Top Trump officials are privately fuming over what they describe as a widening crack inside the MAGA movement, and they are pointing the finger at Candace Owens.
A senior Trump official told Zeteo that anxiety is spreading through the president’s inner circle as Owens, once a reliable defender of Donald Trump, has turned into one of his loudest critics. The official described an onslaught of messages from worried allies who see the split growing in real time.
“I have gotten so many texts asking: what are you guys gonna do about Candace Owens?” the senior official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “What can I do? Delete the internet?”
Owens is an influencer with a large audience that has only grown larger by the day. She has one of the top podcasts in the world, and she rocketed to No.1 with her investigations into the death of Charlie Kirk. The Trump orbit has debated on how to handle Owens, but so far, it appears they have chosen not to respond or pull her back into the moment, which she is very unlikely to go for.
The official’s comments also reflect a bigger problem for Trump’s circle, a rising set of right-leaning voices that do not take orders from the campaign, the party, or the White House. Owens has now been lumped into the same growing lane as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, each influential, each willing to criticize Trump-aligned figures, and each able to gain attention from a wide margin of the MAGA movement.
Ben Shapiro went after Owens, Carlson, and Kelly, accusing them of promoting “conspiratorial nonsense.” The moment defined the growing divide in MAGA that has been split into two camps, and Israel is only part of the conflict.
Publicly, Trump-aligned figures often act like these people are fringe, not “real MAGA,” not worth addressing. Privately, Zeteo reports, officials are treating the rift as a real threat, not a sideshow.
“Our MAGA civil war is spreading,” a senior Trump administration appointee told Zeteo, also anonymously.
The fact that multiple officials used the same language says a lot; they see a fight that is no longer contained to podcasts and Twitter threads. It is bleeding into conferences, donor circles, and the bigger story the movement wants to tell ahead of the midterms.
Vice President JD Vance stepped into the mess during AmericaFest on Sunday, but he did it with a softer tone than some in the movement prefer. He described the conflict as a distraction and warned against turning the movement into a purity-test machine.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vance told the crowd, continuing: “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
That message is a direct rebuttal to the scorched-earth approach taken by some Trump allies. Rep. Randy Fine, for example, has argued that figures like Carlson should be pushed out entirely.
But the problem, as Trump officials appear to see it, is that unity speeches do not stop a viral clip. They do not stop an influencer from setting the day’s narrative. And they do not stop a movement from splintering when its loudest personalities decide they are done playing along.
Owens has withdrawn her support for Trump, as have many others, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whether it’s the Epstein Files or support for Israel, the President is losing some of the loudest MAGA influencers.
