Kid Trump

On July 23, hundreds of students gathered at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for Turning Point USA’s fourth annual High School Leadership Summit. The four-day event was a sequence of workshops on campus activism and student leadership punctuated by speeches by prominent conservatives, from House whip Steve Scalise and Education secretary Betsy DeVos to rabble-rousers like Sebastian Gorka and Anthony Scaramucci.

Backstage at TPUSA events you’ll find facsimiles of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Placed on a table with cellophane overlays, the pages aren’t just symbols—and they aren’t there for reference. TPUSA’s speakers and celebrity guests are asked to sign the documents. Scan the pages and you’ll see the John Hancocks of Ann Coulter, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Donald Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, ex-Fox News star Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump right on top of the Founders’ words. You’ll find the scribbled signatures of Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, Brexit evangelist Nigel Farage, and the NRA’s Dana Loesch. Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, wrote “TPUSA ROCKS” above her name. RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany printed a Bible verse below hers and added “MAGA.” The documents are a memento of TPUSA events but also a who’s who of the powerbrokers of conservatism in the age of Trump.

Alongside other signatures, Kayleigh McEnany writes “MAGA!” above her name on a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Alongside other signatures, Kayleigh McEnany writes “MAGA!” above her name on a copy of the U.S. Constitution.


Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder, calls himself “the luckiest 24-year-old ever to exist.” He started the group six years ago instead of going to college and now has 130,000 high school students, undergrads, and recent college graduates on board in what he calls the fight “to save Western civilization.” He sees himself as a general in the “culture war” and TPUSA’s members as “culture warriors”—effective “disrupters” of the left on campus and eventually across America. Kirk travels nonstop; he spent more than 300 days last year on the road giving speeches and meeting with donors, students, and politicians. Everywhere he goes he spreads the message that “Big Government Sucks” and “Socialism Sucks.” This fall he’s thinking of selling a T-shirt that says, “Bring Back ISIS, Vote Democrat 2018.”

Hanging out with Kirk is like being backstage at a cross between a political convention and a reality-television show. The cameras are perpetually rolling. Everything at the summit is livestreamed, and the audience is always present, always interacting, always commenting. Kirk’s the star of this show. The donors—Kirk prefers to calls them “investors”—are the producers. The contestants are the celebrity speakers Kirk invites (and it is a battle of survival as former CIA director James Woolsey gets canceled this week when Kellyanne Conway confirms she can make it). The crew is Kirk’s healthy entourage of protectors and wannabes.

Kirk says yes to virtually every request made of him—and when he doesn’t say yes, it seems as though he wishes he could. He introduced me to those with him backstage. Candace Owens, TPUSA’s communications director, is usually tied to her phone. While I was with them, she was tweeting praise of Ivanka Trump at the first daughter’s request. Owens recently achieved some fame for her influence on Kanye West’s politics. There is Mike Gruen, the heavyset enforcer who makes sure everything runs smoothly and on time. And there’s Kyle Kashuv, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor, who serves as TPUSA’s high school outreach director and is the summit’s emcee. All venerate Kirk. He’s not just the boss but the means toward political fame.

When Kirk hits the stage early in the conference’s first full day, the students stand up, applaud, and holler his name. “The left destroys everything it touches,” he tells them: “sports, comedy, schools, fun, people, everything.” The applause is rapturous; Kirk knows his crowd. “By the way, there are two genders,” he announces, and the students leap to their feet, crying out in agreement. Kirk is a skilled performer. He speaks for just as long as it takes for the next act to arrive, freewheeling from one topic to the next. Talking about capitalism and market pricing, Kirk asks, “Is there a price you won’t pay for a Chick-fil-A sandwich?” “$100,” a student shouts from his seat. Whether you realize it or not, “You’re having this conversation with Chick-fil-A everyday.” “Except Sundays,” another student yells in jest. “God bless America,” Kirk replies. “We love our sabbath.”

