(AFP) – The first major gathering of Turning Point USA since the murder of its influential founder was supposed to bring America’s right-wing activists together to celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk. Instead, it is laying bare the divisions of a fractious conservative coalition, increasingly worried about its electoral prospects and about President Donald Trump’s fraying popularity.
Key figures in the Make America Great Again movement took to the stage in Phoenix on Thursday to tear into each other, blasting opponents for cozying up to fascists or accusing them of besmirching the memory of a man who acted as a unifying force. Influential podcaster Ben Shapiro came straight out of the gate, attacking former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for an uncritical interview with self-described white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
“The conservative movement is… in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty,” he said. Shapiro said Carlson should never have given oxygen to Fuentes, whose views are described as antisemitic, misogynistic, and racist. Kirk had “despised” Fuentes, Shapiro added. “He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility, and that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.”
Carlson shot back, mocking Shapiro for suggesting censorship, which he claimed was anathema to the Turning Point founder. “Deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event. I’m like, what? It’s hilarious,” he told the audience a few hours later. The brewing MAGA civil war is over who will take the reins when Trump — who cannot run for the White House again — steps back.
No one has formally declared their candidacy for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but a number of names are being bandied around as pretenders to the throne. They include Fuentes and firebrand congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who last month broke with Trump, saying his second-term agenda was a betrayal of his voters. Vice President JD Vance, who is due to speak at the gathering on Sunday, got a significant boost Thursday when Erika Kirk endorsed him for a 2028 White House run. “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she said to cheers from the thousands-strong crowd. The next US president will be the country’s 48th leader.
Former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2024, did not comment directly on Kirk’s endorsement. “We’re at a fork in the road, and I think that there are competing visions for the future of the right,” Ramaswamy told AFP. “I think it’s great for us to have that conversation.” The Vance endorsement from Turning Point’s new CEO is why Shapiro is annoyed, hinted Carlson, whose newsletter on Friday gloated “Sorry, Ben Shapiro, JD is America First.”
“Trump created this amazing coalition, bringing in people who had never voted Republican before…and that coalition took over the most powerful government in the history of the world,” Carlson told the audience on Thursday. “So there’s a lot of blood at stake here, as the question becomes, who gets to run it after, who gets the machinery when the President exits the scene.” There are a lot of people in Washington, maybe even in this room, who aren’t quite sure what they want, but they know they don’t want — JD Vance.
The spat between two of the loudest voices in the conservative mediasphere comes as former Daily Wire host Candace Owens continues to cause waves with a series of provocative claims. Owens, whose YouTube channel has 5.7 million subscribers, is involved in a bizarre fight with French President Emmanuel Macron over wild claims his wife Brigitte is actually a man. She is also in a quarrel with Erika Kirk over unsubstantiated claims of a conspiracy involving the US and Israeli governments in the killing of her husband.
Kirk on Thursday sought to tamp down the divisions on the right, which she said had appeared after Charlie’s death. “When he was assassinated, we saw infighting. We’ve seen fractures,” she said. “We’ve seen bridges being burned, that shouldn’t be burned.” – Paula RAMON
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