This past weekend, some of the brightest stars in the conservative sky descended on Phoenix, Arizona, for Turning Point USA’s “Americafest 2025” conference. But the far-right revelry and MAGA backslapping quickly shed its veneer of camaraderie to expose deep fracture lines threatening the ultranationalist group’s mission. Across four days of dueling speeches and simmering behind-the-scenes feuds, TPUSA’s first major event since the shooting death of cofounder Charlie Kirk became a microcosm of the broader forces jockeying for MAGA power and influence nationwide.
Although its annual conferences have been “long billed as a show of unity for young conservatives,” this year’s TPUSA event was a “public airing of deepening fractures inside the MAGA movement,” Salon said. While “clashes over Israel, antisemitism and leadership” dominated the weekend, Kirk’s death and the “absence of a clear successor loomed large” as tributes “veered into ideological disputes, particularly over foreign policy and the influence of far-right figures within the movement.” After speakers “torched each other as pompous, cancerous cowards,” the group that had once been “so lockstep when President Trump was running” found itself “engulfed in an overt power struggle ahead of 2028,” said Axios.
Conservative broadcaster Ben Shapiro used his conference address to lash out at “grifters and charlatans” who he claimed were “guilty of misleading their audiences with falsehoods and conspiracy theories,” CNN said. He took particular aim at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for interviewing avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes in what Shapiro said was an “act of moral imbecility.”
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Carlson returned fire during his speech, calling Shapiro’s attempt at “deplatforming and denouncing people” at a TPUSA event “hilarious.” He then “downplayed the problem of anti-Jewish hate,” said the Times of Israel, in part by framing antisemitism as “less pervasive than bias against white men.”
Speaking Sunday evening, Vice President JD Vance conspicuously declined to condemn the “streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days” of the event, The Associated Press said. That includes former TPUSA staff and now popular podcaster Candace Owens, who has “alleged without evidence that Israeli spies were involved in Kirk’s death.” Taken together, the “tension on display” over the weekend “foreshadowed the treacherous political waters” aspiring conservative hopefuls will face before the next election.
All eyes on 2028
The schisms exposed over the weekend “laid bare” the challenge for any conservative hoping to succeed President Donald Trump atop the MAGA movement, The New York Times said: how to address the “explosive debate” over whether conspiracy theorists and extremists should be “embraced or excluded from the conservative coalition.”
In Vance’s remarks, delivered after Kirk’s widow and current TPUSA CEO Erika endorsed him for 2028, the vice president signaled he was “more than willing to forgo imposing any moral red lines.” At the same time, some observers have claimed that the “narrative of tension” and a looming MAGA civil war is “ginned up by people who hope to prevent” Vance’s political ascension, said the AP. “This is a proxy on ’28,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said at the convention, per the National Review. “There are people who are mad at JD Vance,” Tucker Carlson said, per the same outlet, and “they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination.”
