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Turning Point USA Student Member
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Ben Shapiro
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's obviously a massive honor to be here at Turning Point usa. It's even more of an honor to follow Erica Kirk, a heroic figure and a true American patriot. I really believe that the best way to judge a goodness of a man is to see the goodness of his wife and his children. And on that measure, Charlie was unsurpassed. Erica and her children are in all of our hearts. And of course, this is an incredibly bittersweet moment. It's absolutely bitter because of the murder of our friend Charlie Kirk, an irreplaceable human being. I knew Charlie from the time he was 18 years old, and I watched him build himself into one of the most powerful exponents of conservatism in America, one of the most powerful coalition builders in American history. But it's also sweet to see the number of people who continue to remember Charlie each and every day and to carry on his mission. Well, today I want to talk about the future of the country and the future of this country. This amazing country relies on the future of the conservative movement. It relies on what TPUSA defines as its core mission. Freedom, free markets, and limited government. And most of all, most of all, the future of this country relies on truth. This country relies on truth. Because victory True, real, lasting victory cannot be achieved without truth. Victory without truth is victory for a lie, and that is no victory at all. And unity without truth is no unity. It is merely solidarity and falsehood. You see, we live in a chaotic time and a time when lots of people are asking lots of legitimate questions about the conservative movement. What ought we to think about the relationship between free markets and traditional virtue? How should we craft a pragmatic foreign policy that spreads our interests and upholds our ideals? What governmental means are appropriate to achieve political ends? All of these questions aren't new, of course. They've been asked for as long as human beings have been talking about politics. Thousands of years. And over the course of this conference, you'll hear a lot of opinions on a lot of these questions. I have my own perspectives on them, of course. You can hear them every single day on my show. My fundamental values have been the same for 25 years. Peace through strength on foreign policy, traditional values on social policy, foreign free markets with regard to economics. But today I want to talk about something even more important. How to discern those attempting to speak truth from frauds and grifters. Because something is new. An informational environment rife with both opportunity and chaos. Opportunity because the legacy media gatekeepers are no longer in charge of what we see and what we hear. And chaos because an anarchic informational environment means we actually have to be smart in how we assess the information and arguments that we hear. Why does that matter? Well, because today the conservative movement is in serious danger. It is in danger not just from a left that all too frequently excuses everything up to and including murder. The conservative movement is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair, who seek to undermine fundamental principles of conservatism by championing enervation and grievance. These people are frauds and they are grifters, and they do not deserve your time. And they are something worse than that. A danger to the only movement capable of stopping the left from wrecking the country wholesale. So today I want to discuss five obligations that people who speak to you on matters of importance have to you. I want to speak to you about our duties. Our first duty is truth. We owe you the truth. That means we should not mislead you. It means we shouldn't hide the ball. We shouldn't be deliberately obscure about what we're telling you. We have an obligation to clarity and to Honesty. This means that we actually have to be clear in the language that we use. We should not traffic in generality. We should not say things like they shot Charlie without specifying whom we mean by they. The person who allegedly shot Charlie Kirk and whom all the evidence points at, all of it is a gay, trans, loving, furry. If we are going to target ideological movements, we should talk about the fact that the radical trans movement treats all those who oppose it as existential threats. Or if we're going to talk about the Democratic Party making room for the radical trans movement and echoing its inflammatory rhetoric, well, we should talk about that. Those are specific problems and they require specific responses. When people say they shot Charlie, however, they are instead trafficking in vagary that results in increased hatred without proposing any effective response. They are fostering despair and rage and that makes things worse. We must also be honest about what people say and do, regardless of what that means. Coalitionally, it is the job of politicians to build coalitions. It's the job of those of us who try to shape public opinion, to hold politicians to account and to hold them accountable to our values. We must not let fear of audience deter us from telling the truth. We must not let fear of other hosts deter us from telling the truth. So, for example, if Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk, So if Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TP USA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends, to cast aspersions at Mikey McCoy and Andrew Colvin and Blake Neff and Tyler Boyer and yes, at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover up over Charlie's murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie's murder or a cover up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name. Erica Kirk and TPUSA never, never should have put in, never should have been put in the position to have to defend themselves against such specious and evil attacks, particularly in a time of mourning. And the people who refuse to condemn Candace's truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice. The fact that they have said nothing while Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and constituted nonsense into the public square for years is just as cowardly. Second, because we owe you the truth. We owe you the duty to speak out of principle, not personal feeling. It should not matter whether we despise someone or whether we love someone. The question is what they say and what they do and whether those things are morally decent or not. On a political level, do they foster freedom, justice and prosperity? On a personal level, do they treat others as they would wish to be treated? Personal feeling is not a substitute for moral judgment. To take again the Candace Owens situation as an example. Friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter. Politics is not the sisterhood of the traveling pants. Politics is about principle, and if you are willing to sacrifice basic truth and simple principle in favor of emotional solidarity, you have betrayed your fundamental duty to the American people.