Kirk reminds the crowd that there are three things all TPUSA-ers agree on: “America is the greatest country in the history of the world.” “The Constitution is the greatest political document ever written.” And “free market capitalism is the most moral and proven economic system to lift the most people out of poverty into prosperity.” As Kirk wraps up his pitch, students jump out of their seats and pour into the theater’s aisles, seeking the summit’s most coveted bit of swag: a selfie with the face of TPUSA. But Kirk quickly gets offstage to make way for the next speakers: Pence confidant Marc Lotter and Trump surrogate Gina Loudon on a panel moderated by the Daily Caller’s Benny Johnson. They spend 40 minutes discussing the Trump victory and showing a video presentation with a Pepe the Frog meme. For four days, speaker after speaker, hour after hour, the audience is enraptured by such political entertainment and by the performative politics they’ve come to D.C. to join in.

YouTube vlogger Hunter Avallone tells the students that after the last election, the left “went as far as to curse us all with that stampede of unshowered feminists, also known as the Women’s March. I don’t think I’ve seen this many Democrats act out and get violent since we took away their slaves.” “Universities offered support to students after Trump won the election,” he goes on. “Some elite campuses even offered coloring books and puppies to help students cope. I wonder how many liberals saw this and thought to themselves, ‘Wow: validation, coddling, gifts. Are my parents getting divorced again?’ ” His act draws applause and laughter—and primes the crowd for the political decadence that was to follow. The nation’s villains are obvious at TPUSA: liberals and the media that twist every conservative event and utterance to suit their tastes. It is something we see in action.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks to a boisterous and participatory morning group. When he compliments the students’ energy, they begin to chant, “Lock her up.” Sessions smiles, repeats the phrase, and says, “I heard that a long time on the last campaign.” Some in the media pick up the story and word quickly spreads that Sessions had led the chanting. He hadn’t, and while standing in the Chick-fil-A line at lunch, all the students could talk about was “fake news” and the biased media. “We were there,” one says to me. “Did you see this clip online taking it out of context?” “I bet CNN will cover it tonight as ‘Jeff Sessions chanted Lock her up at Nazi conference.’ ”

The “lock her up” chant was repeated dozens of times over the course of the conference. I ask Kirk if he worries that students are too focused on an old battle and an old enemy. “No, not whatsoever,” he replies. “They’re frustrated at the misapplication of justice. It’s less about Hillary and more about if a Republican did what she did, that person would be in jail.” But wouldn’t “locking her up” constitute the silencing of political opposition? Again: “No, not whatsoever. I hold conservatives to the same standard.”

It was William Montgomery who discovered Charlie Kirk speaking at “Youth Government Day” at Benedictine University just outside Chicago in 2012. The 72-year-old was active in the local Tea Party movement. He was mesmerized by the 18-year-old Kirk’s rhetorical gifts and the crowd’s reaction to him. Montgomery, who was semi-retired after making a pile in real estate and advertising, approached the Baylor-bound Kirk and said, “You don’t know me, but you can’t go to college.” Montgomery wanted him to “take some time off” and “to start an organization that reaches out to young people” during a crucial campaign year. They met several times over the next month. Montgomery tried to persuade Baylor to give Kirk credit for starting this organization and sought to sway his parents, an architect and a mental-health professional. Baylor didn’t budge, but the Kirks did. In June 2012, Kirk started TPUSA with “investments” from several donors he met through Montgomery. Among the early backers were Christian conservative investor Foster Friess and Bruce Rauner, now the governor of Illinois. Friess gave TPUSA $10,000 after meeting Kirk at the Republican National Convention and Rauner, through his family foundation, gave $100,000 in 2014.

Kirk’s fundraising has largely been through word of mouth. Jaco Booyens, a Dallas businessman and philanthropist, tells me that he doesn’t just invest in TPUSA but actively looks to help Kirk expand his organization. Each of Kirk’s donors seems to want to introduce him to all his friends, and so on. Kirk has assembled a cabinet of advisers with deep pockets to advance his mission. Kirk and Montgomery, who is the organization’s secretary and treasurer, believe that this year they’ll raise close to $15 million.

