PHOENIX — After three straight days of MAGA infighting here at Turning Point’s AmericaFest, top Republicans — including Vice President JD Vance — tried to find agreement on Sunday afternoon, shifting their focus to countering the opposition.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vance told the crowd to loud applause, adding later: “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
In his speech, Vance ripped into “far left” Democrats, casting their policies as toxic to Americans and blaming them for Charlie Kirk’s September killing, which has loomed large over the gathering. He touted the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, vaccines and transgender issues, while calling for the crowd to engage ahead of next year’s midterms.
“If you miss Charlie Kirk, do you promise to fight what he died for? Do you promise to take the country back from the people who took his life?” Vance asked the crowd.
His speech at the Phoenix Convention Center is the culmination of a weekend-long festival for 30,000 of President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. But until Sunday, much of the weekend was clouded by an intra-party schism that kicked off during night one on Thursday, when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro ripped into a number of fellow MAGA-verse influencers, especially Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Steve Bannon.
“The conservative movement is in serious danger,” Shapiro said, especially from some “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”
Those themes carried through on Friday and Saturday, with presidential-hopeful turned Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy casting the moment as “a time for choosing in the conservative movement.”
Like Shapiro, Ramasawamy focused significant time on Carlson and his interview with far-right influencer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, listing some of his most inflammatory remarks and saying they “have no place in this movement.”
Then, Bannon hit the stage and reversed course, comparing Shapiro to a “a cancer, and that cancer spreads.”
“Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA,” Bannon told the crowd.
The sold-out annual meeting is the group’s first since founder Charlie Kirk was gunned down in September. It has featured a broad array of figures from within the conservative movement, including top commentators, elected officials, candidates and religious leaders, culminating with Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday.
Johnson called the weekend an “epic and faithful battle that truly will determine the future of our great republic” while stressing the importance of keeping control of the House ahead of next year’s midterms.
Vance also spent much of his speech talking about the midterms, bashing Democratic Senate candidates Graham Platner of Maine and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who are both running in competitive primaries.
“We are gonna kick their ass next November,” Vance said of Democrats as the crowd immediately burst into “USA” chants. Outside of Johnson and Vance, a number of other speakers on Sunday sought to bridge the divisions that emerged in the prior days.
“I choose to build a movement, be part of a movement, that stands on principle, on strength, that loves the people in the movement, even sometimes when they piss you off,” said Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who is running for governor. “You can’t form a winning unit if you can’t stay focused on the mission at hand.”
Donald Trump Jr. also sought to shift the focus to Democrats.
“The real enemy? It’s not Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro, it’s the radical left that murdered Charlie and celebrated it on a daily basis,” Trump Jr. told the crowd.
The political beliefs of alleged Kirk shooter Tyler Robinson, who is facing multiple charges including aggravated murder, aren’t easily defined.
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