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Charlie Kirk’s mentor and noted Christian apologist Dr Frank Turek has joined other leaders—including conservative commentator Ben Shapiro—in calling out Candace Owens at Turning Point USA’s four-day AmericaFest (AmFest) 2025 conference.

Between 18 and 21 December local time, more than 30,000 Americans converged on the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona for AmFest 2025—making it the biggest event TPUSA has ever hosted.

The conference featured big-name speakers, including Vice President J. D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and Donald Trump Jr.—along with a surprise appearance from the “Queen of Rap”, the world’s best-selling female rapper, Nicki Minaj.

Tulsi Gabbard speaks to AmFest 2025

“What is it that binds us together? What are the fundamental principles that we must stand together on, whether we are Democrats or Republicans or people of different religions, people of different backgrounds or different views on certain… pic.twitter.com/3IdyT2KblE

— The Epoch Times Arizona (@TheEpochTimesAZ) December 20, 2025

Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Charlie Kirk Conspiracies

However, beneath the hype, many attendees observed what Calvin Robinson called “a tension bubbling up under the surface”—between competing visions of the future of the Republican Party.

It comes on the back of significant controversy following the assassination of Charlie Kirk on 10 September this year. Since that time, podcaster Candace Owens has released a series of episodes speculating about the events surrounding the murder—seeking to undermine the widely accepted view that Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, a radical leftist, was responsible for the shooting.

She has also increasingly focused her rhetoric and conspiracies against Jewish people and the state of Israel in what Daily Declaration contributor Bill Muehlenberg has characterised as “virulent and irrational Jew-hatred”.

According to a Forbes analysis, Owens’s company now generates some USD $10 million in revenue each year. Since her split with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire in 2024, her digital following has grown by an estimated nine million, and according to a report by Podscribe, in October, her show Candace ranked No. 1 globally across platforms in downloads and views per episode—with an average of 3.5 to 3.6 million downloads per episode.

Tucker Carlson, too, has platformed similar conspiratorial speculations, including the highly controversial streamer, Nick Fuentes—known for his antisemitic, racist, and foul-mouthed political tirades on Rumble. When interviewing Fuentes in late October, Carlson called Christian Zionism heresy and a “brain virus” and said he “dislike[s] them [Christian Zionists] more than anybody”—although he later walked back those comments.

“Conspiracism and Dishonesty”: Ben Shapiro Calls Out Owens, Carlson, and Fuentes

At times, the latent tension at this year’s AmFest flared, most notably when Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator at The Daily Wire and an orthodox Jew, took to the stage and called for moral clarity within the conservative movement.

“The conservative moment is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty. These people are frauds, and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time.”

In particular, Shapiro condemned personalities like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Nick Fuentes, who many Republicans see as the future of their movement, despite their positions, rhetoric, and speculations on Israel, Jewish people, and a range of other issues.

He also called out more mainstream conservative voices like Megyn Kelly for refusing to condemn Owens for her persistent conspiracies following the death of Charlie Kirk, including implicating Kirk’s closest friends and colleagues in his murder.

Supporters of Owens, Carlson, and Fuentes accused Shapiro of undermining unity and “vilifying” fellow Republicans, with one outlet falsely calling Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey a “dispensationalist”—a Christian position Stuckey clarified that she does not hold—after she expressed support for Shapiro’s words.

Stuckey praised Shapiro for “clarity”, saying she loved that with Shapiro “we don’t have to guess what he is thinking”, while also asserting the right of other speakers to defend themselves and make their own cases for the future of the conservative movement.

In her own speech, Stuckey reiterated the idea that pursuing unity within the GOP at the expense of truth is dangerous, saying “There can be no true unity without the acknowledgement of truth.”

Christian apologist and YouTuber, Mike Winger, also voiced his support for Shapiro’s speech, tweeting simply “Ben Shapiro was right.” Since Kirk’s death in September, Winger has consistently challenged unhealthy conspiratorial thinking among Christians and refuted attempts to implicate those closest to Kirk for his death.

