At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, conservative voices clashed in a public airing of grievances that has intensified the ideological civil war over the future of the post-Trump right.
The AmericaFest Showdown
Ben Shapiro opened the event after Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, with a scathing critique of what he called “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.” He named Candace Owens, who has spread conspiracy theories about Kirk’s killing, and also speakers who followed him, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon.
Shapiro added, “The people who refused to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks – and some of them are speaking here tonight – are guilty of cowardice.” He referenced Carlson’s October interview with antisemitic commentator Nick Fuentes, noting that Carlson had said those who host “a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving” commentator like Fuentes “ought to own it.”
Carlson, Kelly and Bannon all responded on the main stage. Carlson said he laughed at Shapiro making “calls to deplatform at a Charlie Kirk event.” Bannon called Shapiro “like a cancer, and a cancer that spreads.” Kelly, who helped set up a meeting between Owens and Erika Kirk last week, said she no longer considers Shapiro a friend and that while she does not agree with Owens’s theories about Israel and more, she didn’t call her out for asking questions “because I favored her asking them.”
Heritage Foundation Turmoil
The Heritage Foundation has seen a major staff and board member exodus that underscores the institutional strain on the right. In October, President Kevin Roberts defended Carlson for interviewing Fuentes, a stance for which Roberts later apologized.
Earlier, Roberts had steered Heritage in a more populist direction, embracing non-interventionist foreign policy and warming up to tariffs that the organization had previously opposed. Board discontent had been growing long before the Fuentes episode.
Two board members resigned last week: Shane McCullar and Abby Spencer Moffat. McCullar said the board was “unwilling to confront the lapses in judgment that have harmed its credibility,” and Moffat said the organization had drifted “from the principles that once defined its leadership.”
A third board member, Robert P. George, had resigned a month prior.
Nearly all staff from Heritage’s legal and economic centers departed abruptly. In a late Sunday email, Roberts told staff that two of the staffers had been fired for “conduct inconsistent with Heritage’s mission and standards,” citing “fiduciary duty and intellectual property removal.”
On Monday, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, announced it was absorbing more than a dozen staff members from Heritage – including three directors.
AAF President Tim Chapman said talks to absorb the Meese legal center team began several weeks ago. The AAF board approved the plan on the condition it raised at least 60 percent of a $15 million fundraising goal, enough to fund the new project for $5 million a year for three years. After approaching a small number of donors, the AAF raised $12 million in just two weeks.
With the additions, the four-year-old think tank is doubling in size and is already working to expand its downtown Washington, D.C., office space. More staff additions are expected.
Chapman said the changes reflect “the reorganizing of the right” and that the personality clashes at AmericaFest, while based on somewhat different disputes over ideological purity and who is part of the conservative movement, are all showing the same thing.
“I think that there’s a core of the conservative movement that is still engaged in principled conservatism and still wants to fight for that stuff,” Chapman said. He added, “The advantage that we have is that the truth is on our side.” He continued, “Facts are really stubborn things, and there’s a lot of noise and a lot of chaos around what you see online. But when a guy like Ben Shapiro stands up and just tells it straight and it’s completely irrefutable, that kind of stands on its own. We’re going to do similar things here.”
When it comes to public policy analysis, Chapman said, “our analysis will be rigorous, it will be fact-based, it will be true, and people can disagree with it as a political matter, but they won’t be able to disagree with it as a factual matter.”
Reactions from Trump Allies
Trump allies dismissed the shifts. MAGA strategist Alex Bruesewitz posted on X: “Congrats @Heritage ! The clowns are leaving their organization,” adding, “These departures will also open jobs up for patriots who believe in America First!”
Donald Trump Jr. said on X, “I think it’s great news for Heritage that a bunch of Trump-hating RINOs are leaving. Anyone who would want to go work for Mike Pence’s globalist never-Trump organization isn’t MAGA and definitely doesn’t put America First!”
Implications for 2026
The ideological civil war over the future of the post-Trump right has shifted into a new stage that will set the tone for 2026. The mid-term elections and the Republican primaries before them will be a major test of Trump’s popularity and power in Washington, as well as of which ideological factions will keep or gain dominance heading into 2028 and a post-Trump landscape.
Key Takeaways
- Ben Shapiro’s AmericaFest speech ignited a public feud with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon over accusations of conspiracism and antisemitism.
- Heritage Foundation saw a mass exodus of staff and board members, prompting the formation of a new think-tank alliance under Mike Pence’s AAF.
- Trump allies dismiss the shifts as a sign of “clowns” leaving, while the broader conservative movement faces a reorganization that could shape the 2026 political arena.
The ideological divide remains sharp, and the next election cycle will reveal whether the traditionalist wing can regain footing or whether the post-Trump coalition will continue to fragment.
