Deepening MAGA rift comes to a head at TPUSA’s AmericaFest 2025

A rift within the MAGA movement came to a head at Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) AmericaFest this week, with conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson engaging in a war of words during their time on stage.

Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, took the stage at AmericaFest on Thursday, where he launched into a scathing condemnation of Carlson and others — whom he described as charlatans and con artists who “engage in conspiracy and dishonesty.”

One of the main criticisms Shapiro leveled against Carlson was his platform toward individuals like white nationalist Nick Fuentes, among others.

ICE IS NICE: AMFEST PARTICIPANTS LARGELY ASK DHS TO TARGET THEIR HOME TOWNS AS DEMS REFUSE AGENTS

Ben Shapiro speaking at AmericaFest 2025 on December 18, 2025. (Screenshot/TPUSA)

He claimed that hosts are “indeed responsible for the guests they choose and the questions they ask those guests,” and ripped Carlson’s interview with Fuentes — someone who, he noted, the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk had opposed.

“There’s a reason why Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and, in fact, even chastised Dinesh D’Souza for debating with him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that’s precisely what Tucker Carlson did,” he argued, adding that Carlson “should take responsibility for it.”

About an hour after Shapiro gave his speech, Carlson took the stage and appeared to mock his attempt to “distort and denounce” people who disagree with him.

“I just got here and I feel like I missed the first part of the show. I hope I didn’t miss anything important. But I just want to say I don’t think I did,” Carlson joked. “No, I’m just kidding. I looked at him. I laughed.”

2028 LINES ARE DRAWN AMONG CONSERVATIVES AS TWO BIG NAMES EMERGE AMONG AMERICAFEST ACTIVISTS

He went on to add that he “laughed that kind of bitter sardonic laugh that comes out of you that’s like a world turned upside down. When your dog starts doing your taxes and you’re like, ‘Wait, it’s not supposed to work that way.'”

Tucker Carlson speaks at TPUSA’s AmericaFest 2025 on Thursday, December 18. (Olivier Touron/AFP)

Although he did not mention Shapiro by name, Carlson appeared to repeatedly criticize Shapiro’s speech — saying it was “hilarious” to hear “calls to deplatform and denounce people at a Charlie Kirk event.”

“Charlie stood firm in his oft-stated and deeply held belief that people should be able to debate and that if you have something valuable to say, if you tell the truth, you should be able to explain it calmly and in detail to people who disagree with you, and that you should not immediately resort to ‘Shut up, racist,'” he railed.

Carlson also spent some of his time on stage defending himself against Shapiro’s allegations of anti-Semitism.

TURNING POINT USA HOLDS AMERICAFEST CONFERENCE AFTER CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION

“Anti-Semitism is immoral. In my religion, it is immoral to hate people for the way they were born. Period,” Carlson said.

After Shapiro’s speech highlighted the infighting within the MAGA movement, Carlson denied its existence, saying the coalition built by President Donald Trump still holds water.

“The Trump coalition and the so-called civil war going on within that group — I don’t think it’s real,” he told the audience. “I think it’s wrong. I think it’s totally wrong.”

The next day, conservative commentator Megyn Kelly took the stage for a conversation with TPUSA contributor Jack Posobiec, where she criticized Shapiro for playing the role of gatekeeper of the conservative movement.

Megyn Kelly speaks during a stop on the American Comeback Tour hosted by Turning Point USA in Blacksburg, Virginia on September 24, 2025. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP)

“[Shapiro] “He thinks he’s in a position to decide who should say what to whom and when,” Kelly said. “So I don’t think we’re friends anymore. I’m a really good friend to Ben.”

CONSERVATIVES MUST EMBRACE ‘FUSION’ OF POPULISM, SENIOR LEADER SAYS, Calling AMFEST Scenes ‘ENCOURAGING’

During his speech the day before, Shapiro emphasized that, despite their recent disagreements, Kelly was still “a person I consider a friend.”

Kelly recalled inviting the Daily Wire co-founder to speak on her “Megyn Kelly Live” tour last month, noting that their “confusion” came from Carlson — not disagreements over Israel.

“He just came on my tour, just like you, and I gave him the nicest introduction I could, because I know he’s losing a lot of subscribers. So I tried to do something nice for him by giving him a 10-minute long intro and personally vouching for him. And we mixed it all up about Israel on stage,” she said.

Kelly added that “it wasn’t Israel because we’re at the same point on Israel. We mixed things up on whether Tucker Carlson should be excommunicated from the conservative movement, which I don’t believe.”

Ben Shapiro participates in the panel “Future of news: How Creators and influencers are reshaping journalism,” at the Reuters NEXT conference, New York, New York, United States, December 3, 2025. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

According to Kelly, the two hugged and said goodbye after Shapiro’s appearance on his tour, and even shared a “nice text message exchange a few days later saying our friendship was important to us.”

DAVID MARCUS: THE “JEWISH QUESTION” BECOMES AN UNNECESSARY DISTRACTION AT THE TURNING POINT OF THE UNITED STATES AMERICAFEST

“And the next thing I saw was him attacking me on stage last night like a coward,” she told Posobiec. “It’s not friendship. And I think I’m okay with that.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, a candidate for Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, took aim at what he called pockets of the “online right” during his speech Friday night at AmericaFest, who focus on heritage and lineage rather than American ideals. He specifically called Fuentes undesirable in the conservative movement.

“I think the idea of ​​an American legacy is about as crazy as anything the woke left has actually come up with,” he said. “There is no American more American than another… It’s binary. Either you are American or you are not.”

This emerging divide within the conservative movement was mentioned by Erika Kirk at the start of the event.

Erika Kirk, widow of the late right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, speaks at Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona, December 18, 2025. (Olivier Touron / AFP via Getty Images)

She recalled that her husband was a “peacemaker” and a “coalition builder,” and that after his assassination in September, “we witnessed infighting. We saw fractures. We’ve seen bridges burned that shouldn’t be burned. We saw a lot of things in full screen.

“And what I’ve experienced as a wife, and I’m just like him. If you try to put it into fight or flight mode, we’re always in fight mode. We don’t back down,” she added.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.