Frank Turek: “Yeah, I’m Talking to You, Candace Owens”

Another speaker who took to the stage to call for clarity and truth over unity was Dr Frank Turek, Charlie Kirk’s mentor and a noted Christian apologist and evangelist.

Dr Turek has engaged in cultural commentary and Christian apologetics for decades, authoring or co-authoring several influential books, including I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (2004) and Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case (2014).

During his service as a flight officer in the United States Navy, Turek was converted to Protestant Christianity after reading Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict and More Than a Carpenter. He went on to debate world-renowned atheists—most notably the late Christopher Hitchens in 2008—and engage with students on campuses around the United States.

Before turning to the elephant in the room, Turek opened his AmFest 2025 speech with a defence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

“Ladies and gentlemen,
everyone you love will die.
Everything you build will crumble.
Everything you say will be forgotten.
Everything you do will come to nothing.
You and your identity will die and
vanish.
Your life is meaningless…
unless the resurrection is true.”

He also shared his own memories from the day that Charlie Kirk was killed, using his reflection as an opportunity to present the Gospel to the thousands of attendees.

“The doctor came out, and with the subtlety of a brick, he said, ‘He’s dead.’
He didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry. We tried everything.’
He just said, ‘He’s dead’—and what we had feared had come true.
But if Christianity is true—and it is, ladies and gentlemen—people don’t die, they just change location.”

After calling for the crowd to reject the view that a human is “just a molecular machine” or “a moist robot”, Turek turned to addressing the rumours and conspiracies pedalled by Candace Owens and others.

“We had a murder on 9/10 [10 September],” he stated. “What have we seen since then? We’ve seen lies. We’ve seen accusations. And we’ve seen slander with no evidence.”

But, like Shapiro, a visibly impassioned Turek did not confine his criticisms to generalities only.

“Yeah. I’m talking to you, Candace Owens,” he said.

“You’re no friend of Charlie if you’re running down her [sic] widow [Erika Kirk] without evidence.”

Tucker Carlson and Islam

Following Shapiro onto the stage was Tucker Carlson, who surprised many attendees by accusing conservatives and Christians of Islamophobia.

“What you’re watching now,” he said, “attacking people, attacking millions of Americans because they are Muslims. It’s disgusting.”

“I know there is a lot of effort to claim I am a secret Jihadi—I’m not… you should not attack people on those grounds, and you’re seeing it from Republicans. What the hell are you doing? What you’re doing is you’re trying to divide the country, and I’ve lived through fifty years of this crap. All these fake race wars that they’re always promoting.”

Carlson’s comments even led some Muslim commentators to speculate that Carlson deliberately stopped himself from declaring outright that he would never become a Muslim.

After accusing conservatives of Islamophobia, Carlson had said, “and I’m a Christian. I am not a Muslim, and I’m never…”—stopping short of saying that he would never become a Muslim, before continuing with a slightly different line of thought.

The comments come in light of recent controversial remarks by Candace Owens on her podcast about the slave trade, where she accuses Jews of enslaving black people and controlling the slave trade, and says that “they” keep Christians warring with Muslims.

“I challenge black Americans to wake up to your true history because your quarrel is not with white men. Wake up to who publishes these books and keeps us warring with one another—Christians versus Christians, Christians versus Muslims. Wake up and learn the true history of slavery, ’cause that wasn’t exactly a white men sport, okay. Jewish people were the ones that were trading us. Jewish people were in control of the slave trade.”

While there is no evidence that Owens attended AmFest 2025 in light of her ongoing feud with Erika Kirk and TPUSA, her views—and those of Carlson, Fuentes, and others—appear to be increasingly well-represented within TPUSA’s audience, raising important questions for the Republican Party about the future of the conservative movement in the United States.

Photo courtesy of Cross Examined.