The Daily Wire lost a third of its paid subscribers in 2025; Shapiro and his critics on the right dispute why

The Daily Wire, the Nashville-based conservative media company that Ben Shapiro co-founded in 2015, has spent the past 18 months under pressure from two directions. Its business has contracted on several measures: investor documents reported by Semafor show that paid subscriptions fell by about a third in 2025, the company has cut staff twice since March 2025, and the two founders who served as its chief executives have both stepped down. Over the same period Shapiro has been in a running public dispute with some of the best-known commentators on the right, among them Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon and Piers Morgan, over Israel, antisemitism, the killing of Charlie Kirk and who belongs in the conservative movement.

Owens and Carlson describe the company's troubles as a collapse that Shapiro brought on himself. Shapiro and the company say reports of the Daily Wire's demise are exaggerated and point to its profits and podcast rankings. This article tests both accounts against the available record: company statements and figures disclosed to investors, third-party audience measures, and what each person in the disputes has said, with links to each source. Where a number comes from a tracker rather than the company, or where 567 Politics saw a quote only through another outlet, the article says so.

What the company's own figures show

The most detailed financial picture comes from documents reported by Semafor on June 23, 2026, which the outlet said it reviewed as the company sought new investors. According to Semafor, paid subscriptions, about three-quarters of revenue, "dropped by a third in 2025 from a year ago, to roughly 850,000 people." Advertising, about a fifth of revenue, "has also dropped every year since 2022." The same documents show that the company "notched $48 million in adjusted EBITDA" in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA is a measure of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, from which a company also leaves out costs it considers one-time; it is not audited profit. The Daily Wire did not respond to Semafor's requests for comment.

For comparison, the company told Axios in November 2022 that DailyWire+ had passed 1 million paid subscribers. Semafor's figures imply roughly 1.25 million paying subscribers at the end of 2024. 567 Politics found no subscriber number published by the company itself for 2023 or 2024.

Revenue appears to have stayed above $200 million. Semafor reported on July 8 that the company "did over $200 million in revenue and $48 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2025," and co-founder Jeremy Boreing told Deadline in January that "Daily Wire generates more than $200M a year in revenue." In May the company told Inside Radio that its revenue was lower than in 2024 but its cash flow was solid, in Inside Radio's summary.

The documents Semafor reviewed also describe an expensive bet. The company spent $50 million on The Pendragon Cycle, a scripted fantasy series that Boreing championed, and the spending "consumed the majority of the 2025 content budget." A memo from Highmount Capital quoted by Semafor said the series "did not fully resonate with the core Daily Wire audience." Semafor reported that Highmount was in talks to lead a round of at least $100 million that would value the company at $750 million, that bankers described buyout offers above $1 billion, and that the founders preferred a minority investment with an eye to a public offering in a few years. Shapiro, according to Semafor, "agreed to take less podcast money for more equity in the company." The Highmount memo also said: "The return of Fortune 500 advertisers validates the platform's scale and audience quality." 567 Politics found no announcement that the round has closed.

The company has since stepped back from parts of that strategy. In July it sold its Jeremy's Razors and Jeremy's Chocolates brands to Boreing's new company for an undisclosed sum, and Semafor wrote that the Daily Wire "has scaled back the expensive scripted streaming business that Boreing spearheaded." Pendragon, which premiered exclusively on DailyWire+ in January, arrived on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S. on Sept. 1. The company has kept releasing other entertainment: the film Run Hide Fight: Infidels in September, and Confession, which it plans to screen in 100 theaters for one night on Nov. 11.

Layoffs and leadership changes

The company has cut staff in two rounds. In late March 2025, a spokesman said the cuts were made after a review of "business needs and operational efficiencies," according to Barrett Media, a trade outlet that covers talk media and reported that the number affected was unclear. Former employees said publicly that the children's content department was among those cut, Breitbart reported. Posts on X at the time put the cut at about a quarter of staff; the company never confirmed a number, and 567 Politics found no established outlet that reported one.

On May 1, 2026, the company announced a restructuring that "included layoffs to a number of teams," with cuts "largely concentrated at our Nashville production office," according to a statement published by TheWrap. The statement said the step "allows us to focus our resources on an ambitious slate of new entertainment projects set to release this year" and that the company would keep investing in reporting, including a Washington bureau. Owens, a former Daily Wire host, wrote on X that day that she was "hearing that the Daily Wire laid off over 50% of their staff today." The company's editor-in-chief, Brent Scher, replied on X: "No, it was nowhere near 50% of the company." Two weeks later Shapiro gave a figure in an opinion piece on the company's site: "the Daily Wire has laid off roughly 13% of our workforce since the beginning of the year." A company spokesman told the Washington Post that the company still had more than 200 employees, according to The Independent's account of the Post's report; 567 Politics could not open the Post article. No absolute number of layoffs has been published.

