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The far-right organization Turning Point USA is hosting its annual AmericaFest this week in Phoenix, and keynote speakers at Thursday’s kickoff homed in on a familiar target: fellow Republicans.
To be clear, the Trump-friendly event was, in typical TPUSA fashion, chock-full of attacks on everything from the Civil Rights Act to trans people to feminism.
But as Congress careened toward a government shutdown — fueled largely by divisions among Republicans over funding proposals — Trump allies Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and the president-elect’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., made a point Thursday to bash conservatives they deem insufficiently loyal to the MAGA cause. Essentially, as my colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote, Elon Musk helped tank a bipartisan funding agreement that House Speaker Mike Johnson helped arrange in favor of a more conservative bill that ultimately failed to pass ... and Johnson is enduring much of the blowback.
Bannon, for example, gave a meandering speech in which he portrayed Johnson as a meek tagalong, somebody who follows Trump everywhere while failing to enact the MAGA agenda:
He goes to the UFC fights, right? He’s on the plane. He’s walking in in the UFC fight, right? When President Trump shows up at the UFC fights, it’s like the Roman Colosseum. I mean, this thing explodes, right? I mean, it’s unbelievable — he’s there. He’s at the Army-Navy game, hanging in the box. He’s always around. He’s down at Mar-a-Lago.
Then Bannon teed off on Johnson over his efforts to negotiate a government spending deal, asserting that “there’s nothing to negotiate.”
All is not well in MAGA world, clearly.
Trump Jr. took the stage shortly after and told attendees that “a vast majority of the Republicans” are “our foes,” in addition to Democrats. Then he gave specific instructions for the MAGA movement to inflict “pain” on the “weakling” House Republicans who voted against the failed budget proposal endorsed by his father and Musk.
Trump’s son said:
So we need everyone to do what we did over the last few weeks. Call them out. Call their offices. Put on that pressure. Make them feel the pain. I call it — I think Joni Ernst learned this a little bit the hard way — “ETP,” education through pain. It’s a very simple concept.
That jab at Sen. Joni Ernst was a reference to the about-face the Iowa Republican made on Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, going from criticizing Hegseth to being more supportive after facing political pressure.
Carlson’s winding rant was equally petulant but arguably more disturbing. He proclaimed that “Charlie Kirk is more powerful in the true sense — which is, he actually gets things done — than the Republican National Committee.” And he echoed previous speakers when he called on the MAGA movement to get conservatives in line behind Trump, closing his remarks by saying:
Anyway, just make them obey. I think that’s up to us. Don’t be charmed by them. Force them — spank them like the bad little girls they are. Thank you.
Carlson has an odd infatuation with imagery of fathers spanking their daughters, which I’ve written about previously. But once you remove that layer of creepy talk, the message from Carlson and other fierce Trump loyalists seems clear: They’re pining for a GOP civil war. And they just might get what they’re asking for.