The american right wing is essentially tens of millions of people formed up together around various personality influencers that they like.

When you eliminate the influencer, you scatted some of that right wing into the winds and if they do not land on another right wing influencer the right essentially loses traction and control over them. Their views slide out of alignment with the rest of the right as they start thinking for themselves (however wrongly) and no longer have someone else injecting thoughts into them. This causes conflict within the right as views become less unified.

These influencers have replaced news channels, radio, and newspapers in people's daily diet of bullshit. The thing is though, you couldn't destroy a newspaper or a news channel in the past. They didn't die overnight because one newscaster that everyone liked left the channel or paper.

These modern newspapers can die, and it takes many years to build them up in the first place.