The money will fund its namesake groups on campuses across the country—over a thousand of them so far, Kirk estimates. The groups bring speakers to campus, canvass on the quads, and agitate in student government. TPUSA sends “activism kits” to every affiliate. These include flyers, booklets, buttons, stickers, and rally signs printed with some of its signature slogans, such as “Taxation Is Theft,” “Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings,” and “You Are Entitled to Nothing.” Other campus conservative groups can also apply for “activism grants” and promote TPUSA’s mission by hosting related events. Lately there’s been controversy over the role that TPUSA plays in campus elections—encouraging students to run for office and, in some cases, it has been said, financing campaigns. The majority of TPUSA’s charitable giving is through a nonprofit that has 501(c)(3) status. The recipients can’t engage in the real-world politics of elections or TPUSA gets in legal trouble.

One of the keys to the organization’s success is Kirk’s perceived closeness with the first family. Montgomery tells me about an event where Donald Trump Jr. was slated to speak to 800 students. Kirk and Montgomery were meeting with donors and advisers, and Don Jr. came in and announced, “If it weren’t for Charlie Kirk, my dad would not be president of the United States today.”

Gentry Beach can take credit for introducing Kirk into the Trump circle. The Dallas-based financier was a groomsman at Don Jr.’s wedding and national vice chairman of Donald J. Trump for President. Three years ago, he brokered a meeting between Don Jr. and Kirk in Texas. Kirk says he ended up spending around 90 days straight on the campaign trail with Don Jr., whom he considers a “close friend.” When I asked the president’s eldest son about Kirk, he had only nice things to say. “I think he does a great job,” he explains to me while standing at a cordoned-off bar in a side room at his father’s D.C. hotel. “I think he’s one of the few people on the conservative side who are [fighting] for the next generation. He’s making it okay to be conservative on campus.”

Donald Trump Jr. entering Turning Point USA’s dinner gala at his father’s hotel. At right in red, ex-Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Donald Trump Jr. entering Turning Point USA’s dinner gala at his father’s hotel. At right in red, ex-Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle.


Kirk’s inroads in Trump’s Washington are deep. “If there’s one person this president admires, it’s Charlie Kirk,” House majority leader Kevin McCarthy tells a roomful of high school students on the summit’s third day. Back in March, the White House hosted an event for young conservative leaders. “Generation Next” featured a panel on jobs and tax cuts with Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta and Ivanka Trump and one on the “crises on campus” with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and the Justice Department’s Sarah Flores. But the forum’s main draw was Kirk interviewing the president.

Don Jr. and Kirk have talked about writing a book together about the campaign. “Don and I are exploring the idea,” Kirk tells me. “It’s not definitive, nothing’s agreed upon. You tell a couple people and all of a sudden it’s leaked to the Daily Beast.” “If there were a book, you know,” he goes on, “one of the things that we’d want to talk about is: What does the future of the Republican party look like? What are the ideas behind it? What are some of the philosophical, doctrinal defenses of the Trump agenda? Which, of course, is something I’m very interested in, right? What is a nation-state? Borders? Security? Free-market capitalism?”

“Trump, Trump, Trump” is the most consistent chant at the TPUSA summit. Everyone here supports the president in no uncertain terms, and everyone plans to vote for him in 2020. “I have some great news for you guys,” announces more than one speaker over the four days, “Hillary Clinton is still not our president.” Thunderous applause, every time. Few things rouse the group as much as a Hillary punch line.

Stephen Bak, 18, drove down from Lancaster, Pa., for the summit. He was too young to vote in the last election, but that didn’t stop him from following it like a superfan. He started out on Team Ted in the primaries and only made his way to Trump when Cruz dropped out of the race. “I became an avid supporter of anyone but Hillary,” he tells me over lunch. He was one of the many people chanting “Lock her up” during Sessions’s speech at the summit and says the media coverage of it was incredibly unfair. Bak wore a Trump T-shirt the day after the election, and “I had an American flag in my backpack.” A lot of the students and teachers at his private school were in mourning. One girl dressed in a black shirt came up and gave him a hug. “Okay, this isn’t going to do anything, but whatever you say,” he says, remembering her gesture. He looks up to both Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos. “Milo’s more entertaining, Ben is more suited for political life. Milo’s just entertainment.”

