OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:31 AM – Friday, December 19, 2025
Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk endorsed Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 presidential election at the organization’s first AmericaFest conference since the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
At the conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday, Erika Kirk honored her late husband and announced her endorsement for the vice president to lead the Republican Party into the future.
“What I’m inspired by is the fact that Charlie and I, again, will go wherever we need to go, but so will you. That’s why you guys are here,” she told the crowd. “All of you are here because you know you’re saying, ‘I want to do something.’”
“What I have learned so much within these past three months, again, the enemy, that he will never win. We know we’re on the winning side,” Kirk continued. “God is so good.”
Kirk went on to note the growth of Turning Point since her husband’s assassination, including over 1 million students involved, 3,082 Club America chapters, and 1,432 college chapters.
“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” Kirk added.
Meanwhile, prominent conservative figures clashed at the Thursday event, which began with Ben Shapiro denouncing Tucker Carlson for hosting controversial far-right commentator Nick Fuentes on his show.
Shapiro argued that Charlie 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 went on to condemn right-wing commentator Candace Owens for her investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk, while criticizing figures like conservative commentator Megyn Kelly for failing to denounce Owens.
“The people who refused to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks — and some of them are speaking here tonight — are guilty of cowardice,” he continued. “If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes … you ought to own it.”
“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 added. “These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time.”
Carlson took the stage to close out the event, responding by mocking Shapiro’s speech for his calls to condemn and deplatform, arguing that those sentiments stand against Charlie Kirk’s philosophy of open debate.
“I hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful. … I don’t think I did,” Carlson said. “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.”
“Calls to deplatform at a Charlie Kirk event — I’m like, what? That’s hilarious,” Carlson said of Shapiro.
Carlson went on to point out that anti-White hate is “every bit as bad” as antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is not just naughty, it’s immoral. And it is precisely as immoral as hating any other group, and that would include other groups in the United States that are hated and have been under attack for decades. And that would include White men,” Carlson stated.
“Our leaders, not just of our Congress, the executive branch under [former President Joe] Biden, but of every major U.S. corporation, of every college in the country, probably except Hillsdale and two others, every single one for more than ten years, has engaged in a systematic effort to hurt White men because they are White men.”
“That is racism, that is precisely as bad as antisemitism, but it is much more widespread, and has been so far, much more damaging,” he continued.
Carlson concluded by condemning the Israeli government’s war in Gaza through the lens of his Christian faith.
“My theology is super simple, I like the beatitudes, read them yesterday… I think any person, any honest person, would say that’s the essence of the Christian faith. And killing tens of thousands of children, and then making excuses for it on behalf of a foreign government is not in there. It’s antithetical to that. It doesn’t make me a hater, it makes me the opponent of hate,” Carlson stated before taking questions from the crowd.
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