Leadership has also turned over. Boreing stepped down as co-chief executive on March 18, 2025. The company's announcement said he would turn his "full attention to creative and entertainment ventures for the company," and Shapiro credited his "brilliant leadership." About a week later, on Megyn Kelly's show, Shapiro rejected reports of financial trouble: "We are healthy, we are growing, we're thriving," Barrett Media transcribed him saying. Boreing later described his exit differently. He told Deadline in January 2026 that "we negotiated a separation" because "our priorities weren't as aligned as they had been." On Allie Beth Stuckey's podcast in May, he said: "I didn't expect to be separated from the Daily Wire. It's not what I wanted," calling it "the biggest blow I've ever gone through in my life." In June, Shapiro said he would appear on Boreing's new independent show: "Sure, why not? His show is good, by the way," Barrett Media reported.

On May 20, 2026, Caleb Robinson, who had become sole chief executive, stepped down. His statement, quoted by Barrett Media, said his new title was "guy on the board who still owns a lot of the company," and handed the job to Mike Richards, a former Jeopardy! executive producer whom the company had hired as president in May 2025. Robinson gave no reason for leaving, and Barrett wrote that none was clear.

On-air talent has also left. Brett Cooper, host of The Comments Section, departed in December 2024, saying in a video, "It is not true that I am being forced out; it was my own choice to leave," The Spectator World reported. Boreing said in the same video that the company was "sad to see Brett go." Owens's 2024 exit is described below.

1. March 22, 2024Candace Owens and the company part ways
2. Dec. 10, 2024Brett Cooper leaves, saying the choice was her own
3. March 18, 2025Jeremy Boreing steps down as co-CEO
4. Late March 2025First layoff round; size not disclosed
5. May 2025Mike Richards hired as president
6. Jan. 22, 2026The Pendragon Cycle premieres on DailyWire+
7. May 1, 2026Second layoff round, concentrated in Nashville
8. May 20, 2026Caleb Robinson steps down; Richards becomes CEO
9. June 23, 2026Semafor reports investor talks at a $750 million valuation
10. July 8, 2026Razor and chocolate brands sold to Boreing's company
11. Sept. 1, 2026Pendragon arrives on Prime Video in the U.S.

Source: Daily Wire, The Spectator World, Barrett Media, TheWrap, Semafor

What audience data show

No single measure captures the Daily Wire's audience, and the company and its critics cite different ones. Taken together, the available data point to a real decline from 2024 levels on several platforms, with podcasts holding up better than video and web traffic.

YouTube. The viral claim that Shapiro had lost "85% of his YouTube audience since last year" began with a post by an X account with about 17,000 followers, according to a fact-check by Barrett Media. Barrett found that the claim "isn't true" as worded. Using Social Blade, a third-party tracker of YouTube's public counts, it found that Shapiro's channel drew about 38 million views in April 2025 and about 25 million in April 2026, a drop of about 34%, while subscribers fell by about 200,000 over a year from a base of 7.2 million, or about 2%. The 85% figure fits a longer window. 567 Politics' reading of Social Blade's monthly chart puts the channel's peak at roughly 177 million views in March 2024, so monthly views in spring 2026 were about 85% below that peak. The difference lies in the baseline: views were about a third lower than a year earlier and far below the 2024 high. Social Blade's figures are estimates, monthly views depend partly on how many videos a channel posts, and YouTube changed how it counts views in August 2026, so later months are not directly comparable.

Podcasts. Edison Research's quarterly Top 50, based on interviews with about 5,000 weekly U.S. podcast consumers ages 13 and older, is the one ranking that includes shows whose publishers do not pay for measurement, such as Carlson's and Owens's. The Ben Shapiro Show ranked 8th in the second quarter of 2023 and 41st in the third quarter of 2026. In an August analysis, Edison reported that the show's weekly U.S. audience fell 19% between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2026, while The Matt Walsh Show, another Daily Wire program, was "the only title on this list that has kept its audience consistent." Over the same period The Megyn Kelly Show grew 115% and The Tucker Carlson Show 13%. By the third quarter of 2026, according to Edison's list as published by Podnews, both Kelly's and Carlson's shows had dropped out of the Top 50 and Owens's show had slipped from 30th to 38th.

Sources: Radio Ink, Edison Research at SSRS, Podnews Q3 2025, Podnews Q2 2026, Podnews Q3 2026. "n/a" means the show had not launched or its rank was not in the releases 567 Politics reviewed. Ranks move from quarter to quarter; the Shapiro show was 48th in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 24th in the first quarter of 2026.

Podtrac, a measurement firm that ranks only publishers that take part in its service, shows more stability. The Ben Shapiro Show has ranked between sixth and ninth among measured U.S. shows in the months 567 Politics checked from October 2023 to September 2026, including ninth in September 2026. In Podtrac's September 2026 publisher ranking, DailyWire+ placed 10th, with 5.1 million unique monthly U.S. listeners across 13 shows. The Daily Wire had 8.9 million in July 2023, when its lineup was different, so the two figures are not an exact comparison. Shapiro cited Podtrac's global chart in his May opinion piece, writing that the network ranked "sixth globally."

Web traffic. TheRighting, a newsletter that tracks right-leaning media, uses Similarweb estimates of mobile and desktop visits. It reported that visits to the Daily Wire's site fell 50% year over year in June 2026 and that visits to all 20 of the most popular right-wing news sites declined. Scher disputed the method in an email to TheRighting: "Similarweb ain't it," he wrote, adding that the figures were "so far from reality." TheRighting said it offered to publish the company's own numbers, and the company has not released any.

Reach among Republicans. A Pew Research Center survey of 9,482 U.S. adults, conducted March 10 to 16, 2025, found that 12% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and 2% of Democrats and Democratic leaners, said they regularly get news from the Daily Wire. Pew has not published a later comparison.

Two cautions apply to all of these numbers. Many right-leaning outlets peaked around the November 2024 election, which makes year-over-year comparisons starting then look steeper. And several of the declines are shared across the sector, which makes it harder to attribute the Daily Wire's losses to any one cause.

The disputes: what each side has said

Shapiro's disputes on the right turn on a few recurring questions: how conservatives should treat critics of Israel and figures they consider antisemitic, whether interviewing someone amounts to endorsing them, and how to talk about the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025. A Utah man, Tyler Robinson, has been charged with aggravated murder in Kirk's death, TheWrap reported.

Candace Owens

Owens and the Daily Wire parted ways on March 22, 2024. Boreing, then chief executive, wrote only that the company and Owens "have ended their relationship," and the company gave no reason, NBC News reported. Owens wrote on X: "The rumors are true— I am finally free." The Washington Post reported at the time that the split followed months of conflict over Israel after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, according to a syndicated copy of its story. A week later, on The Rubin Report, Shapiro said the departure "is not about disagreements over Israel" and that "there's no free speech problem with The Daily Wire," Barrett Media reported. In January 2026, Boreing told Deadline, "I did hire Candace Owens, so I probably owe some penance for that," while also calling her "probably, the most talented person operating in conservative media."

The dispute sharpened after Kirk's death, when Owens publicly questioned the official account of the killing. At Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix in December 2025, Shapiro said, "Friendship with the person accusing TPUSA of a cover up of Charlie's murder is no excuse for cowardice," Jewish Insider reported. Owens answered on her podcast that after she left the company Shapiro "wanted to make sure my reputation and livelihood was also destroyed," and said, "You are an impostor, Ben," according to Mediaite.

In a Jan. 8, 2026, episode, according to a machine transcript of the show, Owens called Shapiro "a parasite" and said his behavior since the killing led her to believe "he may know more than the public knows about Charlie Kirk's death." She cited no evidence for that suggestion in the passages 567 Politics reviewed, and no court filing or official statement that 567 Politics found supports it. On Feb. 24, after Owens released a series about Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, Shapiro called Owens "an evil, twisted human being" on his show, according to a Media Matters transcript. In July, Owens posted screenshots that she said were texts from Kirk disparaging Shapiro over Israel; their authenticity has not been independently verified. Shapiro replied on X: "I've said repeatedly that Charlie and I weren't best friends." He accused Owens of "slandering Charlie's wife, his friends, and all of the people he worked with," and added, "You're working to acquit his murderer." 567 Politics found no reply from Owens to that post.

When Semafor reported the subscriber decline in June, Owens told her audience that the company was struggling "because they're unnecessarily awful to everyone," and said, "That's not a company, that's a cult, and a cult cannot survive," HuffPost reported. She also said the timing of the company's troubles was telling: "I love that it's all happening the year that I left."

