Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry at Turning Point USA's convention

Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry at Turning Point USA's convention Erika Kirk greets Vice President JD Vance during Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, in Phoenix. Jon Cherry/AP hide caption toggle caption PHOENIX - Vice President JD Vance said Sunday the conservative movement should be open to everyone as long as they "love America," declining to condemn a streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days of Turning Point USA's annual convention. After a long weekend of debates about whether the movement should exclude figures such as bigoted podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vance came down firmly against "purity tests." "I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform," Vance said during the convention's closing speech. Turning Point leader Erika Kirk, who took the helm after the assassination of her husband, Charlie Kirk, has endorsed Vance as a potential successor to President Donald Trump, a helpful nod from an influential group with an army of volunteers. But the tension on display at the four-day gathering foreshadowed the treacherous political waters that Vance, or anyone else who seeks the next Republican presidential nomination, will need to navigate in the coming years. Top voices in the "Make America Great Again" movement are jockeying for influence as Republicans begin considering a future without Trump, and there is no clear path to holding his coalition together. Defining a post-Trump GOP The Republican Party's identity has been intertwined with Trump for a decade, but he's constitutionally ineligible to run for reelection despite his musings about serving a third term. Tucker Carlson said people are wondering, "who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene?" So far, it looks like settling that question will come with a lot of fighting among conservatives. The Turning Point conference featured arguments about antisemitism, Israel and environmental regulations, not to mention rivalries between leading commentators. Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, used his speech on the conference's opening night to denounce "charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty." "These people are frauds and they are grifters and they do not deserve your time," Shapiro said. He specifically called out Carlson for hosting Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast. Carlson brushed off the criticism when he took the stage barely an hour later, and he said the idea of a Republican "civil war" was "totally fake." "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," he said. Carlson described Vance as "the one person" who subscribes to the "core idea of the Trump coalition," which Carlson said was "America first." Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet framed the discord as a healthy debate about the future of the movement, an uncomfortable but necessary process of finding consensus. "We're not hive-minded commies," he wrote on...

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