PHOENIX — Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that the conservative movement should be open to everyone as long as they “love America,” declining to condemn a streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days of Turning Point USA’s annual convention.
After a long weekend of debates about whether the movement should exclude figures such as bigoted podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vance came down firmly against “purity tests.”
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during the Phoenix convention’s closing speech.
Turning Point leader Erika Kirk, who took the helm after the fatal shooting of her husband, Charlie Kirk, has endorsed Vance as a potential successor to President Trump, a helpful nod from an influential group with an army of volunteers.
But the tension on display at the four-day gathering foreshadowed the treacherous political waters that Vance, or anyone else who seeks the next Republican presidential nomination, will need to navigate in the coming years. Top voices in the “Make America Great Again” movement are jockeying for influence as Republicans begin considering a future without Trump, and there is no clear path to holding his coalition together.
Defining a post-Trump GOP
The Republican Party’s identity has been intertwined with Trump for a decade, but he’s constitutionally ineligible to run for reelection despite his musings about serving a third term. Tucker Carlson said people are wondering, “who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene?”
So far, it looks like settling that question will come with a lot of fighting among conservatives. The Turning Point conference featured arguments about antisemitism, Israel and environmental regulations, not to mention rivalries among leading commentators.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, used his speech on the conference’s opening night to denounce “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,” Shapiro said. He specifically called out Carlson for hosting Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast.
Carlson brushed off the criticism when he took the stage barely an hour later, and he said the idea of a Republican “civil war” was “totally fake.”
“There are people who are mad at JD Vance, and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination,” he said. Carlson described Vance as “the one person” who subscribes to the “core idea of the Trump coalition,” which Carlson said was “America first.”
Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet framed the discord as a healthy debate about the future of the movement, an uncomfortable but necessary process of finding consensus.
“We’re not hive-minded commies,” he wrote on social media. “Let it play out.”
‘You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore’
Vance acknowledged the controversies that dominated the Turning Point conference, but he did not define any boundaries for the conservative movement besides patriotism.
“We don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said.
Vance didn’t name anyone, but his comments came in the midst of an increasingly contentious debate over whether the right should give a platform to commentators espousing antisemitic views, particularly Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identity. Fuentes has a growing audience, as does top-rated podcaster Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,” he said.
Vance ticked off what he said were the accomplishments of the administration as it approaches the one-year mark, noting its efforts at the border and on the economy. He emphasized efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies, drawing applause by saying they had been relegated to the “dustbin of history.”
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” he said.
Vance also said the U.S. “always will be a Christian nation,” adding that “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond.”
Those comments resonated with Isaiah White-Diller, an 18-year-old from Yuma, Ariz., who said he would support Vance if he runs for president.
“I have my right to be Christian here, I have my right to say whatever I want,” White-Diller said.
Turning Point backs Vance
Vance hasn’t disclosed his future plans, but Erika Kirk said Thursday that Turning Point wanted Vance “elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” The next president will be the 48th in U.S. history.
Turning Point is a major force on the right, with a nationwide volunteer network that can be especially helpful in early primary states, when candidates rely on grassroots energy to build momentum. In a surprise appearance, rapper Nicki Minaj spoke effusively about Trump and Vance.
Vance was close with Charlie Kirk, and they supported each other over the years. After Kirk’s killing on a college campus in Utah in September, the vice president flew out on Air Force Two to collect Kirk’s remains and bring them home to Arizona. Vance helped uniformed service members carry the casket to the plane.
Emily Meck, 18, from Pine City, N.Y., said she appreciated Vance making space for what she called a wide variety of views.
“We are free-thinkers, we’re going to have these disagreements, we’re going to have our own thoughts,” Meck said.
Trump has spoken highly of both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential successors, even suggesting they could form a future Republican ticket. Rubio has said he would support Vance.
Asked in August whether Vance was the “heir apparent,” Trump said, “Most likely.”
“It’s too early, obviously, to talk about it, but certainly he’s doing a great job, and he would be probably [the] favorite at this point,” he said.
Cooper and Govindarao write for the Associated Press.
Vance declines to condemn bigotry as conservatives feud at Turning Point
PHOENIX — Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that the conservative movement should be open to everyone as long as they “love America,” declining to condemn a streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days of Turning Point USA’s annual convention.
After a long weekend of debates about whether the movement should exclude figures such as bigoted podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vance came down firmly against “purity tests.”
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during the Phoenix convention’s closing speech.
Turning Point leader Erika Kirk, who took the helm after the fatal shooting of her husband, Charlie Kirk, has endorsed Vance as a potential successor to President Trump, a helpful nod from an influential group with an army of volunteers.
