Vance Refuses to Condemn Antisemitism at Turning Point USA: "No Purity Tests"
At the Turning Point USA convention — amid fights over whether to exclude antisemitic figure Nick Fuentes — Vance refused to condemn antisemitism or set "red lines" against bigotry. He dismissed it as merely "a real backlash" to U.S. foreign policy.
At the Turning Point USA annual convention on December 21-22, 2025, amid an internal conservative movement fight over whether to exclude antisemitic figures like podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vice President JD Vance was asked to set boundaries against bigotry.
He refused.
"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform," Vance said. "We have far more important work to do than canceling each other." He dismissed antisemitism as merely "a real backlash" to U.S. foreign policy toward Israel — framing hatred of Jewish people as a rational policy disagreement rather than bigotry.
This from a man who converted to Catholicism — a faith whose catechism explicitly condemns antisemitism, and whose Pope (now deceased) devoted significant effort to Jewish-Catholic reconciliation.
The refusal to condemn antisemitism — at an event where the question was specifically about antisemites in the conservative movement — was not an oversight. It was a calculation: the base that includes antisemites is too valuable to alienate. "No purity tests" is the euphemism for tolerating hatred when it's politically useful.