlie Kirk assassination, all of the evidence pointed toward the fact that Tyler Robinson, the accused and then arrested alleged assassin, was guilty. And so, I think for those people who have been paying attention and have their wits about them, it’s been fairly obvious. But Candace Owens went on this enormous conspiracy arc about Egyptian planes and the Israelis and sabotage from within, accusing a variety of players of assassinating Kirk, even insinuating that perhaps Charlie’s wife had some knowledge of or role in his assassination. It was always garbage from day one. But she’s been making the case for almost a year, and finally, with this preliminary hearing, where they introduced evidence-video, DNA, the murder weapon, the vehicle entry and exit, and multiple confessions by Tyler Robinson-her theories, I think, with the public, and particularly the public on the right, really could not stand in any way. I think a lot of people who were initially snookered into this conspiracism are starting to realize, Wait a minute. This is totally wrong. And what she’s doing is really among the most vindictive and perhaps even evil attempts-exploiting a widow, directing a ton of hatred her way. I hope that this is the beginning of the end of Candace’s public notoriety. DAVID DESROSIERS: I mean, what’s next for Candace? You would expect that she could say-which I wouldn’t expect-I was just asking questions. But is she going to just go from here-antisemitism, anti-Zionism all the time-and try to maintain herself with her kind of slice of QAnon and folks? CHRISTOPHER RUFO: She might. I mean, we know certainly what’s heading Candace’s way next is a series of lawsuits. We have a First Amendment in this country, but that doesn’t include the right to defamation, libel, or slander. And so there are a number of parties that are waging lawsuits against Candace. I think some of them have a strong possibility of success. And look, I think what’s going to happen is that Candace has already burned all of her bridges on the institutional right. She’s not going to get invited to speak at any conferences. She’s not going to be making appearances at the White House. She’s not going to be an influential voice among the right’s intelligentsia. And so all she has left is this audience that I think will be decreasing slowly and steadily in certain corners of the internet: Third World click farms, Groypers, other malcontents. And while I think she may be able to harvest cash from this audience, I think there is a shelf life on these ideas. What I’ve seen is that, fundamentally, a lot of the people who spew this garbage not only marginalize themselves politically, but they actually burn out psychologically. I just don’t think it’s sustainable for this kind of personality to be amping up the conspiracies, amping up the kind of anti-Israel sentiment. Eventually, that kind of personality will burn out. The lawsuits will start to take a toll. And I think that’s where Candace is heading. DAVID DESROSIERS: Chris, there’s this enemy of my enemy is my friend ecosystem emerging. Let’s turn our attention to this bit of dysfunction. What do you think about Hunter Biden and Nick Fuentes recently conversing? This ecosystem that’s out there seems like it has some common characteristics-anti-Zionism and antisemitism-but it also seems like they’re trying to pull this Bill Kristol effort, where they’re talking about taking their people and moving to the sidelines, flexing in front of the midterm. CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Yeah. Look, I think it is all a fantasy. I don’t think it’s actually politics. I think it’s a form of tabloid entertainment. The reality is that Nick Fuentes does not have a voting bloc. Hunter Biden does not have a voting bloc. These are social media personalities making bids for attention. I think the right needs to have a realistic, calm, and collected approach to some of these fringe personalities and just recognize them for what they are. These are people who are not meaningfully engaged in the political process. They’re meaningfully engaged in the kind of tabloid spectacle. You can think of them as Jerry Springer. They get eyeballs, but I don’t think anyone in the United States is really looking to Hunter Biden to say, Where should I put my vote? We shouldn’t give too much attention. We shouldn’t have too much concern. And look, if someone is using spectacle and trying to enrage you, trying to be as controversial as possible, you should not take the bait. That’s the real thing: You have to maintain a calm and collected attitude and just let these spectacles subside on their own. In fact, if you react emotionally to it, you’re playing into their game and you’re not playing your own. DAVID DESROSIERS: One of the things you did-you wrote a book on these personality types, America’s Cultural Revolution. And what I found interesting, when I took it off my shelf, I noticed there was a blurb from Tucker Carlson on the back. Tucker is presently, I believe, intentionally divisive. But what he says about you is spot-on. He says, Christopher Rufo is, in fact, one of the