Vice President JD Vance took the stage at AmericaFest and aimed his sharpest words not at the left, but at conservatives who have been “canceling” their own side.
His Sunday remarks landed in the wake of a Thursday AmericaFest speech by Ben Shapiro that accused several prominent conservative figures of being “frauds and grifters,” the New York Post reported.
Vance, without naming names, knocked the practice of compiling “lists” of fellow right-leaning personalities to denounce, framing the spectacle as a self-inflicted wound at the worst possible time.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeated purity tests,” Vance said, making the case that the Trump coalition grew because it welcomed people who weren’t carbon copies of one another.
He drew a bright line between disagreement and exile, saying, “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” a line that read like a pointed response to the week’s public finger-pointing.
The message wasn’t subtle: It’s one thing to argue about ideas, and another to turn every disagreement into a loyalty hearing that ends in a public shaming.
Vance also invoked Charlie Kirk, saying, “Let me just say the best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie’s death that he himself refused to do in life.”
Vance urged the movement to keep its eyes on the work ahead rather than the online firing squads, saying, “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
The flare-up Vance was responding to came after Shapiro’s AmericaFest speech last Thursday, when he aired concerns about “frauds and grifters” in the conservative movement.
In that speech, Shapiro cited people he believed had harmed the movement, including Tucker Carlson and right-wing podcaster Candace Owens, along with others.
Shapiro criticized Owens for “spewing conspiracy theories” about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, making Kirk’s death a flashpoint inside an already charged argument.
Shapiro criticized Carlson over a “softball interview” with white separatist Nick Fuentes and for Carlson’s “populist tendencies,” taking aim at both style and substance.
Shapiro also “dinged” Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon, and after his speech, the pundits he targeted responded, ensuring the controversy didn’t end when the applause did.
Carlson, as described in the story, speculated that Shapiro’s critics “don’t want JD Vance” to be the party’s nominee in “2028,” a theory that turned a media feud into an early proxy fight over the party’s next chapter.
Vance’s own posture was different: He never identified Shapiro or anyone else, even as the Post suggests his critique of denunciation lists seemed like a swipe in Shapiro’s direction.
Adding an extra layer of irony to the moment, Vance employs Tucker Carlson’s son as a spokesperson, a reminder that in politics, today’s internecine argument is often tomorrow’s staff meeting.
Erika Kirk said during the major Turning Point USA conference that the conservative grassroots organization intends to back Vance for president once Trump’s term ends, and she said the plan matched her late husband’s intent.
Vance, for his part, “quickly dabbled in 2028 politics” by taking aim at prominent Democrats who are speculated to be positioning themselves, a pivot that signaled he’d rather fight the other team than referee his own.
He said, “Democrats are already talking about 2028 and it looks like they’re going to nominate a California liberal who’s presided over rolling blackouts, open borders and unchecked violent gangs,” adding, “They’re just trying to settle on whether it’s going to be Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris.”
