The ongoing dispute between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson took center stage on Thursday during the opening night of Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, the organization’s annual gathering and its first since the killing of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk in September. 

Attempts by TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk, who took the helm after her husband’s death, to project unity within the MAGA movement at the summit — including by announcing her endorsement of Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 presidential election — were overshadowed by the barbs traded by Shapiro and Carlson in their respective speeches. The two men spoke within three hours of each other at the Phoenix, Ariz., event, with Shapiro taking the stage first.

Shapiro began his remarks by warning that conservative commentators including Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon are “frauds and grifters” who are threatening the future of the Republican Party. In addition to Carlson, Kelly and Bannon are slated to speak at the four-day conference.

“Today, the conservative movement is in serious danger, not just from the left that all too frequently excuses everything up to and including murder,” Shapiro said. “The conservative movement is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair, who seek to undermine fundamental principles of conservatism by championing aggravation and grievance.”

“These people are frauds and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time,” he added.

Shapiro criticized Kelly and Carlson for refusing to condemn Owens for espousing and promoting conspiracy theories surrounding Kirk’s assassination, and highlighted Bannon’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein while noting that Bannon “accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country.”

Regarding Kelly, Shapiro noted that while he considers the former Fox News host to be a friend, he criticized her argument that Owens’ behavior was undeserving of criticism because she’s a young mother and a personal friend.

“Meghan Markle is a young mother. [Rep.] Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is a young mother. That doesn’t matter,” Shapiro told the crowd. “Megyn said this week, ‘My goal and my job here is to try to understand where Candace is coming from on this,’ and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself ‘into this on one side.’ That is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here, Erica Kirk’s side.”

“You know, the side of the widow with two children whose husband was shot live on camera in front of all of us?” he continued. “Friendship with the person accusing TPUSA of a cover up of Charlie’s murder is no excuse for cowardice.”

Shapiro also criticized Carlson’s platforming of Andrew Tate, the controversial influencer and alleged sex trafficker; neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes; and Darryl Cooper, a known Holocaust revisionist and a Hitler apologist who produces his own history podcast. Shapiro called on Carlson to “own” his part in mainstreaming the three into the conservative movement. 

“If we offer a guest for your viewing, we owe it to you to ask the kinds of questions that actually get at the truth. If we agree with the guest, that’s fine, but we should own it,” Shapiro said. “So, for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving, anti-American piece of refuge like Nick Fuentes, … if you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it.”

Carlson took the stage later on in the program Thursday evening, and began his remarks by revealing he had “laughed” while watching Shapiro take digs at him. He later criticized Shapiro’s push to purge fringe figures such as Fuentes and Owens from the conservative ecosystem. 

“I just got here and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful. I don’t think I did. No, I’m just kidding, I watched it. I laughed,” Carlson said, later adding: “To hear calls for, like, deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what? That’s hilarious.”