(Dec. 23, 2025 / JNS)
Perhaps at a different moment in time, the headlines about Vice President JD Vance’s concluding speech at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference last weekend in Phoenix, Ariz., would have centered on his avowal that “We have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation.”
But that wasn’t the case.
Not even the most critical liberal outlets like The New York Times or The Washington Post, both of which could be expected to trash anything he said, led their coverage with reporting about that aspect of his remarks. Perhaps readers were outraged about him using the phrase “Christian nation”; still, however off-putting it may be for many Jews, I don’t feel that’s a threat to minority religious groups. Either way, the media outlets were right to highlight something else.
WrestleMania with podcasters
That’s because the truly significant aspect of the vice president’s address wasn’t about elements of its core, in which he spoke about his beliefs on conservative, religious and family values, and the flawed, amoral vision of the political left that he opposes. Important though that was, the headlines got it right. The most newsworthy aspect concerned his belief that the conservative coalition that he and President Donald Trump lead is one that should draw no lines in the sand about antisemitism or any other form of pathological extremism.
And that is something that should worry not just Jewish Republicans or conservatives, but everyone who cares about the future of America.
The context was crucial. Until Vance’s remarks closed out the conference, the TPUSA event was, as columnist Jim Geraghty put it, “WrestleMania with podcasters.”
Rather than a fake show with cartoonish good guys and villains, it was a contest in which advocates, like commentator Ben Shapiro, for a conservative movement that set boundaries to exclude hate-mongers and Jew-baiters, were arrayed against their opponents. Shapiro was given his say in one session. But the following day, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now articulates anti-Jewish tropes and platforms internet stars like the neo-Nazi “groyper” Nick Fuentes and other Holocaust deniers, was allowed to answer him.
Political commentator Megyn Kelly also had her time in the spotlight when she, too, criticized Shapiro. Kelly refused to go along with any approach that might set some limits or boundaries on discourse within mainstream conservatism, such as those that might consign mad conspiracy theorists and antisemites like Candace Owens to the fever swamps of either the far right or far left. She seemed genuinely outraged by the notion that thought leaders should be judgmental about such voices, rather than treating them as having just as much validity as those of less insane people.
No gatekeeping
That opposition to “gatekeeping” under any circumstances was in no small measure a reaction to efforts of leftists to silence any opposition to radical ideas about race. That includes those in the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the Biden administration’s effort to collude with Silicon Valley oligarchs to censor critics of its COVID-19 practices and other policies.
Nor are confrontations new at TPUSA. The assassination of its late founder, Charlie Kirk, in September cast a pall on a conservative movement that often convened debates about the issues, including those concerning Israel.
But in the months since his death, Kirk’s belief in giving a hearing to divergent views and opposing censorship has been twisted into something else entirely. Largely because of the furor that followed Carlson’s hosting of Fuentes, the right is now expected to accept a new standard. Open racism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, as well as even the most maniacal conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death, mixed in with traditional tropes of Jew-hatred, are now considered open for debate. The vilest ideas are being presented as something conservatives should agree to disagree about rather than reject out of hand.
If scoring was involved in this set-to—as if it were a debate between serious persons—Shapiro won hands down. His evisceration of both Carlson and Kelly was masterly. He termed the former’s chummy interview of Fuentes as “an act of moral imbecility” and called out the latter’s hypocrisy and cynicism. Moreover, Carlson’s decision to not merely feebly answer Shapiro’s critique but to also harp on his belief that conservatives are too harsh on Islamists, like his pals in Qatar and other Muslim Brotherhood-based supporters of Hamas terrorists, went over like a lead balloon to the live audience, which responded with silence.
Yet any thought that Shapiro’s rational point of view might prevail at TPUSA were dispelled by Vance’s speech.
Vance picks a side
Faced with a serious, growing breach within the coalition that elected Trump last year and which he hopes will enable him to succeed to the presidency in 2028, Vance picked a side. And it was the one that did not seek to establish any limits that might exclude those who have articulated antisemitism or, like Carlson, are at war with the idea of a Judeo-Christian heritage, which is the foundation of political conservatism.
Directly addressing the issue spoken about by Shapiro and Carlson, Vance made it clear that he stood on the side of the latter.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform, and I don’t really care if some people out there—I’m sure we’ll have the fake news media—denounce me after this speech,” he said. “But let me just say, the best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie’s death that he himself refused to do in life. He invited all of us here. Charlie invited all of us here for a reason. Because he believed that each of us—all of us—had something worth saying, and he trusted all of you to make your own judgment. And we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
Though he didn’t say so explicitly, his vision of a conservative big tent is obviously one that seems to include the “groypers” who follow Fuentes and think that his neo-Nazi beliefs are normative. It seems to also include those who, like Carlson and Owens, are “just asking questions” when they spew blood libels and other lies about Israel and the Jews.
While he pre-emptively put down any criticism of this stand as the product of the “fake news media,” you don’t have to be a critic of Vance or Trump to see the problem here.
