National Review Showers Ben Shapiro With Praise Amid Conservative Civil War

National Review showered The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro with praise in an editorial on Monday after he excoriated some of the Right’s most influential conspiracy theorists in speeches last week.

First, Shapiro dropped by the Heritage Foundation last Wednesday, where he delivered a stunning takedown of Tucker Carlson in which he called the former Fox News host “an opponent of conservatism, an outsider masquerading as an insider, and destroying the character of the conservative movement in the process.”

Then he showed up ready for a fight at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, where he took aim at Candace Owens over the conspiracy theories she’s promoted about the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk — as well as Carlson and Megyn Kelly for giving her cover.

“Erika Kirk and TPUSA never, never should have been put in the position to have to defend themselves against such specious and evil attacks, particularly in a time of mourning, and the people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks – and some of them are speaking here – are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice. The fact that they have said nothing while Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years is just as cowardly,” declared Shapiro at the popular conference.

“Well, that will leave a mark,” declared the editors of National Review under the headline, “Cheers for Ben Shapiro.”

After summarizing the two speeches, the long-running conservative magazine made its case for Shapiro’s larger argument:

Shapiro’s critics accuse him of wanting to cancel his adversaries. But having standards and speaking truthfully about lies is not cancellation. If Carlson had chosen not to have Fuentes on his show, Fuentes wouldn’t have been canceled; he just would have been denied the favor of a high-profile platform with a friendly interviewer.

As Shapiro told the TPUSA audience, “Our first duty is truth. We owe you the truth. That means we should not mislead you; it means we shouldn’t hide the ball; we shouldn’t be deliberately obscure about what we are telling you. We have an obligation to clarity and to honesty.”

“Such are the business incentives in the influencer space and the radicalism that has been unloosed that these words are unlikely to be heeded any time soon,” concluded the editorial. “Yet, Shapiro has put down an important marker, and anyone vested in the health of the conservative movement should be grateful.”