Candace Owens Brings MAGA to the Conspiracist Horizon
Arguments between the antisemitic influencer’s supporters and critics dominated the proceedings at TPUSA’s AmFest.
The TPUSA Convention Disaster
The leading lights of the conservative movement headed to Phoenix over the weekend for AmericaFest, Turning Point USA’s signature annual convention. But what was meant to be a celebration of slain founder Charlie Kirk soon dissolved in recriminations between Kirk’s former friends.
As things started to go south, Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, joked that the conference was starting to feel like “a Thanksgiving dinner where your family’s hashing out the family business.” Who doesn’t love that! But judging by the cutting speeches at the event, this feels a bit more like the Christmas dinner in The Bear.
Ben Shapiro kicked things off on Thursday, responding to the wave of antisemitism and conspiracism that has been swamping the right for months. His targets included Candace Owens for suggesting Erika Kirk murdered her husband (“baseless trash”) and personalities like Megyn Kelly for condoning it (“cowardice”). And, in the case of Steve Bannon, Shapiro asked, why was he doing PR work for a billionaire pedophile? He encouraged the audience members to look it up.
But Shapiro saved his harshest remarks for Tucker Carlson, whose friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes almost two months ago continues to roil the right today.
“There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and indeed even chided Dinesh D’Souza for debating him,” Shapiro said. “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. He built Nick Fuentes up, and he ought to take responsibility for that.”
Shapiro’s remarks were a frank, honestly remarkable, salvo against onetime fellow travelers in the conservative movement. But he suffered from the fact that