most effective journalists and filmmakers in the country. Chris, I’d like to turn the attention to your work. Tucker mentioned your work and how fabulous it is, but one of the things that I recognized after watching you receive the Bradley Prize in 2025 is that you’re a product of a self-conscious recipe. You went in there, you looked at the world, and you didn’t see it changing, and you consciously came up with, This is the recipe for success. I think the reason why you’ve been successful, and why you’ve aged well-even though you haven’t aged in your face, there are no gray hairs there; you even have kids, and you’re not gray yet-but could you tell us what that recipe is? CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Look, I make no bones about it. I’m a journalist. I’m a writer. But I’m also an activist, you might say-someone who has a vision for how the world should be and has a method for pushing the world in that direction. What I’ve learned over the years in this kind of anti-woke campaign is that you always have to connect these media narratives that go viral, that get on television, and that mobilize public sentiment. You have to connect them with policy outcomes. You have to connect language with power, if we want to use the abstract terms. A lot of the work that I did connected with the Trump administration, with Ron DeSantis’ policies in Florida, with Republican legislators and governors around the country, and then again with the second Trump administration, where I was able to use some of the work that I’ve done exposing DEI to lead the Trump administration to make a whole-of-government effort to abolish DEI within the government. And then use the powers of the state to enforce colorblind equality, nondiscrimination, and go after some of the institutions that have been using this racialist logic. The formula for the success that I’ve had is to figure out how to capture public attention and then direct public attention toward policy outcomes, but also with a recognition of policies that actually deliver on those outcomes. DAVID DESROSIERS: One of the things that I find interesting-and when you really look at consequential people on the right, you find out that some of their origin stories start on the left. You changed your own mind over time. I think that is what’s made you a very persuasive person when it comes to changing other people’s minds as well. CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Yeah, that very well might be. My politics shifted dramatically from being on the far left as a young person-a teenager, college age-to now having shifted far rightward over the last 15 or 20 years. I think part of that is that I’m familiar with the language of the left. I’m familiar with the worldview and psychological makeup of people who are now my opponents. The reality is that the opposite is not true. Most people who are on the intellectual left, and in academia, media, and politics, don’t have a good theory of mind or system for understanding their opposition. They don’t even really understand right-wing or conservative arguments. I think that gives us-people in my position-a tremendous advantage in any kind of debate, any kind of contest of ideas. I’m also not shocked, scandalized, and emotionally overwhelmed by what I see in the world. For me, having lived in California for many years, it’s part and parcel of my own experience, and I’m able to dissect it and fight against it while maintaining a kind of cool and collected attitude. DAVID DESROSIERS: When did this transition happen? At what point did it happen? For me, it happened in college. Most people go to college and get radicalized. I went to a Great Books school and realized that, while my family was an Irish New Deal family, I went home one day and told my grandfather that I went to the library and discovered that labor was a verb. What about you? [LAUGHTER] CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Yeah, I think it occurred in the same time frame. I went to college on the left, and then, for me, it was at first a kind of personal and cultural change, where I started meeting a lot of the people who were running the institutional left, who were involved or were going to be involved with the left over time. I just felt like so many people who were the campus activists at Georgetown in D.C., or the kind of left-wing staffer class, were so phony, so fundamentally disingenuous, that it sparked this question. I said, Well, wait a minute. If these characters are a kind of phony type, maybe the ideas that they’re espousing are not adopted in good faith and perhaps won’t even lead to the outcomes that they say they will. That set off probably a 10-year arc of travel around the world, working in the documentary film world, talking to thousands of people, and then doing my own reading and my own study. That really cemented for me that the kinds of 20th-century leftist arguments from all over the world just did not work. They didn’t hold water. I was searching, and then I searched for a different framework of belief.

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