When "A Warning Against the Unmooring of the American Right" was published this past Friday, many readers reached out asking me to elaborate—to name names, to point directly to the people and patterns I had in mind. That’s a fair request.

In the piece, I deliberately kept my focus broad. My goal was to describe a sickness I believed most of us could already sense: the slow drift of some voices on the Right from principle toward paranoia. But clarity matters, and since Charlie Kirk’s assassination just over five weeks ago, those currents have begun to take on sharper contours.

Let me make clear what some readers may have misunderstood: this is not a critique of MAGA or of President Trump. I do not consider him “far Right.” I supported him in 2024 and believe his presidency has thus far been a success. His Supreme Court appointments during his first term were excellent. His foreign policy has been a massive improvement over that of his predecessor—and, in my view, over that of any other president of the 21st century. And his immigration policy has been incredibly effective. My concern lies to the right of Trump—in the growing fringe that increasingly dominates the online conversation and are the antithesis of what it means to be “Right” (perhaps we ought to call them… “wrong”).

On the day my column was published, The Daily Wire hosts Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and Michael J. Knowles uploaded a conversation discussing the New York Young Republicans group-chat controversy and the broader dialogue now unfolding on the Right. In it, Shapiro said: “There are things that get said on the Right that are really, really, really ugly, and pretending those away doesn’t make them go away. I think that they’re rising. I think that they’re getting more common. I know my death threats from that side are getting more common. I know that I have more security because of that, and it’s not just from the Left.”

I am proud to call myself a conservative. Yet pride in one’s political tradition also requires an honest accounting of its problems and potential pitfalls. Shapiro also made clear, in the same conversation, that hatred and extremism remain more institutionalized on the Left. This is true. But our movement isn’t immune........

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