At Turning Point Fest, Vance Refuses to Take Sides in Fight Over Bigotry

The vice president’s plea for a big-tent coalition at an annual conservative gathering belied the cracks in his party over antisemitism, racism and conspiracy theories.

The bitter infighting over antisemitism, free speech and bigotry during Turning Point USA’s annual national conference not only exposed fissures in President Trump’s movement but also laid bare a challenge for his potential successor.

How would his likely heir apparent handle an explosive debate among Republicans over whether extremists and conspiracy theorists should be embraced or excluded from the conservative coalition?

On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance gave an answer, suggesting he was more than willing to forgo imposing any moral red lines.

“When I say that I’m going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you — each and every one,” Mr. Vance said at Turning Point USA’s annual gathering, AmericaFest, where prominent conservative leaders called on their peers to stop promoting conspiracies and hate. “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”

The vice president’s plea for a big-tent coalition, however, belied the cracks visible in the past week in his party. The annual conservative gathering was just a year ago a platform united under Mr. Trump and elevated by its co-founder, Charlie Kirk, a young rising figure on the right. Mr. Kirk’s assassination in September galvanized Republicans and fueled conspiracy theories among them, and it prompted Mr. Vance to call on Americans to coalesce around criticizing what he called the far left.

This year, the event showcased the intense jostling over the direction of Mr. Trump’s movement and whom it would platform.

Last week, Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator, warned that the “conservative movement was in serious danger” by those willing to amplify conspiracies, including Candace Owens, the podcaster widely accused of antisemitism. She has also spread unfounded theories about Mr. Kirk’s death. Mr. Shapiro’s warning also targeted Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who recently held a softball interview with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and avowed antisemite. Mr. Carlson later accused Mr. Shapiro of trying to censor him.

On Friday, Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian American who is running for governor of Ohio as a Republican, also criticized a faction of the party. He went after those who have embraced the idea that so-called “heritage Americans” — a predominantly white group whose families have been in the country for multiple generations — have a greater claim to the nation than more recent arrivals.

Those comments appeared to put Mr. Ramaswamy at odds with Mr. Vance, who has spoken out against “importing millions and millions of low-wage serfs” and argued that mass migration was the “theft of the American dream.”

Mr. Ramaswamy also took on those who have issued derogatory attacks against Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance. And he said Mr. Fuentes and others promoting hateful views had “no place in the future of the conservative movement.”

Mr. Vance, however, left open the possibility that they did.

“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce and deplatform,” Mr. Vance said, arguing that Mr. Kirk had welcomed debate. “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

Mr. Vance’s team did not respond on Sunday to requests for comment.

Mr. Vance in the past has disavowed Mr. Fuentes, calling him in an interview with CBS News a “total loser” who had no place in Mr. Trump’s coalition during the 2024 campaign. And he played down Mr. Fuentes’s influence in a blog interview published on Sunday, while bluntly criticizing antisemitism, “ethnic hatred” and attacks on his wife.

But as vice president, Mr. Vance has on multiple occasions refused to pick a side in interparty fights over bigotry.

When the emergence of a Telegram group chat showed Republican elected leaders and young party activists routinely using racist and homophobic language, as well as invoking Hitler, Mr. Vance compared them to “anything said in a college group chat.” He also embraced false claims about Haitian Americans in the 2024 race, declining to condemn those who spread racist conspiracy theories.

And on Sunday, Mr. Vance declined to issue warnings of extremist figures like other speakers at the conference, instead arguing that the coalition was open to all as long as they “love America.”

After receiving the endorsement for president of Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, Mr. Vance encouraged supporters to unite around Mr. Trump’s immigration policies and the targeting of diversity initiatives. The White House has argued that they have unfairly led to the disenfranchisement of white men.

“We don’t treat anybody different because of their race or their sex, so we have relegated D.E.I. to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it had belonged,” Mr. Vance said, using the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion. “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

He received some of the loudest applause from the crowd when he told attendees that “by the grace of God we will always be a Christian nation.”

Mr. Vance also continued to target Somali Americans after weeks of Mr. Trump’s insulting the immigrant community from the White House. Mr. Vance said Omar Fateh, a Minnesota state senator and Somali immigrant, had previously run for mayor of “Mogadishu.”

“I mean Minneapolis,” Mr. Vance said of the city with a large Somali American population. “Little Freudian slip there.”

Mr. Fateh said on social media after the speech that he was born in Washington, D.C., and that his father “came to America on a scholarship” in the early 1960s. He added that he was “proud to represent MPLS.”

While Mr. Vance has not announced plans to run for president, he showed signs on Sunday that he had his eyes on the future. He said Democrats were “already talking about 2028” and criticized the party’s potential leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. He said that Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Black Democrat in Texas running for Senate, had a “street girl persona” that “is about as real as her nails.”

Ms. Crockett said in a text message that the vice president was seeking to distract. “Republicans like JD Vance attack my nails and lashes because they can’t keep up with me when it comes to debating the issues,” she said. “While JD Vance is talking about my looks, I’m talking about legislation. I’m talking about lowering the costs for groceries, utilities and health care.”

Mr. Vance’s lack of similar condemnation for fringe G.O.P. figures was met with rebukes from some in his party.

“I’ll never vote for someone who is ambiguous in their stance against antisemitism or who can’t see that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a threat to our long-range strategic interests,” Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, said.

Jason Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, praised Mr. Vance’s speech, calling it a “fantastic unifying message heading into the 2026 midterms.” Mr. Miller added: “When the time comes, I think the vice president will be ready to pick up the baton from President Trump.”

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