Steve Bannon speaks during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. December 19, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin O'Hara
In Phoenix in late December, Turning Point USA (TPUSA) held its first convention since the fatal October 10 shooting of co-founder Charlie Kirk. AmericaFest 2025 featured a who's-who of MAGA, including Vice President JD Vance, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, "War Room" host Steve Bannon and Kirk's widow, TPUSA leader Erika Kirk.
President Donald Trump himself, however, wasn't part of the lineup, although images of him appeared on a large screen.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte offers some AmericaFest 2025 takeaways in an article published on December 23, stressing that the gathering underscored MAGA's desire to be even worse than Trump.
AmericaFest 2025, Marcotte observes, "revealed serious and growing tensions within the MAGA movement over the inclusion of people like" Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.
"Vance may say he's not taking sides," Marcotte argues, "but that is impossible in this situation. 'White nationalists: good or bad?' is a binary question, and by accepting neo-Nazis and other far-right groups into the MAGA tent, the vice president is inherently rejecting everyone who thinks that's a bad move. As Donald Trump himself learned in 2017 when he described folks who marched with neo-Nazis as 'very fine people,' there's simply no way to side with Nazis and not side against the people they hate."
Marcotte warns that Vance isn't shy about promoting overtly "racist" ideas.
"Unlike Trump, Vance can't hide behind the assumption that he's too ignorant to know better," Marcotte says. "Instead, the vice president's rhetoric and ideology appear to be part of a long game of advocating the ideas and philosophies of overt racists within the Republican Party, even as he continues to use coded language to conceal this radicalization from the mainstream press to avoid negative coverage. Even more than the 79-year-old Trump, Vance seems to feel that far-right radicals who espouse nakedly racist views are the future of the GOP."
Marcotte adds, "As he starts to collect endorsements for a 2028 presidential bid — including from TPUSA CEO and chair Erika Kirk on December 19 — he's focused on pandering to the loudest, most shameless bigots in the country and putting a pseudo-intellectual gloss on their hatreds. In July, Vance gave a speech at the Claremont Institute in which he laid out his blood-and-soil vision of America, arguing that people who have ancestors living in the U.S. during the 19th Century 'have a hell of a lot more claim over America' than newer arrivals. The vice president has also praised a 1920s-era law that blocked most immigration of non-white people, a law that would prevented his own wife's family from moving to the U.S."
Usha Vance, the vice president's wife, is Indian-American, a vegetarian and a practicing Hindu whose parents moved to the U.S. from India. VP Vance, however, is a convert to Catholicism.
Marcotte warns that among the younger MAGA Republicans, "a lot of the energy" is coming from "overt fascists."
"As Candace Owens is becoming even more loudly antisemitic," Marcotte observes, "her audience is only growing. A recently leaked text chain from the Young Republicans of New York shows members praising Hitler and using racial slurs — behavior Vance defended by pretending they were teenagers instead of professionals in their 20s and 30s."
Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.