This week, some of Donald Trump’s most loyal right-wing media personalities who helped carry him back to the White House sounded a lot like the liberals they’ve spent years mocking.

"The 25th Amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness," wrote far-right extremist Candace Owens.

“How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist and ardent Trump supporter, asked on his Infowars show.

And Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host turned podcaster, denounced Trump for his expletive-laced Easter message, calling it “vile” and suggesting he might be the Antichrist. Still others, including Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh, turned on Trump in strikingly harsh terms after he threatened to wipe out the entire Iranian civilization.

Even by the standards of the recent feuds that have rattled the MAGA movement, the rhetoric from some of its biggest stars amounted to a scorched-earth assault on a figure they had long elevated and defended. During the 2024 campaign, those same personalities amplified Trump’s claims with little scrutiny, casting him as America’s savior from a “communist” Kamala Harris.

In a 482-word tirade on Truth Social, Trump unloaded on his now-former allies as “stupid people” and “nut jobs.”

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote. “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too! Look at their past, look at their record.”

The blistering response only escalated the feud even further. Carlson said he “feels sorry” for Trump and accused him of being a “slave” to other forces, Owens mocked his fitness for office, writing “it may be time to put Grandpa in a home,” and Jones went further still, suggesting Trump was suffering from “early dementia.”

While it may be tempting to dismiss the squabbling as infighting sparked by performance artists and conspiracy theorists, their collective audience of millions have made them deeply influential within the Republican party. The MAGA diehards played a meaningful role in shaping the information environment that aided Trump’s return to power—amplifying favorable narratives and helping insulate him from what might otherwise have been damaging, if not fatal, blows to his candidacy.

Still, Trump continues to count Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin as reliable mouthpieces firmly in his camp, having celebrated his decision to launch a war with no clear end in the Gulf. But Trump’s blistering attack on his biggest online MAGA allies suggests he knows how much power they hold over an audience that has abandoned mainstream news in favor of propagandists serving up a steady diet of red meat and Trump fantasy. "They've all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren't even invited on TV because nobody cares about them," Trump ranted. "They're NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some 'free' and cheap publicity."

For years, Trump has exerted near-total command over the right-wing media ecosystem that has warped and reaffirmed the views of millions of followers to his advantage. But the meltdown this week made clear that his grip on that system is loosening.

“Do one more thing,” Jones declared Friday in an angry rant delivered to Trump. “You should be kissing my ass. But instead you shit all over me and rub it in. I’m not looking for a fight, but if you want one you came to the right place.”