PHOENIX \u2014 For a second day in a row, a long-brewing internal fight among MAGA influencers spilled onto the stage of Turning Point USA’s first annual conference since the September slaying of Charlie Kirk, the organization’s co-founder. <\/p>\n
Podcaster Ben Shapiro, speaking on the AmericaFest convention’s opening night Thursday, ripped into right-wing broadcasters Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, as well as white nationalist Nick Fuentes.<\/p>\n
At the core of his argument is a case that Owens has peddled conspiracy theories<\/a>, without objection from Kelly and other prominent conservatives, about Kirk’s assassination. Those theories include suggestions that foreign governments \u2014 including Israel’s<\/a> \u2014 and employees of Turning Point USA<\/a> could have been involved. Prosecutors in Utah have charged Tyler Robinson<\/a>, 22, in the killing and are seeking the death penalty. He has yet to enter a plea.<\/p>\n “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,” Shapiro said. “Those of us with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name.” <\/p>\n He condemned Carlson for hosting Fuentes \u2014 whom he called “a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse” \u2014 and Bannon for “maligning people that he disagrees with” by accusing them of “loyalty to a foreign country.”<\/p>\n Bannon fired back on Friday night from the same stage, accusing Shapiro of wanting to take over Turning Point USA and putting Israel’s interests ahead of the United States. <\/p>\n “Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads,” Bannon said to cheers from the crowd of thousands at the Phoenix Convention Center.<\/p>\n The back-and-forth amounts to a flashpoint among conservative influencers over U.S. policy toward Israel and a sign that leaders of the MAGA movement are jockeying for power as President Donald Trump\u2019s final term progresses and the next presidential election nears.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a proxy on \u201928,\u201d Bannon, who was a top adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign and the early days of his first term, said Friday night, adding that Kirk was an opponent of “this concept of greater Israel and Israel first.”<\/p>\n