Candace Owens represents a crisis for the Carlson/podcaster/OG MAGA right because she diverted Charlie Kirk's murder from the focus on left criminality it initially pointed at towards TPUSA, which now must either be defended or subjected to suspicion, and defending TPUSA
places you within the circle of suspicion churned up within the internet depths the extent of which no one can know for sure. Meanwhile, defending TPUSA also raises problems, because Candace supporters can find threads leading out from there, and from Kirk himself, that lend a
patina of plausibility to her "inquiries," so, you're stuck with dueling quotes and videos from Kirk requiring increasingly "Talmudic" interpretive practices (what was Charlie thinking right before he was killed, etc.). And this leads back to Kirk himself endorsing Carlson
unequivocally and "defiantly" and Owens implicitly. It's hard to see how a general conflagration of this entire media ecosystem can be avoided, with Owens controlling a rump of the audience and the rest dispersed and confused. The great experiment of an autonomous MAGA media is
likely coming to an end. Something will replace it--maybe fledgling networks like OAN will pick up much of the slack--but the real questions regard Trump succession. Vance is the figure associated with this media, and he now will either extricate himself from it more or less
gracefully or get caught in the vortex (the very possibility of him even getting asked questions about Owens must be worrying to his supporters). And other than Vance, there really is no clear successor to Trump--other possible candidates are more from the establishment GOP world