MAGA media mess deepens at Turning Point convention
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Turning Point USA's annual AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center. Photo: Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images
PHOENIX — MAGA speakers torched each other as pompous, cancerous cowards at this weekend's 30,000-person Turning Point USA AmericaFest, accelerating the right's media meltdown over Israel, hate speech and more.
Why it matters: The MAGA movement — so lockstep when President Trump was running, and largely unified by TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk before his assassination this fall — is engulfed in an overt power struggle ahead of 2028.
Being there: AmFest, as it's known, shows that Kirk's movement muscle lives on. People started lining up at 3 a.m. for the climactic program, featuring Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson and Donald Trump Jr.
- Last year's AmFest drew 21,000 to hear President-elect Trump. I'm told ticketing this year was cut off at 31,000 at the insistence of fire officials.
- Banners outside the Phoenix Convention Center say: "MAKE AMERICA CHARLIE KIRK." Inside, the faithful took photos next to an image of Kirk and huge letters proclaiming: "WE ARE ALL CHARLIE KIRK."
How it went down: Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, and one of MAGA's most powerful podcasters, said Thursday at the convention's opening session that Megyn Kelly is "guilty of cowardice" for failing to condemn Candace Owens for spreading conspiracy theories about Kirk's death.
- Shapiro said the conservative movement is in "serious danger" from "charlatans," "frauds" and "grifters." He called Tucker Carlson's hosting of antisemite Nick Fuentes on his podcast "an act of moral imbecility." (The episode is now at 7 million YouTube views.)
Carlson, speaking shortly after Shapiro, said that as he watched the criticism backstage, he laughed the way you would "when your dog starts doing your taxes." Carlson added: "Antisemitism is not just naughty. It's immoral."
- Steve Bannon, an official in the first Trump administration who now heads the influential "WarRoom" podcast, said onstage: "Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads. [Lowers mike for dramatic effect.] It's a cancer, and it metastasizes."
- Megyn Kelly responded onstage by belittling Shapiro: "It reminded me a little of when the girl who was the head of our middle-school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away ... I helped make him a star."
Behind the scenes: I asked Andrew Kolvet — Kirk's friend, the executive producer of his show and a key architect of TPUSA under new CEO Erika Kirk — the thinking behind allowing speakers to attack each other.
- "We don't tell speakers what to say," Kolvet told me. "Charlie never did, and we don't, either. If certain speakers felt the need to address these conflicts, then we trust that these were issues that needed to be aired in public."
- "Debate and open dialogue, not censorship, are part of Charlie's legacy," Kolvet added. "We trust our speakers to do what they feel is best. Debate, disagreements and hashing out family business can ultimately be healthy."
What's next: Bannon says to buckle up. "People wanted to stop walking on eggshells," he told me. "Dude, you're talking to Bannon — I had a smashmouth version, but there were high school kids there, so I shelved it."
- "I've only begun to fight," he added. "Stop playing patty-cake. Let's get down to it."
Go deeper: MAGA's metastasizing mess.