But the tension on display at the four-day gathering foreshadowed the treacherous political waters that Vance, or anyone else who seeks the next Republican presidential nomination, will need to navigate in the coming years. Top voices in the “Make America Great Again” movement are jockeying for influence as Republicans begin considering a future without Trump, and there is no clear path to holding his coalition together.
Defining a post-Trump GOP
The Republican Party’s identity has been intertwined with Trump for a decade, but he’s constitutionally ineligible to run for reelection despite his musings about serving a third term. Tucker Carlson said people are wondering, “who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene?”
So far, it looks like settling that question will come with a lot of fighting among conservatives. The Turning Point conference featured arguments about antisemitism, Israel and environmental regulations, not to mention rivalries among leading commentators.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, used his speech on the conference’s opening night to denounce “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,” Shapiro said. He specifically called out Carlson for hosting Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast.
Carlson brushed off the criticism when he took the stage barely an hour later, and he said the idea of a Republican “civil war” was “totally fake.”
“There are people who are mad at JD Vance, and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination,” he said. Carlson described Vance as “the one person” who subscribes to the “core idea of the Trump coalition,” which Carlson said was “America first.”
Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet framed the discord as a healthy debate about the future of the movement, an uncomfortable but necessary process of finding consensus.
“We’re not hive-minded commies,” he wrote on social media. “Let it play out.”
‘You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore’
Vance acknowledged the controversies that dominated the Turning Point conference, but he did not define any boundaries for the conservative movement besides patriotism.
“We don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said.
Vance didn’t name anyone, but his comments came in the midst of an increasingly contentious debate over whether the right should give a platform to commentators espousing antisemitic views, particularly Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identity. Fuentes has a growing audience, as does top-rated podcaster Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,” he said.
Vance ticked off what he said were the accomplishments of the administration as it approaches the one-year mark, noting its efforts at the border and on the economy. He emphasized efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies, drawing applause by saying they had been relegated to the “dustbin of history.”
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” he said.
Vance also said the U.S. “always will be a Christian nation,” adding that “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond.”
Those comments resonated with Isaiah White-Diller, an 18-year-old from Yuma, Ariz., who said he would support Vance if he runs for president.
“I have my right to be Christian here, I have my right to say whatever I want,” White-Diller said.
Turning Point backs Vance
Vance hasn’t disclosed his future plans, but Erika Kirk said Thursday that Turning Point wanted Vance “elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” The next president will be the 48th in U.S. history.
Turning Point is a major force on the right, with a nationwide volunteer network that can be especially helpful in early primary states, when candidates rely on grassroots energy to build momentum. In a surprise appearance, rapper Nicki Minaj spoke effusively about Trump and Vance.
Vance was close with Charlie Kirk, and they supported each other over the years. After Kirk’s killing on a college campus in Utah in September, the vice president flew out on Air Force Two to collect Kirk’s remains and bring them home to Arizona. Vance helped uniformed service members carry the casket to the plane.
Emily Meck, 18, from Pine City, N.Y., said she appreciated Vance making space for what she called a wide variety of views.
“We are free-thinkers, we’re going to have these disagreements, we’re going to have our own thoughts,” Meck said.
Trump has spoken highly of both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential successors, even suggesting they could form a future Republican ticket. Rubio has said he would support Vance.
Asked in August whether Vance was the “heir apparent,” Trump said, “Most likely.”
“It’s too early, obviously, to talk about it, but certainly he’s doing a great job, and he would be probably [the] favorite at this point,” he said.
Cooper and Govindarao write for the Associated Press.
Source link
Rams’ Puka Nacua apologizes for offensive gesture on livestream
Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua apologized for performing a gesture “antisemitic in nature” during a livestream, stating he originally had no idea it “perpetuated harmful stereotypes against Jewish people.”
“I deeply apologize to anyone who was offended by my actions as I do not stand for any form of racism, bigotry or hate of another group of people,” Nacua wrote in a post on Instagram.
Nacua made the gesture while appearing on a livestream with Adin Ross and N3on. The livestreamers suggested he perform the gesture the next time he celebrated after scoring a touchdown.
“There is no place in this world for Antisemitism as well as other forms of prejudice or hostility towards the Jewish people and people of any religion, ethnicity, or race,” the Rams said in a statement.
The NFL also released a statement: “The NFL strongly condemns all forms of discrimination and derogatory behavior directed towards any group or individual. The continuing rise of antisemitism must be addressed across the world, and the NFL will continue to stand with our partners in this fight. Hatred has no place in our sport or society.”
Nacua’s gesture came on the same livestream in which he also criticized NFL referees, calling them “the worst” and claiming many probably get a thrill making bad calls on national television during games.