I’ve cheered Vance’s ability to articulate and push for a “national conservative” agenda that offered an alternative to both an out-of-touch GOP establishment and to the left, as I did when he was first tapped for the vice presidency. I did so again in February when he defended democratic values. In a controversial speech, he rightly took European nations to task for their efforts to shut down criticism of open-border immigration policies that are destroying the national identities of those nations and allowing Islamists to mainstream antisemitism there.
A deliberate choice
In Phoenix, he had a chance to distinguish his national conservative vision from the views of Fuentes and Carlson, who seem to have a lot more in common with left-wing antisemites and anti-Zionists like New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani than with Trump or other conservatives these days.
It wouldn’t have taken much to do so.
He could have easily added a throwaway line about opposing Jew-hatred in all forms without changing any other element in the address. In his list of the administration’s core agenda and accomplishments, he could have also merely mentioned the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance to the president’s “America First” foreign policy, as he did in a speech last year, even if it was only in the context of boasting of its success in dealing a blow to Iran’s nuclear threat in June.
But he didn’t. And there’s no avoiding the conclusion that such language was deliberately omitted.
That reflects a belief on his part about who should be inside the GOP’s big tent. It seems to include those on the far right who cheer Carlson’s cheerful platforming of anyone willing to bash or lie about Israel or deny the Holocaust, regard mad theories put forth by Owens as catnip to their conspiratorial appetites or even regard Fuentes’s neo-Nazi bad boy act as mirroring their own insecurities and prejudices.
Such people may not reflect Vance’s own personal beliefs, which revolve around a vision of faith and identity that contains some serious truths about the need for America to reject the toxic vision of the political left. But by passing on a golden opportunity to draw a line in the sand between his ideas and those of right-wingers who share the left’s hatred for Jews, he’s telling us that he wants their votes
They don’t welcome everybody
Let’s be clear that the braying of Carlson and Kelly about the evils of gatekeeping is patently insincere. Neither one of them—or Vance, for that matter—would welcome anyone into the conservative tent who supported the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion. Nor would they be comfortable with advocates of gender ideology that would allow biological males to use women’s bathrooms, compete against girls in sports, or permit the chemical castration or life-altering surgeries on children and teenagers. Nor would they cheerfully line up alongside supporters of abortion, open borders or the policies of criminal-friendly prosecutors who have been elected with the help of leftist philanthropist George Soros.
Those are boundaries that they believe in. They just don’t think the same sort of lines should be drawn to exclude Jew-haters and people who support the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet or the genocide of its people.
And that’s a Republican coalition in which no Jewish or non-Jewish conservative who opposes antisemitism can ever truly feel at home.
The same cannot be said for his rhetoric about America as a “Christian nation.” As he explained in his TPUSA speech, acknowledging that America’s secular political tradition has its roots in the country’s religious faith does not exclude non-Christians. Western civilization is under assault from the political left, and defending it means standing up for the Judeo-Christian heritage that is its foundation.
Failing the Western tradition
While secular Jewish liberals feel threatened by any public expression of faith, they are wrong to see it as a danger to Jewish life. To the contrary, it is the left’s new secular woke religion—as we have seen in the two years since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—that is the primary contemporary engine of antisemitism.
But by not seeking to exclude those on the right that are mimicking the Jew-hatred of the left, Vance is failing not just the Jews but the cause of the West that is so dear to him.
Will there be political consequences for taking such a position?
One would think that a Republican Party that can’t appeal to the political center, which abhors extremism, would be hard put to repeat Trump’s 2024 success in 2028. Conservatives thrived in the past when they came together behind a creed that was called “fusionism,” in which disparate factions that reflected diverse ideas about economics and foreign policy rallied behind whoever was, in William F. Buckley’s classic take, “the most electable conservative” available. But that approach clearly excluded extremists and antisemites—something that Buckley, the writer and publisher who more or less founded modern American conservatism, made sure of.
Don’t underestimate Vance
Clearly, Vance sees a greater danger to his ambitions if he were to distance himself from his friend Carlson or tell the groypers to go back into the holes from which they have emerged.
Nor should he be underestimated. As he showed in his Phoenix speech, he is someone who can combine Trump’s populist instincts with intellectual depth the president lacks, along with a polished orator’s skill in rallying the voters to his side. The process by which the GOP field will be cleared for him may have already begun, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio already indicating that he won’t oppose Vance and with Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, endorsing him.
But if Vance is prepared to proceed in the coming years as the leader of a conservative coalition that welcomes the groypers that sends a chilling signal to Jews and the majority of American voters who support Israel and oppose such bigotry. A similar message has already been sent to the country by the Democratic Party, whose intersectional base has embraced toxic left-wing ideas that promote hatred for Israel and grant a permission slip for antisemitism.
Given the Trump administration’s principled fight against antisemitism in American education and its historic support for Israel, many Jews were coming to see the GOP as their natural ally. But if Vance’s message, in which the administration sees no enemies on the right, truly reflects the future of the Republican Party—and it may well—that potentially leaves those who care about halting the post Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism and reaffirming the alliance with Jerusalem without a political home in 2028.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
