Sparks flew between Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and other speakers at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025.
PHOENIX—In the final minutes of a sometimes fractious AmericaFest, Vice President JD Vance called for something short of a truce: He urged conservatives not to try to expel each other from conservatism.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or deplatform,” Vance said in his Dec. 21 speech, which capped off Turning Point USA’s first AmericaFest since the assassination of one of the organization’s founders, Charlie Kirk, on Sept. 10, 2025.
In his remarks, which also emphasized the deep roots of Christianity in American life, Vance appealed to Kirk’s own commitment to open dialogue on the political right.
“The best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie’s death that he himself refused to do in life. He invited all of us here,” the vice president said.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,” he added.
On the first day of AmericaFest 2025, political commentators Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson traded jabs.
Shapiro, who came on stage just after Charlie’s widow, Erika Kirk, castigated Carlson, as well as media personalities Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens. All but Owens went on to take the stage over the course of the multi-day event.
“If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA … implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad, to members of TPUSA, in Charlie’s murder, or a cover up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name,” Shapiro said.
He also accused Carlson of going “silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA” and Kelly, who he said he considers a friend, of “shying away from condemning her actions.” Shapiro alleged Bannon was “maligning people he disagrees with” by imputing loyalty to a country other than the United States without evidence.
In his own Day One speech, Carlson denounced Shapiro’s remarks, saying they were a bid to deplatform him.
He also alleged the comments were part of a proxy war against Vance.
Just minutes before Shapiro spoke, Kirk said her organization backed a potential Vance presidential bid in 2028. In the course of his remarks, Shapiro described Carlson as “quite close with” the vice president.
Carlson told the audience that “there are people who are mad at JD Vance and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination.”
Kelly also took issue with Shapiro’s comments, airing her objections on Dec. 19 during a conversation with commentator and activist Jack Posobiec.
“I resent that he thinks he’s in a position to decide who must say what to whom and when,” Kelly said. “So, I don’t think we are friends anymore.”
“I’ve been a very good friend to Ben,” Kelly continued, adding that she “helped make him a star” during her time on Fox News. She also pointed out that they agree on many things, but disagree on “whether Tucker Carlson should be excommunicated from the conservative movement.”
Bannon, too, fired back at Shapiro. In his Dec. 19 AmericaFest speech, the former Trump White House strategist called Shapiro a “hardcore never-Trumper” and accused him of seeking to put Israeli interests ahead of the United States’.
On Dec. 21, Vance told the AmericaFest crowd that some level of disagreement can signal strength in conservatism, which he described as “a movement of freethinkers.”
