The GOP’s junior ranks are increasingly being staffed by open racists, in what some commentators have called the “groyperfication” of the party. And Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is no exception.
Last week, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk announced that his organization would be officially partnering with the campaign to get out the vote.
“Breaking right here on this show: Turning Point Action’s ballot chase initiative, and remind you, we are working directly in coordination with the Trump campaign, that’s the new FEC rule and regulation. Charlie, I don’t want to get over my skis there,” Kirk’s podcast co-host, Andrew Kolvet, announced.
“We’re allowed to work in harmony on doors and canvassing, that’s what the law says,” Kirk said.
Turning Point USA has been a force in right-wing media and campus conservative organizing, and has held events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound. But the organization has previously been mostly limited to maintaining a watchlist of supposedly subversive leftist professors, encouraging followers to violate Covid-19 masking regulations, and enriching its brass, and has never officially partnered with a campaign.
Kirk, the group’s founder and apparently the Trump campaign’s newest canvasser, is a model of the new student conservativism: he has impugned the character of Martin Luther King Jr. and questioned whether MLK Day should be a federal holiday, implied that affirmative action is allowing unqualified Black pilots to fly planes, and expressed “impatience for American Jews that have put up with the anti-white sentiments the last decade.”
Turning Point USA’s national field director was fired after texting another TPUSA employee, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all… I hate blacks. End of story.” The organization also has been accused of organizing bus trips to the Capitol on January 6.
The Trump campaign has already proven it will go to any lengths and partner with any group, no matter how unsavory, to gain an edge against Joe Biden. Partnering with bigots such as Kirk, then, isn’t surprising, but it provides a harrowing preview of the future of Republican Party organizing. The fever doesn’t appear to be breaking anytime soon.
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