By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Step inside the front door of Turning Point USA’s new national headquarters here for a primer on the booming student organization’s activist focus.
“We’re not a think tank. We’re a battle tank!” proclaims a large poster of a modern war wagon in action.
Battling against what? Statism. Nearby, a large poster asks, “If socialism is so great, why don’t people flee from Florida to Cuba?”
Videos and literature say Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is the “most effective conservative student movement in America,” with its videos viewed two million times a day, and 20 million reached on social media each week.
Eighteen years old when he began to give shape to his dream in 2012 with meager resources, TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk at age 24 today seems to have an idea whose time has come.
The emphasis is freedom and opportunity, pushing back against enveloping government that would seal up society at the dead-letter office.
Kirk and his director of communications hired last November, Candace Owens, are perhaps the most visible part of the dynamo, but TPUSA is on 1,300 campuses now, Kirk told people attending its office’s grand opening on August 10. Pennants of about 100 universities covered one wall.
Kirk and Owens were on many people’s minds after they had been in the news only a few days earlier when screaming left-wing protesters in Philadelphia surrounded them at a restaurant breakfast, threw eggs, and dumped water on Kirk’s head.
Incredibly, the white protesters accused Owens, who is black, of being a white supremacist, while black police protected the two conservatives.
The protesters apparently took to heart radical California Democrat Cong. Maxine Waters’ incendiary urging to hound Trump conservatives even at restaurants.
The violence-hungry radical left, beloved of dominant media, is turning the U.S. into a jungle. TPUSA announced it had to plan to triple its annual costs for security to $300,000.
Conservative columnist John Kass posted at the Chicago Tribune on August 9 that “American politics apparently won’t be happy until it ruins everyone’s meal and we eat breakfast like the Venezuelans, in complete fear, if at all.
“And is it idiotic that a conservative black woman can be called a ‘white supremacist’ by white lefties? Yes, but then much of American politics has become unhinged,” Kass added.
A few days after Philadelphia, red, white, and blue balloons bobbed at the two-story, 14,000-square-foot TPUSA headquarters in a modern business park in the southeast part of Phoenix. After the 10 a.m. opening, tours were scheduled to last until 3 p.m.
Visitors walked through one large room with about 32 computer monitors, a row of individual offices, a studio where interviews can be conducted, a breakroom, and a large editing room to produce content. This is where social media take wing.
The tour guide said two to three media aides follow Kirk and Owens at their events then bring back material to produce here for distribution.
Apparently recognizing the arrival of TPUSA as a formidable force, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, Maricopa County prosecutor Bill Montgomery, and other elected Republican officials came to pay their respects.
Ducey told the crowd, “The First Amendment will be respected in the State of Arizona, and it’s up to us to get out and make the case for limited government and free markets and a secure border.”
When conservative GOP U.S. Senate candidate Kelli Ward was announced as attending, she received a loud cheer in the audience. Ward is opposing an entrenched establishment trying to keep the Senate seat under its control. The Arizona primary election is scheduled for August 28.
TPUSA not only is engaged against leftists’ efforts to dominate student thinking but also against the Democratic Party’s plantation mentality to keep blacks almost unanimously voting for it while being hectored into feeling cornered, dependent, victimized, and anxious.
If the percentage of blacks voting Democrat were to drop down into, say, the 70s, the Dems, who already have driven away millions of their other constituents due to a left-wing, pro-abortion agenda, likely would be destroyed as a major national party.
Some tremors went through the national liberal elite earlier this year after rap entertainment star Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” Was this another crack in the dam that would portend Dem disaster?
Interviewed on Fox News soon after West’s April tweet, Owens said that leftists “do not want black people focused on their future. They want black people focused on their past.”
At the Phoenix opening, Kirk said, “We are not in the political war right now. Turning Point USA is invested in the culture war. And if you had to ask me which one I would rather win, I’d rather win the culture war. Because as Candace always says . . . politics flows downstream from culture.
“And if we had a generation where half our generation hates America,” Kirk added, “doesn’t matter if we spend $200 billion on getting them to vote Republican. They won’t even look at us. And that’s the fight for the soul of our country.”
Immediately following Kirk at the microphone, Owens said she, too, is “not too interested in politics. But I am interested in the culture war.”
Owens said she’d been “shocked” at the media calling Donald Trump all sort of names like “racist” once he began his presidential race, even though they’d previously “glorified” him for having the Mar-a-Lago resort that the music stars liked.
She got to 26 years of age thinking she was a liberal Democrat, Owens said, without realizing she was a conservative. Why? Because “Republicans weren’t communicating their messages effectively enough,” she said.
However, Owens said, when Kirk met her and asked what she wanted to do, she replied, “I want to lead the black revolution against the Democrat Party.” The audience applauded and whooped.
Earlier, when tweeting last March, Owens had noted the disproportionately high number of black mothers having abortions: “Planned Parenthood has been tremendously successful in the path they set out on. They have successfully trained us blacks to exterminate ourselves.”
TPUSA’s director of urban engagement, Brandon Tatum, told the audience how he, too, as a black Democrat left that party.
He’d always thought of himself as a Democrat, Tatum said, but as a Tucson police officer he began to reconsider because of the way Barack Obama regarded the police while president. “I saw that Barack Obama disrespected the loyalty and dedication of police officers around this country, and I had had enough.”
Tatum said other officers had told him his conservative values “didn’t line up correctly” with Democrats, but he didn’t understand that. Still, Tatum said, Obama was saying police were “just killing people at will, and that started to make me think.”
Deciding to go to a Trump rally in Tucson to check it out, Tatum said his eyes were opened when he found everyone there was “accepting, kind, loving, compassionate.”
“I love everything about this country,” Tatum said.
As the opening talks moved toward conclusion, Owens continued her theme of black independence, saying that “there is no value in being a victim. And there is only value in being a victor.”
Expanding her focus to everyone, Owens said, “We will not let you down. . . . This is the fight for the heart and soul of this country, and we are blessed and honored to be at the forefront of that battle.”
The Wanderer asked Diane Douglas, the state schools chief, if she thought opponents would object to her presence at this event that advances a certain viewpoint. “I am very proud to be here with an organization that’s going to help enhance free speech that has been stymied for far too long” on campuses, Douglas replied.
In addition to students not being taught about government, Douglas said, “we don’t teach them history either.”
Off The Obama Train
An audience member, Adrian Norman, was another black who told The Wanderer that he’d left Obama policies behind.
Norman said he was raised as a conservative, “but when I went to college, I became a Democrat. I was kind of indoctrinated, and I was surrounded by people who all thought the same way.” He majored in journalism, minored in women’s studies, and “felt obligated to vote for the first black president.”
However, almost as soon as Obama entered the White House, Norman said, “his policies started changing. . . . I was off the Obama train probably the first quarter of 2009.”
Democrat policy “was doing a great job of creating a condition where black people are involved in groupthink,” Norman said.
“We keep voting in people who are more interested in helping themselves than helping the people they represent,” he said, adding that for years Democrats “have just used black people for votes.”
The Wanderer also spoke with three young men standing on the sidewalk while they waited for the ceremonies to begin.
Sean McMahon, 21, said he plans to major in business administration at Arizona State University. “I do identify myself as a free-market Republican” who wants anybody to be able to succeed, without turning to government or welfare, he said.
Blakeley Zoucha, 21, said he aspires to be a gunsmith and wanted to see Kirk and Owens at this event.
Jacob Trickel, 20, interested in being a psychologist, is taking online classes with Arizona State University and said he was here “to support the conservative movement.”
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