Top conservative influencers repeatedly turned on each other at Turning Point USA’s annual confab this past week while grappling with how to take on rising antisemitism and bigotry in the Republican Party.
The sold-out gathering, which was billed as AmericaFest and held in Phoenix, was the first event of its magnitude since TPUSA’s founder Charlie Kirk was shot and killed earlier this year. The infighting points to deeper divides the party is struggling to address, particularly since many of its younger members have embraced Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier, and other extremist views.
Ben Shapiro, a prominent conservative commentator, opened the event with a scathing takedown of a slew of Republican pundits, including some he accused of elevating conspiracy theories and antisemitism.
“The conservative moment is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty,” Shapiro said. “These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time.”
Throughout his remarks on Thursday, Shapiro chewed out Candace Owens for promoting “baseless trash” about Kirk’s murder, blasted Megyn Kelly for failing to hold Owens accountable, criticized Tucker Carlson for his normalizing of Fuentes and derided Steve Bannon as a former “PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”
“If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes,” Shapiro said of Carlson. “If you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it.”
Several of the media personalities he called out hit back during the event, with Carlson describing Shapiro as “pompous,” Bannon dismissing him as a “cancer,” and Kelly suggesting that they probably weren’t friends “anymore,” according to The New York Times.
“Calls to deplatform at a Charlie Kirk event? That’s hilarious,” Carlson said, per Politico.
Owens argued that Shapiro was “standing against everything that Charlie believed in” and referred to him as a “little worm.”
Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy also condemned the concept of a “Heritage American,” a term that has gained popularity among people on the right, which is effectively used to disparage many immigrants.
“It’s a belief that those with roots in the colonial period are more American than those whose lineage in the United States began more recently,” MS NOW explained. The term has picked up traction as President Donald Trump continues to peddle numerous xenophobic policies.
“The idea that a ‘heritage American’ is more American than another American is un-American at its core,” Ramaswamy said in a speech on Friday, during which he also called out the bigotry he’s faced ― and Fuentes’ antisemitism.
Vice President JD Vance did little to address concerns about growing bigotry in the party and appeared to brush aside the issues raised by Ramaswamy and Shapiro, The New York Times reported.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce and deplatform,” Vance said during his speech on Sunday.
The discord echoed the spats Republicans have recently had over these issues. For example, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, initially supported Carlson when he was criticized for doing the Fuentes interview and denounced those who questioned the talk show host. Roberts later apologized after receiving backlash from the right.
A Politico story exposing racist and antisemitic texts sent in a group chat of young Republicans has also roiled the party.
Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, who has taken over leadership following her husband’s death, attempted to spin the schisms as a healthy debate.
“Feels like a Thanksgiving dinner where your family’s hashing out the family business,” Kirk said, per The Associated Press.