“Owning the libs” is one of the constants of the summit. This form of political schadenfreude is a big part of the TPUSA playbook. The term originated in campus pranks designed to upset, i.e., “trigger,” liberals. “Trigger the libs” quickly morphed into “owning” them. At the University of New Mexico, a TPUSA group in 2017 held an “affirmative action bake sale” where it charged Asians more than whites and whites more than blacks. The bake sale is suggested in the eighth section of TPUSA’s “chapter handbook.” Other ideas include creating your own “safe space” or constructing a “unionized hot dog stand” to show the excesses of liberalism. At Kent State the same year, members of the TPUSA chapter wore diapers in a simulated safe space. It’s the triumph of the put-down as political principle.

“Owning the libs is easy,” Bak says. “It’s fun. It’s my favorite pastime.” He came to the conference to be among like-minded people. He’s heading to Temple University in the fall to study medicine. He doesn’t yet know if there’s a TPUSA chapter on Temple’s campus, but “if they don’t have one, I will definitely start one. I’ll be happy to.” Bak thinks Trump has fared pretty well in his first two years: “I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. The economy, the way it is, a lot of people who are negative towards him in his presidency don’t really know how good of a job he’s actually doing compared to past presidents.” His favorite book is Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he sees as relevant today, “with everyone misrepresenting facts.”

Charlie Kirk himself made a similar journey. Initially he supported Scott Walker for president and then turned to Cruz. The decision that many Republicans faced during the general election—to brace for Trump or to embrace him—Kirk took with unqualified enthusiasm. TPUSA identifies itself as conservative but nonpartisan and holds the self-proclaimed remit to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” It is a mission that suggests some dissent from the Trump agenda. But Kirk tells me that it is not his job to criticize those with whom he agrees “on the big things.” Maybe that’s the price of politics today—one can’t call balls and strikes anymore without attracting the enmity of fellow conservatives. Intra-party debate on the right is “sinking one’s own ship” or “siding with Hillary.” Kirk happily rationalizes every aspect of the Trump administration and its policies. Protective tariffs? Trade wasn’t free to begin with, and Trump is making it more free: “Fair and free,” Kirk insists. He does add the caveat, though, that he usually wouldn’t support tariffs.

This just isn’t a time for policy debate, as Mark Cuban discovers. The Shark Tank billionaire is on the bill for the summit’s second day, and he tells me that he flew in just for the event. It seems like he’s here to scout out what conservative youth activism looks like in advance of his own presidential run. Cuban and Kirk make national headlines when they debate climate change (Cuban affirming its existence, Kirk questioning it). Cuban implores the students “to be curious and to want to learn more.” “I’ve given President Trump a hard time,” he says to an audience that, almost uniquely for the four days of the summit, falls silent, “and you can argue rightfully so or not. But one thing I will give him credit for—and he’s the only president ever really to have done this, and I think it’s because he’s a business guy at heart, and I’m hoping each and everyone one of you adopt this approach—he always challenges the status quo. Always. No matter what.” Cheers finally break out.

Mark Cuban (right) sparring with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk
Mark Cuban (right) sparring with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk


The two also spar about health care, which Cuban thinks is a “right.” The self-identified “conservatarian” Kirk doesn’t agree—“My Healthcare, My Choice” is another big TPUSA slogan. They also argue about the role of the party system. Kirk says he is a Republican, but Cuban believes political parties are outdated and no longer need to exist. There are better ways of collecting that data, he says: technological methods. They debate, spar, and hold to their convictions.

Cuban’s presence, Kirk believes, offers a type of viewpoint diversity that his critics claim is absent from TPUSA. Stephen Bak enjoyed the back and forth but also found it silly. “I do like the change of pace. I just don’t agree with Mark Cuban. In general, eccentric billionaires like that, they’re not actually experts in anything. So he was talking about his health care reform plans and AI, and I’m like, ‘You don’t know anything about that, so why are you trying to propose these things to government? You’re not an expert. And you’re not a politician,’ ” says Bak.

During the question-and-answer portion of Cuban’s program, a student asks him if Kirk “had come on Shark Tank six years ago, would Turning Point USA be something you’d invest in?” Cuban, with a smile, responded, “Absolutely.” “Sometimes you invest in the horse and sometimes you invest in the jockey. I’d invest in the jockey, for sure,” he announces.

