Exclusive: More MAGA than MAGA: How the Daily Caller turned on MAGA and Trump

<p><img src="https://img.semafor.com/3292d6c44827cd0e27c58d5efd3345e82c268077-1440x1…; alt="3292d6c44827cd0e27c58d5efd3345e82c268077-1440x1080.png?rect=0,162,1440,756&amp;w=1200&amp;h=630&amp;q=75&amp;auto=format"></p><div><p>When Tucker Carlson co-founded the Daily Caller in 2010, it was to be the Republican Party’s answer to The New York Times.</p><p>A few identity crises later, the publication has followed Carlson into a hard turn against Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and against Israel — choices that have injected into the publication the digital energy of the new online right, and cost it the support of some of its backers.</p><p>“I’ve had some of the most aggressive donor pressure over this — the single most aggressive donor pressure over this, of anything I’ve seen in journalism in 20 years,” Daily Caller publisher Neil Patel told Semafor. He wouldn’t detail the cost of lost financial support to the Caller, which includes both a for-profit firm and the nonprofit Daily Caller News Foundation, but acknowledged that there had been costs.</p><p>The Caller has been a pillar of Washington’s conservative media scene since its launch, an important voice in internecine Republican conflicts and a pipeline of journalistic talent whose alumni include employees of both conservative and mainstream outlets.</p><p>Now it’s at the vanguard of a Republican civil war that Carlson has helped unleash.</p><p>“The Iran war is a huge turning point for the conservative movement,” Editor-in-Chief Amber Duke told Semafor on Friday.</p><p>Nowhere has that shift been clearer than in the outlet’s X feed since the United States went to war with Iran in February. The organization has taken to <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2114705263970119789">tweeting</a&gt; the price of diesel every day, emphasizing the war’s cost on drivers, and <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2112270235801948557">posts</a&gt; <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2113300583356756289">screenshots</a&gt; of <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2114781239689588784">Trump’s posts</a> about the war in Iran, adding spicy commentary.</p><p>“What if instead of “banning” a term, we stopped spending endless amounts of money on foreign wars?” the outlet <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2115140913173516736">wrote</a&gt; of Trump’s command that AI be referred to as “super intelligence.”</p><p>The Daily Caller has similarly gone after Israel, questioning its decisions in the Middle East. It has blasted Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, and <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2026/10/29/mike-huckabee-american-beaten-israel…; <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2111152534253687293">highlighted</a&gt; Israeli settler violence, particularly against <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2026/10/29/israel-hilltop-youth-child-soldiers-…;. The criticism has gotten the attention of pro-Israel hawks, who have accused the publication of antisemitism and crudely implied it is pro-Islamic propaganda.</p><p>“Daily Caller means Al Jazeera in Arabic,” Fox News host and commentator Mark Levin <a href="https://x.com/marklevinshow/status/2113703978932310287">wrote</a>.</p><… fissures at the Caller — and in the broader conservative movement — began widening when the activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, according to most of the nine current and former Caller employees who I spoke to over the last week. The movement that had united around Donald Trump devolved into a frenzy of unfounded conspiracy theories, many blaming Israel for Kirk’s death.</p><p>The podcaster Candace Owens drove those theories, infuriating her former employer, Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro. Shapiro laid into Owens for perpetuating what he said were antisemitic conspiracy theories, attacked podcaster Megyn Kelly for not condemning Owens, and criticized Carlson for what he described as a cozy interview with self-proclaimed white nationalist Nick Fuentes.</p><p>The Daily Caller, long a younger and slightly edgier outlet than other right-leaning publications like the Washington Examiner, The National Review, or even Breitbart, followed that online energy. Some on staff noted that former editor Dylan Housman left the publication the Friday before the Iran war started, and the tone shifted significantly following his departure. Duke, a former Caller staffer, replaced him and encouraged the publication to adopt an aggressive posture on social media.</p><p>Employees also said they sensed that Patel seemed to side with Carlson, Patel’s longtime friend and business partner. While Carlson has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/business/media/daily-caller-tucker-c… been unaffiliated</a> with the outlet, Patel retains business connections with Carlson, while Carlson’s brother Buckley Carlson has served on the Daily Caller nonprofit’s board.</p><p>Patel told Semafor he is not involved in day-to-day operations at the Caller, on which he defers to Duke and others, and stressed that Carlson’s stances had no bearing on the outlet.</p><p>Still, he said he encouraged the Caller’s leaders to remain independent and reflect the publication’s values.</p><p>That reality for average Americans, he said, has turned against Trump.</p><p>“Things just aren’t going that well today. I think if you’re at all looking at this objectively, it’s hard to make the case that things are going great in a lot of areas. And so if our coverage has changed, I think it’s changed just to reflect that,” he said.</p></div>