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Ben Shapiro
First off, I should break the omerte here and just be a little bit clear the notion that people in our industry are close friends. Like we all take holiday breaks with each and go to each other's kids graduations and stuff. It's generally untrue. Some people do that. Most of us don't. We see each other at conferences and we talk on the phone and all the rest. We're business colleagues. But even if it were true that other public figures were our best friends, our very best friends, that does not relieve us of our duty to speak out of principle and not to cover up evil or shy away from addressing it out of friendship. So no, tucker carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on candace's targeting of tp usa. Or to mirror her bull lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly, a person I consider a friend. Characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from committed condemning her actions or fibbing about them. That is a non starter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. Ilhan Omar is a young mother. That doesn't matter. And when Meghan said this week, my goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes, where Candace is coming from on this and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself quote into this. On one side that is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here. Erica Kirk's side. You know, the side of the widow with two children whose husband was shot live on camera in front of all of us. Friendship with the person accusing TP USA of a cover up of Charlie's murder is no excuse for cowardice. Third, and relatedly, we have a duty to take responsibility for what we say and do. If we hire awful people, we're responsible for that. I have some experience there, as you might suspect. That means that if we offer a guest for your viewing, we owe it to you to ask the kinds of questions that actually get at the truth. If we agree with a guest, that's fine, but we should own it. So, for example, if you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving, anti American piece of refuge like Nick Flag Fuentes, You know the Nick Fuentes who said that the Vice President of the United States is a, quote, fat gay race traitor married to a jeet. The person who said that Charlie Kirk was a, quote, retarded idiot. The person who said, and pardon my language here, it's his quote, that he, quote, took Turning Point USA and f ed it. And that's why it's filled with gripers. If you have that person on your show and you proceed to glaze him, you ought to own it. There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and indeed even chided Dinesh d' Souza for debating him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did. He built Nick Fuentes up and he ought to take responsibility for that. Just as he ought to take responsibility for glazing pornographer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, or for mainstreaming fake historian and pseudo Nazi apologist Daryl Cooper as America's best and most honest popular historian. Hosts are indeed responsible for the guests they choose and the questions they ask those guests. Fourth, because we have a duty to truth, we also have a duty to provide you with evidence of the claims that we make. Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories, and just asking questions, that's lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. None of them are a substitute for evidence. So when Candace Owens says, I don't know, no, but I know that is retarded. And we are all more retarded for having heard it. When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country, he's not actually making an argument based in evidence. He's simply maligning people that he disagrees with. Which is indeed par for the course from a man who was once a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein. Check the record. Our duty to provide you evidence means we actually have to do much more than just ask questions. Just asking questions is something my 5 year old does, and it's really cute when it comes from my five year old. But when grown men and women spend their days just asking questions without, you know, seeking answers. They are lying to you. In fact, they're doing something even worse. They are ceding distrust in the world around you, and they are enervating you in the process. So, for example, if many speakers, including Tucker Carlson and others, get on stage here at TPUSA and claim, without proper evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a Mossad rape ring being covered up by the Trump administration, they are not actually uncovering a conspiracy or effectuating a solution. They are claiming a special provenance to information they won't let you see, which builds their power and leaves you with none. They are also implicating in their speculation actual human beings, good human beings, like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi and, yes, the President of the United States, even if they're too cowardly to say President Trump's name. And that means you won't trust those good people in the future. You haven't gotten smarter. You've just been manipulated. When forced to demonstrate their evidence, these same people will often refuse to provide it. They'll claim ignorance. They'll pretend they're outside the system and they don't have access to actual information. You know, they're just asking questions. But many of these same people have direct pipelines to informational sources. So, for example, if Tucker wants answers to his questions about, say, Jeffrey Epstein, he could call the Vice President of the United States. He's quite close with him. But he won't, because that might undermine the empty speculation. None of this means there aren't actual, real conspiracies in the world. Of course there are. But actual conspiracies require actual evidence. Yes, there was a Russiagate conspiracy, and we know the names of the people involved and what they