Tucker Carlson

The dispute with Carlson took its current form after his Oct. 27, 2025, interview with Nick Fuentes, a streamer whom Shapiro has called "America's foremost Hitler apologist." On Nov. 3, Shapiro called Carlson "an intellectual coward" and "a terrible friend," saying the problem was that Carlson chose to "normalize and fluff Nick Fuentes," Barrett Media reported. He said he had "never called for his cancellation" and that it is not cancellation to "draw moral lines between viewpoints." Carlson, asked by Megyn Kelly days later about critics of the interview, said: "You're not my editor. Buzz off." He described his approach this way: "I'm just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think," adding, "And if you don't like it, don't watch," The Independent reported.

At the Heritage Foundation on Dec. 17, Shapiro said, "A conservatism that treats Tucker Carlson as a thought leader is no conservatism," and urged what he called "ideological border control," JTA reported. The next night, at AmericaFest, he criticized Owens, Carlson, Kelly and Bannon by name and said, "These people are frauds and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time." He said of Carlson's style of raising questions without evidence: "Just asking questions is something my 5-year-old does," Fox News reported. Carlson, who spoke later, answered: "To hear calls for, like, deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I'm like, what? That's hilarious," according to Jewish Insider. Vice President JD Vance, who closed the conference, said he "didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform" and that "we have far more important work to do than canceling each other," Fox News reported. Vance named no one.$

The U.S. war with Iran that began at the end of February 2026 added another fault line. Carlson said in March that "it's never a question that's occurred to Ben Shapiro — is this good for America?" according to a Media Matters transcript. President Donald Trump attacked Carlson, Kelly, Owens and Alex Jones over their opposition to his Iran policy in an April post on Truth Social, calling them "LOSERS," The National News Desk reported. Carlson's most recent claim about the war, a Nov. 1 post saying a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran may be days away, is examined in 567 Politics' report on that claim and the reactions to it.

Carlson has also pointed to the company's finances. "We're getting a lecture about capitalism from a guy who tanked his own company," he said on the Orthodoxy podcast in July; Barrett Media noted that he cited no financial data. In August, according to X posts by Carlson's critics that HotAir collected, Carlson described Shapiro as an "employee" of "larger interests" who had been helped into Harvard Law School; 567 Politics did not review the episode itself. Boreing, no longer at the company, replied that by suggesting Shapiro "only got into college because of some grand global conspiracy," Carlson had "jumped the last shark."

In September, Carlson praised Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, and defended El-Sayed's past remarks about the war on terror, The Independent reported. Shapiro said in late October that Carlson "doesn't give a crap about Republicans winning" and that if El-Sayed wins, "one of the people he should be thanking is Tucker Carlson," according to a Media Matters compilation of clips. The contest is tracked on 567 Politics' Michigan Senate race page.

In October, after Shapiro described the Jewish teaching of the seven Noahide laws to a Christian student at a Turning Point event at the University of Iowa, Carlson said on The Jimmy Dore Show that Shapiro was "proposing a legal code in which my religion would be illegal," according to a third-party transcript. Shapiro called the claim "psychotic" and wrote that "Tucker wants conservatives to lose. It's that simple," VIN News reported. He pointed to the full exchange, in which he told the student, "I think you're doing a great job by believing in Jesus." As VIN News described the exchange, Shapiro was explaining a religious teaching about what Judaism asks of non-Jews; the outlet does not report him proposing it as civil law.

Megyn Kelly

Kelly, who says she helped make Shapiro "a star" by booking him on her Fox News shows, responded to his AmericaFest speech from the same stage the next day. "I found it kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement," she said, and "I don't think we are friends anymore," NBC News reported. She said the rift "revolves around Israel." Shapiro had faulted her for declining to condemn Owens, calling her reasoning "a moral and logical absurdity," according to Jewish Insider.

In early March 2026, Kelly said on her show: "Mark Levin wanted it. It's his war. Ben Shapiro, Lindsey Graham, Miriam Adelson, that's obvious." Shapiro answered: "You know whose war this is? President Donald J. Trump's war," and challenged Kelly and Carlson to "say his name," Barrett Media reported. A week later Kelly took Morgan's side in his dispute with Shapiro, writing on her website: "How many people must be culled from the conservative movement in order to make Ben happy?" Shapiro responded that Kelly was "taking credit for my entire career," the New York Post reported, and said, "I have never remotely called Megyn Kelly an antisemite."

