It’s been a busy weekend at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona, with speakers from DNI Tulsi Gabbard to Tucker Carlson to House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-4) to the Target employee who was harassed for wearing a Charlie Kirk T-shirt. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance was there to deliver the closing keynote speech, and he delivered fire.
He honored slain TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was shot down by an assassin in September.
Vice President JD Vance closed out Turning Point USA's AmericaFest Sunday with a call for action, encouraging the audience to "promise" to stand for Charlie Kirk's principles.
Vance recalled that in the days following Kirk's assassination, he rewatched video of the incident over and over, staying up late nights, trying to search for clues and "researching conspiracy theories."
"I owed it to Charlie," he said, adding, "I was consumed by fear."
"It is better to die a patriot than to live a coward," Vance said, adding that Kirk’s killing was a "kick in the teeth."
The VP covered a number of topics in his speech, which was a little over half an hour long, and numerous moments stood out. Noting that the Trump administration had been dedicated to stamping out discriminatory DEI practices in government and academia, Vance said white people no longer need to feel ashamed:
Vance continued, saying that America is first and foremost a Christian nation, a notion that will surely enrage leftists.
He clarified those remarks because he knew the lying media would try to demonize him:
The fake news media will twist everything that I say.
I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American. I’m saying something simpler and truer. Christianity is America’s creed. The shared moral language from the Revolution, to the Civil War and beyond.
Speaking of leftists, Vance took the opportunity to mock Democrats, who seem to be in disarray and have only one unifying theme: despising Trump. We’re going to defeat them in the midterms, he vowed:
Vance, who was endorsed for president by Erika Kirk on the conference’s first night Thursday, touched on other subjects as well, including sexuality, vaccines, and more. He described the conservative movement as being tolerant and open, and anybody could be part of it as long as they met one key requirement: "The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot. And if you're that, you're very much on our team."
Watch the full speech here: