(LifeSiteNews) — Divisions on the political right continue to widen as Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson openly criticized Ben Shapiro and other pro-Israel media figures on a recent podcast while defending the Catholic faith.
Among others, Kelly had choice words for Fox News host Mark Levin as well as Bari Weiss, the recently installed editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“I genuinely think Mark Levin thinks Catholics who pray the rosary are freaks, that we are kooks,” she said. “He’s not well.”
Megyn Kelly calls out Mark Levin for calling Catholics who pray the rosary freaks. pic.twitter.com/8pP2Mkw4VY
— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) January 8, 2026
Kelly, who is Catholic, was referring to an X post that Levin published on Christmas Eve when he called Jack Posobiec a “crackpot” for holding up a rosary as he took the stage at a Turning Point USA event.
After coming under intense criticism for his comment, Levin issued a follow-up post claiming that “I know for a fact the Catholic Church and the Good Lord would never approve of” Posobiec’s actions. “Yet this fraud wraps himself in religion. He is a poisonous crackpot. Worse, actually.”
Posobiec works at the conservative outlet Human Events. He frequently appears on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. He has held up the Rosary at other public events as well, including Charlie Kirk’s funeral last year. Kelly reiterated her disgust with Levin, who called her anti-Semitic recently.
“Mark Levin, who is spiraling (because) he mocked Catholics praying the rosary & his hatred is evident for all to see, actually thinks he can besmirch Posobiec out of TPUSA. This is genuinely funny. As if TPUSA would ever bow to Christian-Loather Levin. Dying laughing,” she said in an X post on December 29.
Mark Levin, who is spiraling bc he mocked Catholics praying the rosary & his hatred is evident for all to see, actually thinks he can besmirch @JackPosobiec out of @TPUSA. This is genuinely funny. As if TPUSA would ever bow to Christian-Loather Levin. Dying laughing. https://t.co/OPS1HOKrl6
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) December 29, 2025
Kelly also told Carlson: “Are we anti-Semitic because we are holding up a rosary? That’s sick, disgusting … never in my life in arguing with someone like a Mark Levin, would I bring up his faith beliefs and call him a kook for them. That’s just so hateful and disrespectful.”
Kelly earned sympathy and support from Carlson, who agreed with her throughout their conversation. Kelly theorized that she was being attacked because she has not been sufficiently supportive of pro-Israeli talking points recently. She explained that she first started receiving criticism after alleging that Jeffrey Epstein likely had ties to Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. She also said she was rebuked by former “friends” in the conservative movement after calling on Israel to “wrap up” its war in Gaza. Some of the most intense blowback she said she received came when she didn’t denounce Candace Owens and Gen Z commentator Nick Fuentes.
“This whole thing has made me reevaluate. Like I’m just starting from square one basically on Israel right now,” Kelly told Carlson. “Only now, Tucker, have I begun to say, like, wait a minute, how much of the narrative that is in our news today has been spoon fed to me by people who are super pro-Israel at all costs, who won’t tell the truth about Israel no matter what it is, and will cancel you if you don’t befriend or de-friend people who do.”
Megyn Kelly says the media is controlled by people beholden to Israel.
She says this Zionist chokehold is making even her question her beliefs about Islam.pic.twitter.com/gGWz7wVbtu
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) January 10, 2026
While Carlson is not Catholic, he has previously expressed great admiration for it. “I’ve always thought that confession is the coolest thing they do,” he told The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie on his podcast last March. In September 2022, Carlson interviewed Father Vincent Lampert, an exorcist in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. In August 2024, Carlson said “some of my closest friends are Catholics … they’re the most fervent, sincere, on-target Christians I know.” Carlson told German Cardinal Gerhard Müller during an interview in 2024 that “I am not Catholic, but I am interested.”
Carlson said he shares many of Kelly’s sentiments, especially her take on Bari Weiss, a “married” lesbian Jewish woman who now runs CBS News and promotes what many America First commentators see as a pro-Zionist agenda.
“She’s never worked in television a day in her life, not one day. She actually wasn’t very experienced, even in the press business, even in the newspaper business,” Kelly said. “She is woke when it comes to American Jewish people and somewhat when it comes to women.”
Kelly also said that it is the “Ben Shapiros and the Bari Weisses of the world and of course the (Anti-Defamation League)” that is “creating” more anti-Semites than herself and Carlson, who are merely criticizing those who are demanding full loyalty to their talking points.
Shapiro had attempted to cancel Carlson with his speech at a Turning Point USA event last month. Frustrated by his efforts, Kelly told Posobiec during a conversation on stage at the gathering that she found it “kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement, which shows a willful blindness about his position in it.”
While talking about free speech during their podcast, Carlson told Kelly that he was amazed “a bunch of different states, including Florida” have “codified antisemitism as a crime. They’ve defined it in a way that is so expansive that criticism of Israel is (considered) ‘antisemitic.’ The claim that someone is ‘Israel first’ is a crime in the state of Florida.”
Carlson expressed particular dismay with Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. He “flew to a foreign country, Israel, to sign a hate speech law for Florida,” Carlson said.
“This is obviously unconstitutional, it’s immoral, but it’s also part of an elaborate humiliation where you have to go, (and) not just enslave your own people with a hate speech law – which that is, it’s slavery – but you have to go kiss someone else’s wall to show your obedience.”
Kelly agreed, stating that “hate speech is not only constitutional, it’s written right in there that you can say the most hateful things possible.” She added that “Israel’s been in the press quite a bit over the past year or two for cracking down on free speech rights in its country. The rights of journalists to report openly and honestly on what’s happening over there. And Europe is in a place where they’re now arresting people for thought crimes, for actually just causing offense. That’s it. Not to mention in England arresting a woman for silently praying outside of an abortion clinic, literally not saying a word, just praying in her head. And a cop saw her standing there and asked her what she was doing and she admitted the truth and she got arrested.”
