A growing rift within the conservative coalition took center stage at the opening night of Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference, as conservative heavyweight Ben Shapiro denounced several high-profile Republican allies as saboteurs undermining the party. 

The Phoenix gathering marked Turning Point USA’s largest confab since the death of its founder, Charlie Kirk, in September, and it was kicked off with a speech from his widow, Erika Kirk. While Mrs. Kirk put forth a message of Republican unity — even endorsing Vice President JD Vance for a 2028 presidential bid — underlying tensions erupted with the next speaker.

Mr. Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew and founder of a prominent conservative outlet, the Daily Wire, used his address to raise alarm over individuals he views as threatening the conservative movement. Rather than pointing to his opponents on the left, he called out members within his own coalition, a faction he described as “frauds and grifters.” Naming Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon — several of whom are Turning Point USA regulars — he implored the audience to distinguish such figures from “those attempting to speak truth.”

“Today the conservative movement is in serious danger, not just from the left that all too frequently excuses everything up to and including murder,” Mr. Shapiro said. “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 aggravation and grievance. These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time.”

Citing his responsibility to uphold “clarity” and “honesty,” the conservative journalist stated that he had a “moral obligation” to call out figures like Ms. Owens, whom he condemned for spewing “absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover-up in that murder.”

In that same vein, Mr. Shapiro aimed several jabs at Mr. Carlson, denouncing him for platforming controversial figures like alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes, and Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper while failing to address their views through a critical lens.

“Hosts are indeed responsible for the guests they choose and the questions they ask them,” Mr. Shapiro argued. “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.” 

That brought Mr. Shapiro to his central argument: that conservatives have a moral obligation to denounce those who violate the movement’s principles, regardless of their personal relationships. Those who refuse to do so, he contended, “are guilty of cowardice.”

“So no, Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA, or to mirror her insane line of questioning, because you ‘love’ Candace personally,” Mr. Shapiro said. 

He then brought up Ms. Kelly, with whom he has battled in recent weeks as she has refrained from condemning Ms. Owens or Mr. Carlson despite their increasing embrace of antisemitic ideas and individuals. “The same holds true of Megyn Kelly — a person I consider a friend — characterizing Candace as a ‘young mother,’ and thus shying away from condemning her actions or fibbing about them. That’s simply a nonstarter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. So is Ilhan Omar, for that matter.”

Mr. Carlson offered his retort after taking the stage toward the end of the conference. “I just got here and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn’t miss anything meaningful. I don’t think I did. No, I’m just kidding, I watched it. I laughed,” Mr. Carlson said. He later dismissed Mr. Shapiro as “pompous,” adding: “To hear calls for, like, deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what? That’s hilarious.”

Ms. Kelly, who was not scheduled to speak at the conference’s opening night, fired back at Mr. Shapiro — and the editor-in-chief of the Free Press, Bari Weiss, who published Mr. Shapiro’s speech — on social media.

“@benshapiro & @bariweiss in a joint attack on yours truly (their ‘friend’) tonight w/o a damn clue what has been going on behind the scenes for months,” she wrote on X. “Prob should have checked w/ @TPUSA & @MrsErikaKirk first. I’m embarrassed for them.”