Source link
Capitol Journal: In Newsom’s apology to Native Americans, California finally acknowledges the bigotry of its past
Reporting from Sacramento — In a Time Life book titled “The Indians of California,” there’s a passage that probably isn’t taught to schoolchildren studying our not-so-golden state’s checkered history.
It reads:
“One old Pomo woman looked on in horror as two whites impaled a little girl on the bayonets of their guns and tossed the body in the water. [She] saw a little boy and a mother and baby put to death in similar fashion. One man was strung up by a noose and a large fire built under him….”
That happened on what soon became known as Bloody Island at Clear Lake, 90 miles north of San Francisco.
There’s a historical marker that reads: “On this island in 1850, U.S. soldiers nearly annihilated all its inhabitants for the murder of two white men. Doubt exists of these Indians’ guilt.”
There’s no doubt two white ranchers were killed by a handful of Indians. The ranchers had enslaved, tortured and starved the Indians. They were planning to force-march the “surplus” — those unfit or unneeded for ranch labor — to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley 100 miles away. A final straw was when the ranchers captured the chief’s young wife and forced her to live with them.
After the chief and some buddies killed the two ranchers, the U.S. Army retaliated by massacring much of the Pomo tribe. The commander wrote his general: “The number killed I confidently report at not less than 60, and doubt little that it extended to 100 and upwards.”
On Tuesday, 169 years later, California’s governor finally apologized for the likes of Bloody Island.
Technically, state government wasn’t the assassin at Clear Lake. The U.S. Cavalry was. California was still four months short of official statehood. But the carnage unquestionably reflected the prevailing California political sentiment.
The 2020 census is coming.Will Native Americans be counted? »
The next January, California’s first elected governor, Peter Burnett, declared in his State of the State address: “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”
In the 1850s, the Legislature appropriated $1.29 million to wage militia war against California’s Native Americans. Some of that money was used to pay bounties for body parts — 25 cents per scalp, up to $5 for a whole head.
California’s indigenous population exceeded 200,000 in 1800, but plummeted to around 15,000 by 1900.
“It’s called a genocide,” Gavin Newsom said at a ceremony with Native American leaders along the Sacramento River in 103-degree heat. “That’s what it was. A genocide. No other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books….
“You have to call things what they are…. We allowed vigilantes. We organized militias. We funded them. We reimbursed them and we got the federal government to make us whole. That was genocide….
“And so,” he concluded, “I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”
OK, but so what? Why now? And what good does it do?
For starters, why not?
It does mean that California’s government finally acknowledges that a significant number of the state’s early elected officials and pioneer citizens were a bunch of greedy, bigoted thugs. It’s healthy to admit that.
We’ve never been reluctant to demand that Southern whites face up to their shameful history of enslaving, segregating and lynching African Americans.
“It’s definitely overdue,” Newsom senior advisor Daniel Zingale replied when I asked what prompted the governor’s apology. “It’s the kind of thing he wanted to address early on. It’s on his list of core values.”
‘This is our land’: Native Americans see Trump’s move to reduce Bears Ears monument as an assault on their culture »
Another thing it does: It makes the Democratic governor lots of wealthy friends who run tribal casinos and have vaults full of potential campaign donations when he eventually runs for president.
Actually, I figure, most California voters partially apologized in 1998 and 2000 by allowing tribes to build Vegas-style casinos on their rural reservations. There are now 64 casinos operated by 62 tribes.
No one seems to know — at least publicly — how much in winnings they pull in each year. But it’s in the many billions of dollars.
The governor’s apology apparently means a lot personally to Native American leaders.
“It’s instrumental,” says Assemblyman James Ramos (D-Highland), the first California Indian elected to the Legislature. “Sometimes local elected officials don’t really believe what happened to us. It’s just ‘our story.’ So having the leader of the state of California come out and give an apology, it’s instrumental.”
Ramos, who grew up on the San Manuel Indian Reservation, talks about the “Battle of 1866.” White militia forces swarmed into the San Bernardino Mountains to clear out the Indians. His great-great-grandfather, Ramos says, saved the last 30 tribal members and founded the San Manuel reservation in the valley.
“There’s the same story of genocide over gold and logging throughout the state,” he says. “Tribes were pretty much annihilated.”
Now California has the largest American Indian population in the country — around 723,000.
This state, of course, also has a bigoted, greedy history toward Asians. For generations, Japanese immigrants were barred from owning property. The Chinese couldn’t legally migrate here at all.
But California Indians were the only ones systematically killed with Sacramento’s financial support.
If Newsom is ever elected president, he can offer the nation’s apology for all the atrocities inflicted on Native Americans by European invaders — including at the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee and Bloody Island.
More from George Skelton »
george.skelton@latimes.com
Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter
Source link