AmFest 2025

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I listened to the main speeches from Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 so you don’t have to.

They illustrated several points. First, that a clash between conservatives and nationalists over Trump’s legacy was always inevitable. Compromise was never an option. The death of Charlie Kirk hastened that clash rather than leading to unity and reprisals against the Left.

Second, that civic nationalism and its attempts to use religion or values as cheap substitutes for real nationalism is intellectually bankrupt. But that doesn’t prevent many people from sincerely believing in it, who then become prey to those who tout it but don’t believe in it.

Third, that whatever problems our movement may have, we are still a lot less tacky, amateurish, and intellectually shallow than the center right. The association of the American center right with tackiness has driven a lot of people towards the left at home and abroad because they associate liberal positions with status and sophistication. We could probably outflank the center right and the left simply by embracing identitarian optics. Being too radical isn’t a problem or even possible, but being too lowbrow certainly is.

Erika Kirk

Erika Kirk kicked off the event. She has received a lot of criticism for allegedly being insincere in her grief, criticism which oftentimes tailspins into conspiracy theories. I prefer the simpler explanation, which is that she is a product of TPUSA’s megachurch culture, and that was on full display throughout the event

Erika described Charlie as a peacemaker, a coalition builder, and as a connection point, especially between generations. He told a generation that was mocked and dismissed that they matter and can make a difference. The chaos which followed Charlie’s death proves her right.

Erika said that debate is important to TPUSA and that truth can survive scrutiny. Time will tell if there is a special carve-out for those who criticize Israel or confront race realism. While this AmFest platformed several speakers who disagreed with each other on Israel, there was not one single ethnonationalist. At least not an open and honest one.

Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro began by claiming that the fate of the country depends on TPUSA’s core values of freedom, free markets, and limited government, and the success of the conservative movement, which is presently threatened by grifters and charlatans.

Of course, behind Shapiro’s rhetoric was the aim to advance his ethnic Jewish interests, but to discerning listeners he revealed his playbook on how he would do that. Ironically, I strongly agree with him that the conspiracy theories must stop and that people need to openly say what they really think.

Shapiro used the cringe conspiracy theories about the death of Charlie Kirk to smear other legitimate questions through guilt by association. This isn’t new. Many of us have long suspected that conspiracy theories are promoted in part to poison the well. Ben said that we shouldn’t tolerate these freaks because they are undermining legitimate questions. I totally agree, albeit for different reasons. Talk about Jewish space lasers and other forms of low IQ anti-Semitism undermine high IQ anti-Semitism such as the nature of Jewish psychology, evolutionary strategy, and nepotism. Ben Shapiro loves to hate conspiracy mongers like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and lamentably, even Tucker Carlson because their nonsense gives him an easy way to deflect from hard questions about race realism and the Jewish Question.

Shapiro criticized Tucker’s silence on Candace Owens’ conspiratorial attacks on TPUSA. He also criticized Tucker’s softball interview of Nick Fuentes (though Fuentes played softball with Tucker just as much) saying we have a duty to question the people we host, or openly and honestly agree with them. Shapiro cast the duty to truth as meaning that we can’t just “ask questions” and never provide evidence or investigate. It’s cute when a five-year old asks questions, but not grown adults, and especially ones who are in a good position to gather evidence like Tucker.

I agree completely. Tucker’s innocent and endless Socratic questioning may have been an excellent strategy in 2016 or 2020 but not anymore. People on all sides see through it. It is time for him to put his cards on the table and say what he really believes. Blunt honesty and empirical rigor must replace manoeuvre and insinuation.

Shapiro said it was wrong of Tucker to imply that Epstein and Mossad were running a rape ring which implicated Trump. Problem is, that’s actually true, but Tucker undermines that truth because he won’t state it openly and it ends up getting associated with conspiratorial nonsense.

Shapiro is right that we should posit solutions rather than crashing the system or joining cults of personality. Maybe that’s why Shapiro’s tribe prioritizes canceling people like Dr. Greg Johnson who propose realistic solutions, because they are the biggest threats to Jewish power.

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon said that the GOP establishment hated Kirk because he built a machine that delivered victories. He warned that they would try to hijack that machine. He also agreed with Tucker Carlson that the current civil war in the conservative movement is a proxy war for 2028.

Bannon claimed to be very pro-Israel but not for Greater Israel or for Israel First. He described Charlie Kirk as a populist who believed that Americans should make decisions based on their own interests. This was a refreshing reprieve from the saccharine, values-based politics which dominated AmFest.