did. We know Hillary Clinton and Fusion gps and James Comey and Loretta lynch and Adam Schiff. We know all of those people. Yes, there was a COVID 19 conspiracy. We know that Anthony Fauci worked to shut down alternative solutions from people like Jay Bhattacharya. But when people posit a conspiracy and then provide you no evidence, they are doing you a fundamental disservice, and they are making you stupider in the process. Finally, because it is our job to make the lives of our audience better, that's really. Our job is to give you more information to make your lives better. We have a duty to propose solutions. That's why we have to talk about our problems in order to find the solutions. That's what politics was supposed to be about, after all, finding Solutions to our common problems. If we speak endlessly about the problems we face without ever positing a solution other than wrecking the system or centralizing power in a cult like figure, we are not finding solutions. We are merely making problems worse. Just asking questions, positing vague conspiracies, raving like Alex Jones about the secret confederacies that control your life. None of it makes your life better. None of it. In fact, it makes your life markedly worse. That's because if you truly come to believe that nothing in your life is in your control, you can't even take control of your own life. You despair of your ability to change your own circumstances. And then you fail. And you must not fail. Because here is the most fundamental truth of all in the United States, for all of its problems, many of which, a huge number of which are real and serious, the United States is still the greatest country in the history of planet Earth. We have the greatest constitution ever devised by man. We have the greatest founding philosophy ever put to paper in the Declaration of Independence. In this country, you can make of yourself what you will. And if there are true obstacles standing in your way, we can all work together to remove them. That, by the way, is the essence of conservatism. That we live in a world created by God with a logic and a rationale. That we as human beings were created in God's image, as it says in the book of Genesis, with creative capacity and the power to choose. And that in a free country of limited government and defined powers, with property rights and equality under law, our destiny is in our hands. And that we all have a duty to make the most of that historic opportunity. Anyone, anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is lying to you. And they are making your life worse in the process. Now, that lie may feel good in the moment. It may excuse us from taking the corrective action we can take on a personal level to fix our lives. It might give us someone else to blame for our own failures. But in the end, the lie kills not just your future, but the country that we've been given. So for those of us who talk for a living, that's our job. To discuss America's problems with truth and with evidence. To provide possible solutions and to encourage Americans to succeed and make great decisions. We who speak to people on a regular basis, who have a microphone and an audience, we have duties to you. The duty to speak the truth. The duty to speak from principle, not personal feeling. The duty to take responsibility for our own actions. The duty to provide you with evidence to do more than conspiracize or just ask questions. And the duty to posit real solutions. And if we fail in those duties, you shouldn't listen to us. But you have duties too. Far more important duties. Duties to God and to yourself and to your families. The duty to do the best for yourself and your family and your country with the abilities that God gave you. The duty to be grateful for this extraordinary country. The duty to celebrate what we've all been given and to fight to preserve it. All of that, every bit of that, begins with truth. We owe you that quest for truth. You owe yourselves that quest for truth. And true victory only, only comes through truth. Thanks so much. Happy to take a couple questions.
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Turning Point USA Student Member
I'm one of the co presidents of the Turning Point chapter at jmu. I have a question. How do you balance telling the truth with delivery and speaking to people who disagree with you?
Ben Shapiro
So I think obviously the truth comes first. We ought to be polite, but the truth comes first. And if you can tell the truth in a politician, that's the best way to do it. But sometimes people perceive truth as impolite. That's just the way of the world. You know, I rather famously have said that facts don't care about your feelings, and that happens to be true, you know, when you, when you engage in a conversation. I've said this to a lot of people. When you engage in a conversation, it's very important to sort of determine the end of the conversation. If it's going to be impossible to tell somebody the truth in a productive way, you probably shouldn't engage in that kind of conversation, and you should make that judgment ahead of time. But truth always has to take precedence over politeness. If the two come into conflict, particularly if you're talking publicly, as we all do for a living. I'm not talking about. You're talking to your kid and they bring you a macaroni painting and they're like, is it good or not? You're like, no, this is terrible. And you stuff it in the trash. It is terrible. But, you know, say that it's good. Then later you kind of put that. I understand. But when we're talking about politics and policy, obviously the truth has to come first. Because if we can't agree on fundamental facts, there's no possibility for solutions.
Audience Member Questioner
Thank you for being here. Ben, you cited during your speech truth as the most important tenet of American conservatism. Why, therefore, did you call irrelevant the Israeli attack in 1967 on the USS Liberty with left dozens of American servicemen dead and hundreds wounded.
