Megyn Kelly weighed in Monday on the mass layoffs at Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, criticizing the conservative media figure for taking swings at veterans in the field like her and Tucker Carlson instead of a building a coalition that would help keep his company afloat.
“You haven’t moved at all off of your position that you get to dictate who’s part of the conservative movement and who isn’t. Meanwhile, I had been at Fox News for 16 years before anyone even knew his name. Some of us had been in this media space for a very long time fighting very important fights for decades. That includes Tucker Carlson, for sure. And it also includes yours truly,” Kelly said, citing a 2025 Turning Point USA speech Shapiro gave in which he called her a “coward.”
“It’s like, OK, when your business is hemorrhaging, maybe cast a wide net. Maybe launch your criticisms on an individualized basis, take on Tucker’s arguments, take on mine, whatever. You think I’m not saying enough about X — OK, you can spend your show talking about that if you want, I’m sure your audience doesn’t really want to spend its day hearing about that. But OK, you can do that. As opposed to, ‘I shall decree who is in and who is out. I appoint myself master of the conservative movement.’ That doesn’t work,” Kelly continued. “Liberals may like that s—t, but conservatives don’t.”
Kelly also indicated that The Daily Wire has lost sight of its “core mission of doing the news in a more fair and balanced way” while pursuing other projects and building itself out as a full-on production company.
“The Daily Wire is multifaceted,” she said. “They invested tens of millions of dollars in this dragon movie [“The Pendragon Cycle”], which they kept behind a paywall. It had no chance of paying off for them. It was just absolutely foolhardy. Now they’re selling razors and they’re selling chocolate and all sorts of different products, as opposed just doing the news.”
Still, Kelly said she’s “rooting” for Shapiro despite their fallout and continues to have “a lot of friends over there” at The Daily Wire.
“I have never been anything but good to Ben, and we were dealing with each other behind the scenes in a very lovely manner before he attacked me publicly at the Turning Point event in December,” Kelly said. “I’m rooting for Ben too. I don’t want to see Ben suffer. I don’t want to see his company implode, but it certainly seems to be. There are reports of 50 to 60% of the staff having been laid off. They officially denied it.”
On Friday, news of layoffs at The Daily Wire broke, with the majority of impacted positions residing at the company’s Nashville headquarters.
“The cuts were largely concentrated at our Nashville production office,” a spokesperson said. “As the company has invested in new formats, locations and production models, our footprint there has evolved. Over the last year, we have added production staff in D.C., the Northeast, and Florida. This step allows us to focus our resources on an ambitious slate of new entertainment projects set to release this year. Additionally, we will continue to invest in our editorial team and investigative journalism where we have already added numerous new reporters across the country and established a DC bureau with a seat in the White House briefing room.”
Watch the full segment from “The Megyn Kelly Show” below:
