The Civil War Over Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Has Gotten Even Uglier
Right-wing personalities are feuding over the decision to invite Tucker Carlson to TPUSA’s annual confab.
SHORTLY BEFORE HIS MURDER in September, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was facing a thorny question: whether or not to invite Tucker Carlson, an increasingly vocal critic of both America’s support for Israel and some prominent Jewish conservative donors, to his organization’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix.
“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk wrote, according to text message screenshots released earlier this month by podcaster Candace Owens, which were later confirmed as real by TPUSA itself. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker.”
“Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,” Kirk added in a follow-up text message.
AmericaFest is now less than two months away, set to start on December 18. And with Carlson—as well other critics of the traditional Republican stance on support for Israel, like Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec—still on the bill, the tensions Kirk was dealing with privately are spilling out into public.
A fight has begun raging in conservative circles over the composition of the upcoming TPUSA summit and, more broadly, what it might mean for Kirk’s legacy.
It was ignited last week by a tweet from Washington Examiner contributor Kimberly Ross.
“No, it’s not good that Carlson, Bannon, Posobiec, and [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton are speaking at TPUSA’s AmFest in December,” Ross wrote. “It’s bad, actually. The cancer should be cut out.”
But the clash really took off when