Ben Shapiro
So what I actually said is that if we're looking at modern Israeli American relations, looking at an attack that happened mistakenly by multiple Navy reports, multiple Israeli reports, and all available evidence, and using that attack in order to undermine today's relations between Israel and America, that's irrelevant. As irrelevant as would be to cite a piece of evidence from World War II or from 1776 to define America's relations with, for example, Great Britain or Germany today. That does not mean that the attack wasn't horrible for the Americans involved, that it wasn't bloody and terrible. The Israeli government paid reparations to the people who were killed. If you look at the actual military record of what happened on the USS Liberty, it was clearly a mistaken and tragic attack. The people who frequently cite the USS Liberty, however, are not talking about the specifics of the USS Liberty. I suspect that the vast majority of people who bring this up are doing so in order to suggest that Israel deliberately attacked an American ship because Israel deliberately wants to harm America is connected generally with a larger point. I wonder if that's your point.
Audience Member Questioner
If the truth matters, then the Israeli government must be held accountable for that attack. The American flag was flying, flying on that ship. You do not mistake an American ship for a foreign one when our flag is flying.
Ben Shapiro
So we can spend the rest of the time talking about the specifics of the US Liberty attack, or you can actually go look at the naval investigations that were done. Multiple naval investigations that were done. The reality is that people were flying Mirage planes for the Israeli military at the time. The USS Liberty was sailing in an area where it had essentially gone off grid. The Israeli military mistook it for an Egyptian ship. They thought it was shelling all Arish, which happened not to be true. In the initial attack. The American flag was knocked down and then the attack went on for about 90 minutes. And then as soon you can hear this, by the way, on the tapes of the Israeli pilots talking to each other, as soon as they realize that it's an American ship, they call off the attack. They speed a ship to try and help the USS Liberty. There have been multiple unfortunate friendly fire incidents between allied forces, including for example in the Gulf War where US Forces were responsible for for killing about nine British troops during the Gulf War. It's an unfortunate reality of war. But you're not answering my question, which is what is your broader agenda in asking the question? Because I suspect that your question is not limited to your specific ire over an incident that happened in 1967.
Audience Member Questioner
I think we should question any foreign country's relationship with our government.
Ben Shapiro
That's totally fine, but I'm just wondering.
Audience Member Questioner
Why you serve American interests.
Ben Shapiro
Again, I'm perfectly fine with questioning any country's relationship with the United States, but again, I'm wondering what your motivation is in bringing up a six decade old attack as though it is the number one issue in assessing the relationship between Israel and the United States today.
Audience Member Questioner
Well, many problems persist to this day. But it's interesting that you say six decades old incident when there are many people in this audience who are alive for that attack, as if this is something that's irrelevant.
Ben Shapiro
No, it's just not particularly relevant to assessing the relationship between the United States and Israel today in the same way that in 1967 there are a wide variety of countries with which the United States had different relations. Okay, it's clear you're not going to actually answer the question, so I'm happy to move to this One.
Turning Point USA Student Member
Unfortunately, this will be the last question. Hi, my name is Natasha and I'm a TPUSA chapter member at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. So my question is just with the divide in the conservative movement right now, what is your suggestion as to how young people can kind of come together and bridge that divide and just, you know, bring unity right now?
Ben Shapiro
So again, I think that unity has to be reliant on first principles. No one would ask conservatives to unite with radical trans activists because that would be silly. And so we first have to decide what are the principles that we hold in common and then actually determine who are our allies in that particular fight. Now, again, the coalition may shift depending on the issue. That's kind of a normal thing in politics. Sometimes you're going to have different allies than you have with regard to other issues. But when it comes to how young people ought to decide what they believe, that's the thing I most care about. Because if I'm talking about the long term trends of America, not merely the coalitions of the moment which break and reform and reform and break constantly, right? George W. Bush's coalition was obviously not Donald Trump's coalition. And Donald Trump. Trump's coalition is not going to be J.D. vance's coalition, meaning every politician has their own coalition. That's the nature of electoral politics. What I'm more concerned about is the trajectory of how people think and what people think. And so before determining how to unify with others, you should first decide what are the things that are important to you, what are your fundamental values? And then you should find people who agree with those fundamental values. Because the problem is if you don't, then when push comes to shove, things come apart pretty quickly. Take one more.
