Rift in MAGA movement on full display at TPUSA’s AmericaFest as Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson battle it out

A rift within the MAGA movement came to a head at Turning Point USA‘s (TPUSA) AmericaFest this week, with conservative personalities 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 blistering condemnation of Carlson and others — who he described as charlatans and grifters who “traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”

One of the main criticisms that Shapiro levied against Carlson was his platforming of individuals like White nationalist Nick Fuentes, among others. 

ICE IS NICE: AMFEST ATTENDEES OVERWHELMINGLY CALL FOR DHS TO TARGET THEIR HOMETOWNS AS DEMS SPURN AGENTS

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

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

“There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and, indeed, even chided Dinesh D’Souza for debating him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did,” he contended, adding that Carlson “ought to take responsibility” for doing so.

Approximately an hour after Shapiro delivered his speech, Carlson took the stage and seemed to mock his attempt to “deplatform and denounce” people who disagree with him. 

“I just got here, and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful. But I just want to say I don’t think I did,” Carlson quipped. “No, I’m just kidding. I watched it. I laughed.”

2028 LINES BEING DRAWN AMONG CONSERVATIVES AS TWO TOP NAMES EMERGE AMONG AMERICAFEST ACTIVISTS

He continued, adding that he “laughed that kind of bitter sardonic laugh that emerges from you and like, upside-down world arrives. When your dog starts doing your taxes, and you’re like, ‘Wait, it’s not supposed to work this way.'”

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

While he didn’t mention Shapiro by name, Carlson seemed to take multiple jabs at Shapiro’s speech — saying it was “hilarious” to hear “calls for like deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event.”

“Charlie stood firm in his often-stated and deeply held belief that people should be able to debate and if you have something valid to say, if you’re telling the truth, you ought to be able to explain it calmly and in detail to people who don’t agree with you, and that you shouldn’t immediately resort to, ‘Shut up racist,’” he railed.

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

TURNING POINT USA HOLDS AMERICAFEST CONFERENCE FOLLOWING CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION

“Antisemitism is immoral. In my religion, it is immoral to hate people for how they were born. Period,” Carlson asserted.

After Shapiro’s speech highlighted the infighting taking place within the MAGA movement, Carlson denied its existence — maintaining that the coalition built by President Donald Trump is still holding together.

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

The following day, conservative commentator Megyn Kelly took the stage for a conversation with TPUSA contributor Jack Posobiec, where she tore into Shapiro for acting as a gatekeeper of the conservative movement.

Megyn Kelly speaks during an “American Comeback Tour” stop hosted by Turning Point USA in Blacksburg, Virginia, on Sept. 24, 2025.  (Alex Wroblewski/AFP)

“[Shapiro] thinks he’s in a position to decide who must say what to whom and when,” Kelly said. “So, I don’t think we are friends anymore. I’ve been a very good friend to Ben.”

CONSERVATIVES NEED TO EMBRACE ‘FUSION’ OF POPULISM, TOP LEADER SAYS, CALLING AMFEST SCENES ARE ‘ENCOURAGING’

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

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

“He just recently came on my tour, as did you, and I gave him the most kind introduction I could possibly give him, because I know that he’s losing subscribers a lot. And so I tried to do something nice for him by giving him a long 10-minute intro and personally vouching for him. And we mixed it up on Israel out on stage,” she recounted.

Kelly added that “It wasn’t Israel because we’re on the same place on Israel. We mixed it up over whether Tucker Carlson should be excommunicated from the conservative movement, which I do not believe.”

Ben Shapiro takes part in the panel ‘Future of news: How creators and influencers are reshaping journalism’, at the Reuters NEXT conference, in New York City, New York, U.S., December 3, 2025.  (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

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

DAVID MARCUS: THE ‘JEWISH QUESTION’ BECOMES A NEEDLESS DISTRACTION AT TURNING POINT USA’S AMERICAFEST

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

Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, took aim at what he called pockets of the “online right” during his address Friday night at AmericaFest that fixate on heritage and lineage rather than American ideals. He specifically called out Fuentes as unwelcome in the conservative movement.

“I think the idea of a heritage American is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up,” he said. “There is no American who is more American than somebody else… It is binary. Either you’re an American or you’re not.”

This emerging fracture within the conservative movement was touched upon by Erika Kirk at the outset of the event.

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

She recalled her husband as being a “peacemaker” and a “coalition builder,” and that after his assassination in September, “we saw infighting. We’ve seen fractures. We’ve seen bridges being burned that shouldn’t be burnt. We saw a lot on full display.”

“And what I knew as a wife, and I’m the same exact way as him. If you are trying to put up fight or flight mode, we’re always fight mode. We don’t retreat,” she added.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet did not immediately return Fox News Digital‘s request for comment.