Tension was on display at the four-day Turning Point convention that ended on Sunday (Monday AEDT), foreshadowing the treacherous political waters that Vance, or anyone else who seeks the next Republican presidential nomination, will need to navigate in the coming years.
As Republicans begin considering a future without Trump, there is no clear path to holding his “Make America Great Again” coalition together.
Erika Kirk greets US Vice President JD Vance on Sunday.Credit: AP
Vance said on Sunday the conservative movement should be open to everyone as long as they “love America”, and declined to condemn a streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and which roiled the opening days of the convention.
After a long weekend of debates about whether the movement should exclude figures such as bigoted podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vance came down firmly against “purity tests”.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during the convention’s closing speech.
Nick Fuentes holds a rally in Michigan in 2020.Credit: AP
The Republican Party’s identity has been intertwined with Trump for a decade, but he’s constitutionally ineligible to run for re-election despite his musings about serving a third term. Commentator Tucker Carlson said people are wondering “who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene?”
So far, it looks like settling that question will come with a lot of fighting among conservatives. The Turning Point convention featured arguments about antisemitism, Israel and environmental regulations, not to mention rivalries between leading commentators.
Ben Shapiro, a co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, used his speech on the conference’s opening night to denounce “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty”.
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“These people are frauds and they are grifters and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro said. He specifically called out Carlson for hosting Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast.
Carlson brushed off the criticism when he took the stage barely an hour later, and he said the idea of a Republican “civil war” was “totally fake”.
“There are people who are mad at JD Vance, and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination,” he said. Carlson described Vance as “the one person” who subscribes to the “core idea of the Trump coalition”, which Carlson said was “America first”.
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet framed the discord as a healthy debate about the movement’s future, an uncomfortable but necessary process of finding consensus.
“We’re not hive-minded commies,” he wrote on social media. “Let it play out.”
Vance acknowledged the controversies that dominated the Turning Point convention, but he did not define any boundaries for the conservative movement besides patriotism.
US President Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk in 2018.Credit: AP
“We don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said.
Vance didn’t name anyone, but his comments came amid an increasingly contentious debate over whether the right should give a platform to commentators espousing antisemitic views, particularly Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identity.
Fuentes has a growing audience, as does top-rated podcaster Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Candace Owens addresses a conservative conference in Florida in 2022.Credit: Getty
“We have far more important work to do than cancelling each other,” Vance said.
Vance hasn’t disclosed his future plans, but Erika Kirk said on Thursday that Turning Point wanted Vance “elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible”. (The next president will be the 48th in US history.)
Turning Point is a major force on the right, with a nationwide volunteer network that can be especially helpful in early primary states, when candidates rely on grassroots energy to build momentum.
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Vance was close with Charlie Kirk, and they supported each other over the years. After Kirk’s assassination, the vice president flew out on Air Force Two to collect Kirk’s remains and return them to Kirk’s home in Arizona. The vice president then helped uniformed service members carry the casket to the plane.
Reuters, AP
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