Ben Shapiro Built a Conservative Media Empire, but Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are tearing it apart.
On his Rumble show this morning, Nick Fuentes sat at his desk wearing an “America First” hat and announced that he won. “Guys, after nine years, nine years, we won.
The Daily Wire had laid off almost half of its staff two weeks ago. In 2017, Fuentes was 18 years old, drawing about 100 viewers a night on Right Side Broadcasting. Ben Shapiro was at CPAC, building an empire alongside Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, and Matt Walsh that would clear $100 million a year. “Nobody was asking about Israel,” Fuentes said. “We’re all Groypers now.”
Shapiro built an anti-resurrection media empire that dominated the 2010s. The very figures he has spent months denouncing as morally stupid, clever cowards, and conspirators are the ones being crowned by the market.
The Daily Wire, the company Shapiro founded in 2015, was approaching $200 million in annual revenue by 2024, with more than a million paid subscribers. It has been expanding into premium broadcasting with films, children’s content, and a 7-part series of Arthurian episodes called the Pendragon Cycle. The expensive “Conservative Disney” push never came.
On May 1, 2026, the company laid off nearly half of its workforce. Shapiro is reportedly looking for buyers or investors. His main YouTube channel has lost an estimated 85% of its monthly views since its peak in 2023–2024. Website traffic has been cut in half in the past year.
Audiences have moved to the creators more extreme than Shapiro.
Tucker Carlson left Fox in 2023 to form his own network. His shows now average 56.8 million views per episode across all platforms. His coverage of the February 2026 Iran conflict drew a total of 1.53 billion views in 8.5 weeks. Interviewed Nick Fuentes for over 2 hours in October 2025.
Candace Owens left The Daily Wire in March 2024 after falling out with Shapiro over Israel. He called the shot a gift. His independent podcast is now ranked in the top 10 worldwide. He has been leaning heavily on conspiracy theories since the breakup.
Nick Fuentes is a self-described white activist with a history of opposing and denying the Holocaust. He was banned from major arenas for years. He was brought back to X and now has over 1 million followers there. Shapiro called Carlson’s October 2025 interview with him an act of “discipline.”
MAGA’s base has shifted toward neoconservative foreign policy for years. Charlie Kirk’s execution in September 2025 was rushed. The Iran conflict of February 2026 was accelerating. The Daily Wire’s stance on Israel has become an offense to an increasingly separatist audience.
Shapiro had been calling the three for months. He called Carlson a “brilliant coward” and “a big spreader of bad ideas” in the Fuentes interview. He called Owens’ theories about Charlie Kirk’s death “subtle and conspiratorial nonsense.” On May 6, 2026, days after the layoff was announced, he wrote in X: “On the show today: Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes and the rest of the New Left take off the mask.”
The audience read the attack as proof that the targets were saying something worth listening to. Owens teased the Daily Wire layoff in real time. Posts showing the audience’s shift in Shapiro’s pro-Israel stance racked up tens of thousands of likes.
Today, both sides went to their cameras. On the same episode of Rumble, Fuentes recorded a short segment talking to Candace Owens. “Here we meet again at the Daily Wire’s grave,” he said. “We’re like Bonnie and Clyde.”
On his YouTube channel, Shapiro responded. He has agreed to 13% layoffs since January, which is less than the 50% figure some stores have reported. He cited Pod Track data showing that Daily Wire reaches 41 million people a month across 11 shows, ranking 6th worldwide.
He called Fuentes a “certified Nazi” and Owens a “cyber-bag woman.” He framed the story as a left-wing media coalition and “right wing” working to destroy traditional conservatives. He noted that Russia Today, an official Kremlin outlet, retweeted Fuentes’ victory tweet today.
The Daily Wire is still the largest traditional media company. But every attack Ben starts feeds his audience on the attacking people, the attention of the monster.
