AmFest 2025 proves that UNITY is needed more than ever
This year’s AmFest – the first without the late Charlie Kirk at the helm – honored their founder’s legacy, while some influencers took advantage of the platform and used it to attack those they disagreed with
Opinion-editorial by Summer Lane | December 22, 2025
Last week, AmericaFest kicked off in Phoenix, Arizona, marking the first time Turning Point USA has hosted the annual event since the assassination of their leader, Charlie Kirk.
The conference brought together tens of thousands of young Americans eager to honor Kirk’s legacy. The event also gave a slate of podcasters, influencers, and commentators the chance to get on stage and offer their thoughts about the future of the America First movement – a movement shaped heavily and effectively by the political genius of Kirk.
The guests were varied, ranging from a surprise appearance by rapper Nicki Minaj to criticizing commentary from Daily Wire personality Ben Shapiro. But more than anything, what stole the show – on social media, at least – was the grumblings and attacks internally between media voices like Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson.
Amid the social media soundbites and perceived ill will between some of these individuals, one thing was abundantly clear: Charlie Kirk’s leadership, in retrospect, seemed to be a powerful glue that held a large part of the America First coalition together.
Without him, cracks have appeared, but like anything else, these cracks are easily repaired if all parties are willing to focus on a unified goal.
Just say no to infighting
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, much attention has been given to the theories and allegations of podcaster Candace Owens, who has made a series of suggestions about who or what may have been behind Kirk’s death.
Like her or hate her, Owens is just another podcaster driving traffic to her show, but her commentary seems to have spurred a bit of an internal conservative civil war.
In his comments at AmFest, Shapiro pressured others in the movement to explicitly condemn Owens, specifically criticizing journalist and independent podcasters Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson for failing to attack Owens.
He seemed to suggest that silence about Owens represented a moral failure. Funnily enough, the logic Shapiro used here was the same logic many leftists deployed during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, which assumed that all those who didn’t actively state they weren’t a racist were racist.
One could argue that Shapiro’s stance itself was a “moral and logical absurdity,” as he so pointedly said of Megyn Kelly.
Whether one agrees with Shapiro’s stance on condemning Owens is irrelevant. His attack on other prominent voices in the independent media sphere on the TPUSA stage – a stage that should be aimed at unifying the base rather than fracturing it – felt less than inspiring.
When asked about his harsh rhetoric at the TPUSA event, Megyn Kelly fired back, “I found it kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement, which shows a willful blindness about his position in it.”
The contentious back-and-forth between influencers fueled mainstream headlines of conservative “infighting,” which is not the kind of messaging the right needs as the 2026 midterms are rapidly approaching.
Owens is not the problem – she’s a symptom
Candace Owens’ commentary on TPUSA and Charlie Kirk has been relentless. Last week, she even met with Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, in a supposed white-flag sit-down to hash out the harsh online rhetoric Owens has dished out about the political organization and Kirk’s September assassination.
Owens’ popularity with podcast audiences likely stems from years of American authority figures like the FBI and CIA ceaselessly lying to their countrymen. In the wake of highly inflammatory assassinations like President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., it’s no wonder people doubt the official narrative of Kirk’s killing, whether this distrust is warranted or not.
Owens is tapping into this broad distrust and digging in hard. Some like it. Some hate it. Some have condemned it. Others have remained silent.
But the fact remains that Owens herself is not the problem here. She’s a symptom of a much broader disease: American distrust of official narratives and a conservative base that seems unable to rally collaboratively without a powerful leader keeping the coalition together.
That leader was Charlie Kirk. It’s clear that he was far more important and far more effective than people may have realized. His passing has left a void that cannot be filled by anyone.
For TPUSA’s part, the organization has done an excellent job of keeping its students energized and on fire to keep the mission alive. It’s unfortunate that conservative talking heads can’t simply agree to disagree on some issues. They spend so much time dissecting the nuances of their disagreements instead of rallying the base around the things they can agree on and must work toward.
President Donald Trump’s America First movement is historic in so many ways. It cannot be squandered on petty infighting, podcasters’ egos, and silly squabbles.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vice President J.D. Vance said during his capstone speech at AmFest. “He says, ‘Make America Great Again’ because every American is invited.”
The vice president’s speech refused to condemn anyone in the movement and instead, wisely, called for unity and mission focus. Vance, unlike many of the voices in media today, gets it: to keep America free, we must work together, not against each other.
That means podcasters and commentators need to focus on what they have in common rather than fixating on the things that tear them apart. That means digging in hard to win races in the 2026 midterm elections and helping President Trump carry out his America First agenda rather than stymying it.
That means extending grace instead of hatred, love instead of criticism, and a helping hand instead of a pointed slap across the face. Finding common ground and uniting together must be conservatives’ mission in 2026.
For America. For freedom. And for Charlie.
Photo: Adobe Stock