Steve Bannon

Bannon, the former Trump strategist who hosts the War Room program, spoke at AmericaFest the day after Shapiro. "Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads," he said, describing an "Israel First crowd" that included Shapiro and calling the fight "a proxy on '28," a reference to the 2028 presidential race, the Daily Caller reported. He added: "He tried to take over Breitbart and I ran him out of there." In his own speech, Shapiro had said that Bannon "accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country," according to Jewish Insider. 567 Politics found no further direct exchange between the two in 2026.

Piers Morgan

The dispute with Morgan, the British broadcaster who hosts Piers Morgan Uncensored, has come in two rounds. In March, Shapiro called Morgan the "Jerry Springer of political television" for booking guests Shapiro considers extreme and said, "some of us make our choices based on, you know, actual principles," as quoted on Kelly's website. Morgan replied on X that Shapiro "just can't take anyone" who criticizes the Israeli government, Mediaite reported. On his show he called Shapiro "a cancel culture vulture" and argued, "You can't possibly know you are right if you don't know what the other side thinks," the Daily Caller reported. In September, Morgan wrote that Shapiro was "banned" from his show because "he's become ratings kryptonite." Shapiro replied that he had "announced publicly" months earlier that he would not appear, Mediaite reported, and the two exchanged personal insults over the following days.

Inside the Daily Wire

567 Politics found no Daily Wire host who has publicly sided with Carlson, Owens or Kelly against Shapiro. Matt Walsh, whose podcast audience has held steady, has distanced himself from the feuding in general terms. "The conservative commentariat now spends most of its time talking to itself about itself," he wrote on X in March, adding that it "is increasingly divorced from the issues that impact actual Americans" and that "I didn't sign up to star in a soap opera," Barrett Media reported. He named no one.

Walsh has also voiced doubts about the Iran war that Shapiro has defended. After Walsh wrote that the administration's messaging was "to put it mildly, confused," Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky replied, "I hope you don't get fired for this, because it's true," KOMO reported. No discipline was reported. In June the newsletter Breaker reported a contract dispute between Walsh and the company, according to its editor's post on X; 567 Politics could not read the paywalled report and found no comment from Walsh or the company. Walsh hosted an episode of his show on Oct. 28. In 2024, Shapiro had cited Walsh's more skeptical views on the Middle East as evidence that hosts can disagree with him and keep their jobs.$

What polling shows about the split

Representative surveys do not measure the disputes directly, but they show the generational divide over Israel that runs through them. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted May 4 to 17, 2026, 28% of Republicans ages 18 to 34 had a favorable view of the Israeli government, compared with 68% of Republicans 50 and older. 567 Politics' report on U.S. opinion of Israel sets out the broader trend in Pew, AP-NORC and other surveys. No survey that 567 Politics found asks whether views of Shapiro, Carlson or Owens drive those shifts, or measures how the disputes affect who subscribes to the Daily Wire.

Weighing the arguments

Each side's case contains claims the evidence supports and claims it does not.

The company's position that the reports of its death "are greatly exaggerated," in Shapiro's words, is consistent with the figures it disclosed to investors: revenue above $200 million, $48 million in adjusted EBITDA, more than 200 staff and podcasts that still rank in Podtrac's top 10. The same documents show a one-third fall in paying subscribers in a single year, falling advertising revenue and a $50 million series that a prospective investor said did not resonate with the core audience. Shapiro's May opinion piece groups "the media Left, and the Woke Right — Candace and Fuentes and Tucker and Megyn" together as "the New Left" and says their aim is "to destroy traditional conservatism." That treats critics with different views and motives as a single bloc, and the piece offers no evidence that they coordinated.

Owens's statement that "a complete collapse has happened" goes further than the data. A company with about 850,000 paying subscribers and positive adjusted earnings has shrunk; it has not collapsed. Her point about timing describes a sequence, and treating a sequence as proof of cause is the inference known as post hoc reasoning. Semafor's figures imply that paid subscriptions were higher at the end of 2024, the year she left, than a year later, while Shapiro's YouTube views began falling in spring 2024. Neither pattern separates her departure from other changes over the same period, including the November 2024 election.

Carlson's statement that Shapiro "tanked his own company" is not backed by any figure he cited, and the company's reported 2025 earnings contradict it as worded, though the subscriber losses and staff cuts are real. His description of Shapiro as an "employee" of unnamed "larger interests," as quoted by his critics, came with no evidence that 567 Politics could find.

