PHOENIX — Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, said Thursday the group her husband founded would work to elect JD Vance president in 2028 as infighting over the future of the GOP took center stage.
Kicking off Turning Point USA’s first national conference since Kirk was fatally shot in September, Erika Kirk said to big cheers that the organization she now leads is “going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” Vance, the vice president, has not yet said that he will run in 2028, but the Republican jockeying to succeed President Donald Trump is already underway.
The opening night of Turning Point’s four-day conference here in Phoenix also laid bare how different factions of the “Make America Great Again” movement led by Trump are fighting over its direction. Some of the biggest stars in the conservative movement publicly berated each other, with podcaster Ben Shapiro denouncing other featured speakers as “frauds and grifters.”
Erika Kirk’s endorsement of Vance is notable given Turning Point’s reach and the influence her late husband had begun to wield over the young conservative movement. But it was expected to come eventually, as Vance and Charlie Kirk had shared a deep friendship in recent years.
Charlie Kirk was among the influential voices — along with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and others — who advocated for Trump to select Vance as his running mate in 2024. After Kirk’s killing, Vance and his wife quickly canceled their plans to attend a Sept. 11 memorial event to fly to Utah to meet with Erika Kirk and escort Charlie Kirk’s body back to their home in Phoenix.
Divisions on the right have been on stark display for months as influencers clash over conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death, shifting GOP views on Israel and whether some MAGA leaders are giving a platform to bigotry. But this week’s conference hosted by Turning Point has brought many of those figures together in the same place.
Some Republicans see the public infighting as necessary to hash out the future of a party starting to look beyond Trump. Others view it as a distraction that is hurting the GOP. Much of the fighting revolves around who belongs in the GOP tent and what people and ideas should be out of bounds.
On Thursday, Shapiro accused other MAGA influencers of elevating extreme voices and misleading their followers with conspiracy theories and a tendency to say they are “just asking questions.” The commentator drew cheers and gasps as he blasted other prominent conservatives set to appear onstage this week: Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Stephen K. Bannon.
Carlson, taking the microphone a little more than an hour after Shapiro, said Republicans should resist the push to “deplatform and denounce,” saying that the trend of sidelining people with accusations of racism “is the number one reason I voted for Donald Trump.”
Carlson said he is part of a “proxy war” over 2028, accusing other Republicans of criticizing him because they are opposed to his friend Vance. “They’re mad at JD Vance because he is the one person …[who] really kind of buys the core idea of the Trump coalition. Now what is that idea? … America First,” he said.
Carlson set off a bitter debate on the right this fall after he interviewed Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist who has espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories, on his show. On Thursday Carlson said he is not antisemitic and that antisemitism is “immoral.” He suggested people should be more focused on racism against White men — drawing cheers.
Shapiro — who is Jewish and has been especially vocal about antisemitism on the right — reiterated his long-standing criticisms of the Fuentes interview, declaring that Carlson “built Nick Fuentes up.”
Shapiro also slammed Carlson and other Republicans for declining to condemn Candace Owens, a right-wing podcaster whose promotion of conspiracy theories about Kirk’s killing have upset Kirk’s widow and allies.
Authorities have charged a man in Kirk’s death, but Owens made unsubstantiated claims that others were involved, even suggesting without evidence the killing was an inside job. Turning Point leaders have made public appeals to stop the wild theories in recent weeks, saying they are causing harassment of Kirk’s family and friends.
“The conservative movement is … in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty,” Shapiro said.
Some speakers tried to make light of the tensions on Thursday. Erika Kirk jokingly alluded to a conspiracy theory about Kirk’s death involving Egypt. Comedian Russell Brand said he didn’t expect to take the stage between Shapiro and Carlson.
Some Republicans have suggested that Kirk’s death left a leadership void on the right that contributed to the intraparty warfare on display. Kirk was friends with many of the influencers now at odds and widely viewed as someone who helped bridge right-wing commentators’ differences on contentious topics such as Israel.
Conservative commentator Michael Knowles told the Turning Point audience that Kirk’s gift was his ability to “make peace within a fractious coalition.”
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