Social media influencers Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro clash at Turning Point USA event [videos]

Prominent conservative voices clashed at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference on Thursday night, as Ben Shapiro criticized Tucker Carlson for hosting controversial guests, such as white nationalist Nick Fuentes and divisive influencer Andrew Tate, on his show.

Shapiro repeatedly evoked Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was assassinated in September, while calling members of the conservative movement “charlatans,” “frauds” and “grifters.”

“[Kirk] 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 built Nick Fuentes up, and he ought to take responsibility for that, just as he ought to take responsibility for glazing pornographer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate,” Shapiro said.

Speaking at the end of the conference, Carlson made a jab at the earlier calls for what he described as “denouncing and deplatforming.”

“I hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful. … I don’t think I did,” Carlson said of the previous segments. “No, I’m just kidding. I watched it. I laughed. I laughed the kind of bitter, sardonic laugh that emerges from you when upside-down world arrives.”

Carlson added that “the whole point” of Kirk’s public life had been “to usher in a new time where you could have an actual debate.”

Shapiro warned the conservative movement that Kirk helped build was “in serious danger” during his speech.

He condemned right-wing podcaster Candace Owens’s social media inquiries into the assassination of Kirk, and he knocked media personality Megyn Kelly and others for “shying away” from condemning Owens’s actions.

“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 enervation and grievance,” Shapiro said. “These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time.”

The Turning Point event memorialized Kirk, who was killed while speaking with university students in Utah in September. Tyler Robinson was arrested and charged in connection with the shooting.

The clash between Shapiro and Carlson underscores competing visions for the future of the conservative movement as President Trump wraps up the first year of his second term in the White House — and as the party prepares for tough midterm elections next year.

Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point’s new CEO, met this week for what she called a “productive” meeting with Owens amid concerns about her fueling of conspiracy theories swirling around the assassination.

Owens on Thursday responded to the onstage jabs from Shapiro, who is Jewish, by suggesting on the social platform X that Israel was involved in the killing.

“You may not agree with everyone on this stage this weekend, and that’s okay,” Kirk said in her opening remarks at the conference. “Welcome to America. Charlie would’ve welcomed that.”