Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference turned into a war between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson on Thursday as the two men spent much of their speeches trading blows.
During his speech, Shapiro attacked Carlson for hosting controversial guests on his show, including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. Shapiro also attacked the former Fox News host for refusing to condemn Candace Owens amid her ongoing conspiracy theories about the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“The people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice,” said Shapiro. “The fact that they have said nothing while Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years is just as cowardly.”
He argued, “Friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter,” before adding, “So no, Tucker Carlson is not an excuse to go silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA.”
Shapiro continued:
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 a guest, that’s fine, but we should own it. So, for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes – you know, the Nick Fuentes who said that the vice president of the United States is a, quote, “fat, gay race traitor married to a Jeet,” the person who said that Charlie Kirk was a, quote, “retarded idiot,” the person who said, and pardon my language here, it’s his quote, that he, quote, “took Turning Point USA and fucked it and that’s why it’s filled with Groypers” – if you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it.
[…]
[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, or for mainstreaming fake historian and pseudo-Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper as America’s best and most honest popular historian. Hosts are indeed responsible for the guests they choose and the questions they ask those guests.
Carlson responded to Shapiro’s attack in his own speech later on Thursday evening.
“I just got here, and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful,” mocked Carlson. “I don’t think I did. No, I’m just kidding, I watched it. I laughed.”
He continued, “To hear calls for like deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what?! That’s hilarious,” adding:
The whole like Red Guard Cultural Revolution thing that we so hated and feared on the left, that we did everything we could to usher in a new time where you could have an actual debate, I mean this kind of was the whole point of Charlie Kirk’s public life and I think that he died for it. I really believe that. And I know a lot about it because the last several months of Charlie’s life were devoted in part to arguing about this event, in fact this speech, in fact my speech here, which he asked me to do earlier this year, this Summer, and was immediately put under just immense pressure from people who give money to Turning Point – I would assume good people – but who wanted him to take me off the roster.
Pointing out that “Charlie stood firm in his often-stated and deeply-held belief that people should be able to debate,” Carlson responded to Shapiro’s criticism by concluding, “I kind of thought we’d reached the end of that [cancel culture], and as far as I’m concerned, we have, and I’m not gonna play by those rules. I’m not gonna engage in that.”
Shapiro also lashed out at Megyn Kelly during his speech, accusing her of not doing enough to condemn Owens’ conspiracy theories.
Watch above via RSBN.