Bannon then retaliated against Ben Shapiro’s earlier attacks against him with “I know you Ben, you can’t handle the truth.” He then reminded the crowd of how Shapiro had been a hardcore never-Trumper and had tried to sabotage Breitbart in 2016 for supporting Trump. He described Shapiro as a cancer which spreads and predicted that he would make a move on TPUSA because he has always been envious of Charlie Kirk. It’s not about free speech or deplatforming but power politics.

He said that Charlie had fought against Greater Israel and getting sucked into a land war in Iran. He also described the Israel First crowd as destroying Israel. Bannon then said that Laura Loomer and others are recognizing that maybe he is right, that Israel shouldn’t take anymore US money and they can do what they want without dragging us in.

Bannon ended by saying we need to re-Christianize this country. I guess that’s an invitation to Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, and the Indian mafia to go home. But politics can’t re-Christianize America. Politics can, however, re-whiten it, which is really the point. Secular East Germans can become Americans, Christian Haitians can’t.

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj is a rap diva who recently joined the conservative movement. She is indicative of the diverse crowd that has joined, for better or for worse, due to Covid tyranny and the excesses of the woke Left. Her attacks on Gavin Newsom were simple but solid. Not allowing the public to forget how these people acted during Covid is a winning electoral strategy.

When Erika Kirk asked Minaj about backlash in her industry, she replied “I didn’t even notice” and “We’re the cool kids.” This is a good attitude to promote. She also said that there should be reciprocal respect for beauty across races, in contrast to how the media went beyond telling black kids to be proud of themselves to telling others not to be proud of themselves.

She then talked about her Christian faith and called on the administration to help the Christians who are being persecuted in Nigeria. I wish conservatives had at least the same concern for Ukrainians.

Nicki Minaj’s discussion with Erika Kirk turned extremely awkward when she described Vance as an “assassin.” It’s hard to tell if she was insinuating that he was part of the conspiracy to murder Charlie Kirk or if she chose her words poorly. Given that she spoke well of Trump just before, I think it was an accident, and that the following awkward pause and body language were due to embarrassment. It’s hard to tell whether Erika Kirk thought it was an accusation or an accident, but she praised Minaj in Christian terms and acknowledged her “slip-up” would be clipped and go viral, which did happen. The incident served to highlight how mainstream conservatives have a lot of faith and bravado but not always the most sophistication.

JD Vance

Vance began by speaking well of Nicki Minaj. He stated that Trump didn’t win by purity tests and that he would fight for all of us, black or white, rural or urban, controversial or boring. Vance said that he didn’t bring a list of people to denounce or deplatform and didn’t care that this would probably lead to him being denounced. He explained that we have more important work to do than canceling each other and that Charlie Kirk invited all of them there and trusted them to make their own judgment. While that’s not strictly true as evidenced by the groyper wars, it’s indicative of Vance’s commitment to free speech and not punching right. This sounds like Vance is extending an olive branch to white identitarians. I’ll take it.

Piggybacking off of Nicki Minaj’s speech, Vance said:

We don’t treat people differently because of race or sex. So we have relegated DEI to dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs. And in the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore. And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying for college because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control.

It is nice to hear the next President of the United States saying that white people no longer have to apologize for being white, but it is a pity that he bases that on “race-blind individualism,” because that is a sucker’s game, as Greg Johnson has argued.

Vance reiterated his commitment to free speech and ending the scourge of far-Left violence, and that the administration is going after the funders in addition to the networks. He also acknowledged that many people (like myself) say we should be doing more and faster. I certainly hope he brings the hammer down on leftist violence because failing to do so will encourage more of it.

He said that Americans are hungry for identity and a sense of place in the world, and that we are united in being a Christian nation, which is not true and must be an awkward topic around the Vance household. He clarified that we don’t have to be Christian to be American, but that it’s a shared moral creed, and that our debates are centered around how we can please God, which is again untrue. He claimed that religious liberty is a Christian concept, when history says otherwise.

Vance explained how Christian values are at the heart of administration policies like not allowing Tim Walz’s Somalians to defraud Medicaid and going after corporations that ship jobs overseas because we believe in the human dignity of workers. But I’ve been told that the Third-World hordes are also made in the image of God. I really hope that Vance is a fact man who doesn’t believe the big words.

Vance ended by asking those who are impatient at the pace of progress to get involved. For those who are discouraged by infighting, he said it’s better to have people who disagree than be among a bunch of drones who take their orders from George Soros.

For me, the next president saying we don’t have to apologize for being white and tacitly opening up dialogue with the dissident Right is a major win. It eclipses any of the megachurch cringe which accompanied the rest of AmFest.