On the first Megyn Kelly Show after Charlie Kirk’s murder, something slipped by almost unnoticed — a moment that should have set off alarm bells.
Kirk, the powerhouse who built Turning Point USA into the flagship youth arm of the MAGA movement, had been one of Kelly’s most frequent guests. His horrific death left millions around the world in mourning — and instantly became the subject of conspiracies. Candace Owens, an antisemite who has accused Jews of sacrificing Christian children, immediately stepped forward with her own insane version of events: Charlie, she claimed, had been pressured by Jewish donors, offered money, and even courted by Benjamin Netanyahu himself to bring him back in line on Israel. She then said: “I know feigning victimhood is kind of an Israeli brand thing, but I was clear that Charlie felt blackmailed by the offer to fund TPUSA, which he refused.”
This was classic Candace Owens conspiracy theorizing. But on that day, Megyn Kelly didn’t treat Owens like the crank she is. She didn’t confront her history of bizarre Holocaust minimization, blood libel claims, or talk of Jewish cabals. She didn’t put Owens in the bucket with conspiracy-mongers who have no place in serious politics. Instead, she treated her as if she were a leading MAGA thinker whose opinion deserved space. She described Candace as “brilliant,” urged people to watch Candace’s videos, and said: “Candace, who’s been critical of Israel in this conflict, did not appreciate that we had a foreign leader reading part of Charlie’s letter… And she is not wrong about that.”
The American left already went down this road years ago. Proud antisemites like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Zohran Mamdani are now treated as legitimate voices and even leaders within the Democratic mainstream. But Kelly’s choice signaled that the right is now stumbling down the same dangerous path.
Megyn Kelly is not an antisemite. She says it plainly: “I’m totally a Zionist. I completely believe in Israel’s right to exist.” But that’s not the point. By granting Candace Owens the dignity of serious engagement — by treating a woman who traffics in Holocaust minimization, blood libel, and Jewish cabal theories as a credible commentator — Kelly sent a clear message. Antisemitism is no longer disqualifying on the American right. You can spew the oldest, ugliest lies about Jews and still be welcomed as a legitimate voice in the conservative mainstream.
Kelly began walking down this dark path a few weeks earlier, when she sat down with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Rather than confront Greene’s famously kooky antisemitic record — the Rothschild “space lasers,” the mask-mandates-as-Holocaust analogies, the claims of Israeli “control” over Congress — Kelly reassured her audience: “Any anti-Israel people are welcome here… you’re allowed to have that view.”
Predictably, Greene launched into her familiar lines about AIPAC exerting “incredible influence and control over nearly every single one of my colleagues.” Instead of challenging the conspiratorial claim, Kelly echoed it: “I can feel the pressure being slightly ratcheted up… This is America. You’re allowed to have your view. Israel is not America.”
Even Greene’s most absurd claims — such as U.S. courts supposedly protecting the Israeli flag from burning — were met with quick correction followed by sympathy. And then came the absolution: “I know you have nothing against Israel. Oh gosh, no. Never mind Jews. That’s all a lie.”
Kelly’s message was unmistakable: whatever Greene’s history of antisemitic rhetoric, she would be treated as a legitimate voice, another member in good standing of the conservative conversation.
This isn’t the first time conservatives have faced a choice about whether to treat antisemitic conspiracy-mongers as respectable voices. William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, understood this danger. Among his most important contributions to modern conservatism was drawing a clear line against antisemitism — and enforcing it.
In the 1960s, Buckley took aim at the John Birch Society, whose paranoid conspiracies — communists under every bed, traitors in every government office — threatened to drag the right into disrepute. The Birchers trafficked openly in antisemitic conspiracy theories, and Buckley recognized that if the fever swamps were allowed to define the movement, conservatism would lose both its intellectual standing and its moral claim to leadership. He expelled them from respectability.
Three decades later, the challenge returned in sharper form. Senior National Review editor Joseph Sobran had developed what Buckley called “a cumulative tone” of hostility toward Jews and Israel. Pat Buchanan, in his opposition to the Gulf War, spoke of Congress as “Israel’s amen corner.” Buckley confronted both men, and Sobran was pushed off the National Review masthead. Buchanan, Buckley concluded, had crossed into rhetoric that “amounted to antisemitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it.”
In his 1992 book In Search of Antisemitism, Buckley laid down the principle that has guided serious conservatism ever since: “It is not enough to say that antisemitism is wrong, though of course it is. The point is that antisemitism disqualifies. A conservative who is an antisemite is not only wrong but unqualified to serve the conservative cause.”
That was the standard — no indulgence, no welcome back into polite company. Of course, antisemitism never disappeared from the right; it persisted in corners of the party and among certain figures. But Buckley’s line forced the haters to whisper, to hide, to know that their poison had no place in the open. That discipline made space for Jews to flourish in the conservative movement. And it is precisely that standard that Megyn Kelly has now begun to erode.
We now live in a political world where Tucker Carlson — who has turned Israel into an obsession, spun Jeffrey Epstein into a Jewish conspiracy, and regularly platforms open antisemites — is nonetheless feted by the Vice President of the United States and treated as a leading light of conservatism. Where Candace Owens, who calls Holocaust survivor testimony “propaganda” and accuses Israel of blackmail, is treated as a peer on the biggest conservative podcasts. Where Marjorie Taylor Greene, who rants about Rothschild lasers and Jewish “control” of Congress, is given a warm welcome by Megyn Kelly.
Buckley once drew a line and held it: antisemitism was poison, and those who trafficked in it had no place in the conservative mainstream. That line is gone. Today, the very figures he would have banished are not just tolerated. They are elevated, celebrated, and given the microphone as leading voices of the right.
This is not just a Jewish problem. Yes, it is ominous for American Jews, who find themselves increasingly targeted by antisemites who now enjoy legitimacy they once lacked. But it is also ominous for the American right itself. A movement that once prided itself on moral clarity is surrendering that clarity before our eyes.
Ever since the left’s descent into woke bigotry during the Obama years, the right has stood as the counterweight — the place where antisemitism was understood to disqualify. If that standard falls, the right will lose not only its moral compass but also its claim to lead.
For now, American Jews have a gift in Donald Trump — a president who has been a stalwart defender of Israel and regularly calls out antisemitism on campuses. But Trump will not be on the stage forever. And the movement that comes after him is increasingly led by the very antisemites and bigots Buckley once exiled.
That future should terrify everyone. For American Jews, it points to a coming storm of open hostility. For the America First movement, it marks the forfeiting of its moral authority. And for America itself, it signals something darker still: a politics where antisemitism is not shunned, but weaponized as a path to influence and power.
Unless America wakes up now, antisemitism will entrench itself at the heart of American politics. And a nation that lets antisemitism into its halls of power is a nation hell-bent on tearing itself apart.