Turning Point USA Student Member
Hi Ben, big fan of yours and so stuff. And I'm currently a college sophomore and my university just started a chapter and it got approved. So just for your advice, how can we spread conservatism on campus and any hate or anything like that, just combat that. And what would your be? Words of encouragement.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, my words of encouragement are look at Charlie Kirk, right? That's the word of encouragement. Charlie was your age when he started doing this. Again, I referenced earlier that I met Charlie when he was 18 years old. It was actually at David Horowitz Freedom Center Conference and Charlie was going around trying to meet donors. And I saw this really nerdy, tall, gangly kid walking around trying to meet people. And I started introducing Charlie to a few of his sort of original donors. And by the way, in the first conversation With Charlie. I've said this before, but it's true. Charlie walked away and I turned my friend, Jeremy Boreing, I said, that dude's going to be the head of the RNC one day. Because Charlie was just that much of a go getter. And it turns out that he was a lot bigger than that. I think that everyone has the potential to do that. Not everybody has the same exact skill set. And you have to find the skill set that best suits you. Maybe you're great at debate. Charlie was great at debate. Actually, what's fascinating about Charlie is that Charlie made himself great at debate. I knew Charlie when he wasn't great at debate, and then I knew Charlie when he was great at debate. He actually cultivated a skill set. It was really impressive and cool to watch him do that. That's something you can do too. So again, if Charlie can do that, a raw kid out of high school, no college degree, and build the most powerful conservative organization in America, then you can do it too, because that's what America is all about. You're an American, Go do it. Thank you so much.
Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene
What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God? Is that who you think I was alone with? Maradin?
Ben Shapiro
I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was.
Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene
Not of this world. All men know of the great Taliesin, who are my father, that the gods should war for my soul.
Ben Shapiro
Princess Garris, savior of our people.
Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene
I know what the bull God offered you. I was offered the same. And there is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it. A God who sacrifices what he loves for us. We are each given only one life, singer. No, we're given another. I learned of Yazu the Christ, and I have become his follower.
Ben Shapiro
He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one. Trust in Yaesu.
Fictional Character in Dramatic Scene
He is the only hope for men like us. Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light. Great light, Great darkness. Such things mattered to me then. What matters to you now, Mistress of lies? You, nephew. The sword of a high king. How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield? So, clinging to the promises of a God who has abandoned you. I cannot take up that sword again. You know what you must do. Great Light, forgive. The time has come to be reborn.
Title: TPUSA Speech: Truth Over Cowardice and Grifting
Host: Ben Shapiro (The Daily Wire)
Date: December 19, 2025
Context: Broadcast from the Turning Point USA event, this speech explores the theme of "truth" in conservatism and calls out grifting and cowardice in the movement.
Ben Shapiro delivers a powerful keynote at Turning Point USA (TPUSA), memorializing the late Charlie Kirk and urging the conservative movement to re-center itself on principled truth rather than tribalism, grifting, or conspiracy-mongering. Shapiro outlines five duties that conservative commentators and leaders owe their audience, consistently arguing that only with clarity, principle, evidence, and solution-orientation can the movement—and the country—thrive.
[01:24]
"Victory without truth is victory for a lie, and that is no victory at all." (Ben Shapiro, 02:25)
[03:30-06:00]
[06:30-22:00]
Shapiro structures his argument around five ethical duties:
"We shouldn't be deliberately obscure about what we're telling you. We have an obligation to clarity and to honesty." (Ben Shapiro, 04:35)
"Politics is not the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Politics is about principle." (Ben Shapiro, 09:13)
"Just asking questions is something my five-year-old does... when grown men and women spend their days just asking questions without, you know, seeking answers, they are lying to you." (Ben Shapiro, 15:18)
[21:20-23:30]
"Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is lying to you—and they are making your life worse in the process." (Ben Shapiro, 21:42)
On the Movement’s Duty:
"We who speak to people on a regular basis, who have a microphone and an audience, we have duties to you. The duty to speak the truth. The duty to speak from principle, not personal feeling... The duty to take responsibility for our own actions. The duty to provide you with evidence... The duty to posit real solutions." (Ben Shapiro, 22:08)
On the Criticism of Candace Owens and Others:
"The people who refuse to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice. Yes, cowardice." (Ben Shapiro, 08:50)
On False Unity:
"Unity without truth is no unity. It is merely solidarity in falsehood." (Ben Shapiro, 02:30)
[25:01-26:19]
"Truth always has to take precedence over politeness if the two come into conflict." (Ben Shapiro, 25:45)
[26:19-29:44]
[30:08-31:50]
[31:51-33:36]
Shapiro’s tone is assertive, urgent, and occasionally combative, particularly when addressing internal critics. He balances rhetorical flourish with direct personal attacks (notably against Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and others) and mixes policy abstractions with specific current events to illustrate his points.
This summary captures the spirit, content, and structure of Ben Shapiro’s TPUSA address, grounding listeners in the responsibilities of conservative advocacy and the perils of contemporary political discourse.