Backstage after the panel, Cuban, wearing a rainbow Dallas Mavericks T-shirt, chats with Kellyanne Conway and Fox News host Jesse Watters. Conway asks Cuban how the panel went. “It was fun,” he says. Conway, dressed in something silk and pink, quips that this is usually what she says when something has gone awkwardly. “No, it was great,” Cuban insists. “Just not what I expected.” It certainly did seem like Cuban was having fun out there jousting with the ebullient Kirk and his followers.

Watters agrees that TPUSA is a fun audience. “When I give a speech to YAF, I gotta watch what I say, but here I’m like, Lock . . . her . . . up.” If the Young America’s Foundation, or YAF, represents the older, pen-and-paper conservative order of William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan then TPUSA codifies the new—the emotive, populist, and in-the-moment qualities of social media and Trump.

Part of the allure for high school and college students is the omnipresent confidence of its leader: a man with an answer for everything. Kirk has over 600,000 Twitter followers and loves to batter the political opposition. Consider his tweets: “Fact: There are zero Democrats on Mount Rushmore” or “If Elizabeth Warren really has a Native American background, why does she refuse to take a DNA test? If Maxine Waters was really so smart, why does she refuse to take an IQ test?” Kirk’s Tweets cross over the fake-news line, too. On July 3, he claimed, “83%, 10 out of 12, of all rapes in Denmark are committed by migrants or their descendants,” which is in no way accurate. On June 21, he tweeted out a list of tariffs Canada imposes on U.S. goods—from cars to steel to cable boxes—and announced, “We have never had free trade with Canada. Trump is leveling the playing field with Canada who has been ripping us off.” Except that, under NAFTA, there are zero tariffs on such goods. Kirk’s critics frequently point to such tweets when they claim he’s just a provocateur—nothing more than a purveyor of political pranks and Trumpian falsehoods. TPUSA’s Facebook page and YouTube channel are full of videos with chyrons announcing, “Charlie Smashes College Marxist” and “Charlie Kirk DESTROYS Ignorant Socialist Protester.” The latter has been viewed 2 million times.

Kirk likes to say that what plagues public discourse today is that the left hates the idea that there are other ideas. But U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley makes headlines at the TPUSA summit by suggesting that the rising faction on the right hates the idea there are other ideas just as much as the left. She asks attendees to raise their hands if they “ever posted anything online to ‘own the libs.’ ” Most of hands in the audience proudly shoot up, and everybody claps. But Haley is remonstrating against this mentality. “I know that it’s fun and that it can feel good,” she says. “But step back and think about what you’re accomplishing when you do this. Are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading? We’ve all been guilty of it at some point or another, but this kind of speech isn’t leadership—it’s the exact opposite.”

American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaking at the TPUSA summit.
American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaking at the TPUSA summit.


Haley, whose teenage son Nalin is involved in TPUSA, seems to be calling into question the group’s very raison d’être. “Real leadership is about persuasion. It’s about movement. It’s bringing people around to your point of view,” she says. “Not by shouting them down, but by showing them how it is in their best interest to see things the way you do.” Her message is a call to mature in one’s own politics, to “be better than the other guy,” and she gets cheers from the students. Utah senator Orrin Hatch conveys much the same message later in the day, also to applause.

As the conference closes, Kirk takes final questions from attendees. One student asks him if he plans to run for president. Wild sounds of approval burst from the audience along with chants of “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” Bill Montgomery, too, tells me he hopes Kirk will one day be president of the United States. He thinks the world of Kirk after six years of working with him on TPUSA. Kirk is only 24, and he tells me he has no plans to run for anything. I ask him about the further growth of TPUSA and whether he’d be interested in bringing the organization abroad. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says. “It’s something we’re considering. We have groups in Canada.” Is it something you could see in Europe? “Oh, without a doubt. I would love to take this global. Yes.”

Kirk was leaving Washington for New York early that evening. He would be appearing on Fox & Friends and then taping an episode of Watters’ World. And just like that, the Charlie Kirk Show rolls on: TV hit by TV hit, tweet by tweet, donor meeting by donor meeting, conference by conference. Next up on the agenda: TPUSA’s Young Latino Leadership Summit in Miami the first weekend in August.

Related Content