Several explanations for the decline are plausible and can operate together: the public disputes, the cost of Pendragon, the post-election drop in audiences across right-leaning media, competition from independent shows that grew in 2024 and 2025, and changes in how YouTube counts and distributes video. The data available do not show how much each one contributed.

What remains unknown

• Exact layoff numbers. The company has given a percentage (13% in 2026) and a floor (more than 200 employees), not a count. The size of the March 2025 round was never disclosed.
• Audited financials. The Daily Wire is private. Its subscriber, revenue and earnings figures come from documents reported by Semafor and from executives' statements, not audited filings.
• The investment round. 567 Politics found no confirmation that the Highmount-led round closed or that the company has filed for a public offering.
• The Washington Post's May 9 report. 567 Politics could not open it; figures attributed to it here come from other outlets' accounts.
• Several quotes from recorded shows. Some October remarks come from a third-party transcript and Media Matters clip pages, Owens's January episode from a machine transcript, and Carlson's August remarks from critics' posts. Each is labeled where it appears.
• The texts Owens posted. Their authenticity has not been independently verified.

Differing perspectives

What is behind the Daily Wire's losses, and should Ben Shapiro keep publicly confronting other figures on the right?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• Allow open debate over Israel on the right

  Who holds it: Commentators Megyn Kelly and Piers Morgan

  Kelly and Morgan argue that Shapiro has tried to push people out of the conservative conversation for criticizing Israel's government or for interviewing guests he objects to. Kelly asks how many people 'must be culled from the conservative movement in order to make Ben happy?' and says the rift 'revolves around Israel.' Morgan says he challenges extreme guests on air, that audiences benefit from seeing them questioned, and that 'you can't possibly know you are right if you don't know what the other side thinks.' In their view, open argument rather than exclusion is how a movement should settle its disagreements.

  In their words: The Megyn Kelly Show (megynkelly.com), March 11, 2026 ↗

• Draw clear moral lines on the right

  Who holds it: Ben Shapiro; Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing has defended him

  Shapiro argues that conservatism stands for specific principles and that 'if conservatives do not stand up and draw lines, conservatism and the dream of America itself will cease to exist.' He says hosts are responsible for how they treat their guests, and that Carlson chose to normalize Nick Fuentes instead of challenging him. He says Owens has wronged Charlie Kirk's widow and Turning Point with her accusations about the killing. Naming such figures is not cancellation, he says; he has never called for Fuentes's cancellation, and people with a microphone have a 'moral obligation to call that out by name.'

  In their words: JTA, Dec. 17, 2025 (Shapiro's Heritage Foundation remarks) ↗

• Hold Shapiro's approach responsible for the losses

  Who holds it: Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson

  Owens and Carlson argue that the Daily Wire's troubles stem from how Shapiro treats people who disagree with him. Owens says the company is struggling 'because they're unnecessarily awful to everyone,' that Shapiro treats disagreement as 'a declaration of war,' and that a company run this way is 'a cult, and a cult cannot survive.' She says she has never seen anyone 'less capable of making friends.' Carlson says Shapiro lectures others about capitalism after, in Carlson's words, he 'tanked his own company,' and argues that Shapiro's approach to critics depends on pressure more than persuasion.

  In their words: HuffPost, June 25, 2026 (Owens's remarks on her show) ↗

• Judge the company by its earnings and podcasts

  Who holds it: Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire's management

  The company's leaders argue that reports of its decline are overstated. Shapiro acknowledges that the Daily Wire has cut about 13% of its staff this year but calls it 'the largest traditional conservative media company in the digital space,' with a podcast network he says ranks sixth globally on Podtrac's chart. The company reported more than $200 million in 2025 revenue and $48 million in adjusted EBITDA, and says it is investing in new entertainment, reporters and a Washington bureau. Shapiro argues that critics on the left and right attack the company because they want to weaken traditional conservatism.

  In their words: Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire, May 15, 2026 ↗

• Stop the infighting and refocus on voters

  Who holds it: Daily Wire host Matt Walsh; Vice President JD Vance made a similar appeal

  Walsh argues that 'the conservative commentariat now spends most of its time talking to itself about itself' and is 'increasingly divorced from the issues that impact actual Americans.' He says he 'didn't sign up to star in a soap opera' and points to his show's daily coverage of policy issues as a better use of a conservative platform. Vance made a related case at AmericaFest, saying he did not bring 'a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform' and that the movement has 'far more important work to do than canceling each other.'

  In their words: Barrett Media, March 17, 2026 (Walsh's post on X) ↗