Conservative activist group Turning Point USA held its annual “AmFest” event last week under the slogan “America’s Future Starts Here.”
The American right’s future was in question. The high-profile speakers Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Steven Bannon and others demonstrated a major rift on the right, particularly regarding Israel.
In his speech, Shapiro harshly denounced Carlson for refusing to “condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks—and some of them are speaking here—are guilty of cowardice.” He was speaking of the MAGA influencer Candace Owens, an alumna of both TPUSA and Shapiro’s own Daily Wire, for what he saw as attacks on Turning Point after Kirk’s death. Owens has also been a harsh critic of Israel. Shapiro would also slam Carlson for hosting the open antisemite Nick Fuentes on his program.
Those were specific criticisms from Shapiro. But overall, Shapiro appeared to be trying to cancel those who dared to deviate from the neoconservative line.
Carlson began his speech by acknowledging Shapiro’s: “I just got here, and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful.”
Tucker mocked, “I don’t think I did. No, I’m just kidding, I watched it. I laughed. To hear calls for, like, deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what?! That’s hilarious.”
Carlson highlighted Kirk’s career as a free speech absolutist and also noted that the outspoken pundit had been under intense pressure for allowing the former Fox News host at his event.
Particularly the event Carlson was speaking at that very moment.
“The whole, like, Red Guard Cultural Revolution thing that we so hated and feared on the left—that we did everything we could to usher in a new time where you could have an actual debate—I mean this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk’s public life and I think that he died for it. I really believe that,” Carlson said.
He continued, “And I know a lot about it because the last several months of Charlie’s life were devoted in part to arguing about this event, in fact this speech, in fact my speech here, which he asked me to do earlier this year, this summer, and was immediately put under just immense pressure from people who give money to Turning Point—I would assume good people—but who wanted him to take me off the roster.”
The backdrop to this was a months-long war of words between neoconservatives like Shapiro and the talk radio host Mark Levin, who have been trying to keep conservatives firmly in a pro-Israel lane, and America First and MAGA conservatives like Carlson, who have questioned the U.S.’s relationship with that country and the morality of what’s happening in Gaza.
Before Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, the TPUSA founder appeared increasingly to question U.S. support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza, and also said his continued support for conservatives critical of the Jewish state’s policies, like Tucker Carlson, had cost him donors.
Former Trump adviser and early MAGA influencer Steve Bannon got to that point quickly and went after Shapiro directly.
“Now, Benji Shapiro sat up here last night, and he was all, you know, ‘It’s all about the truth,” Bannon began.
“Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth,” he continued. “Let’s face it, Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA. Let’s be blunt. He is a hardcore never-Trumper.”
Bannon described moments in which he believed Shapiro was trying to undermine the MAGA movement, including the Daily Wire’s earlier support of Texas’s Senator Ted Cruz and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump.
“He tried to turn it to Ted Cruz from Donald Trump because he hated Donald Trump,” Bannon said. “In the general election, he barely supported Donald Trump…. When President Trump gets sent back to Mar-a-Lago, the very first individual that jumped on the Ron DeSantis train, the Israel First train, was Ben Shapiro.”
Bannon said Shapiro has been against Trump all along and Israel was always his primary concern. “And those are the darkest days we had. In ’21 and ’22, you guys were there,” Bannon said, referring to the TPUSA audience. “He’s consistently been against Trump, and now the president doesn’t back the Greater Israel Project. What is Greater Israel? It’s not about Israel itself. It’s about an expansionist Israel, an imperial Israel that Netanyahu and that crowd have thought up. And the Israel First crowd is Ben Shapiro, Tel Aviv Mark Levin, and many others that want to put that ahead of America’s interests!”
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At the end of his life, Kirk had alliances with all of these speakers. One of his last interviews ever was on Shapiro’s show, in which Kirk questioned the pro-Israel host about the ongoing war in Gaza.
Those were questions Charlie Kirk could ask at the time and still maintain connections with both Shapiro and Carlson. Three months since his death, at his own Turning Point USA conference, an Israel Firster demanded that those who ask such questions be excommunicated from the right, while America Firsters mocked him and doubled down.
America may or may not be at some kind of turning point. The conservative movement is.
