I personally attended Turning Point USA’s 2020 Student Action Summit (SAS) this past week. While this conference was underway, a lot of false information and hit pieces came out that were directed toward Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA (TP USA) .
Oddly enough, these attacks have come from both leftist and conservative media outlets. On December 20th, writer Rod Dreher published an article on the The American Conservative about SAS, TP USA, and Charlie Kirk.
Here is the link to Dreher’s article:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/charlie-kirk-tpusa-hooters-conservatism-jesus/
His article is purely a hit piece. To stand up for Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, I decided to send a strongly worded email that pointed out some of the falsehoods and misrepresentations in the article.
Personally, I do not hold any animosity toward Rod Dreher. I’ve enjoyed some of his other work in the past. However, this hit piece is unacceptable in my mind. Below, I provided the 800+ word response I sent to The American Conservative.
My Response:
Greetings,
My name is Nathan Koenig. I am a conservative college student from Louisiana.
I recently read senior editor Rod Dreher’s December 20th article “Charlie Kirk’s Hooters Conservatism.”
I personally attended the event that Mr. Dreher describes at length in the article–Turning Point USA’s 2020 Student Action Summit (SAS). Thus, I would like to express my extreme disappointment about Mr. Dreher’s article. His characterization of Turning Point USA (TP USA) and the Student Action Summit is at best a misrepresentation and at worst a smear full of deceit. I personally witnessed the entire conference, so I am highly skeptical of what Mr. Dreher knows about the conference. His attacks are based off of either false information from Palm Beach County officials or tweets from people who did not even attend the conference.
First off, Mr. Dreher stated that TP USA oversold the conference–which led to attendees not being able to make it inside the conference. That statement is an outright falsehood. The Palm Beach County breached the original contract that Turning Point made with the county by creating last-minute capacity restrictions. The county blindsided Turning Point USA and did not give TP USA any indication beforehand that these restrictions would occur. TP USA employees essentially worked without sleep after the conference’s first day to try to figure out how to fix the problems that Palm Beach County officials created. So, Turning Point is not at fault for attendees not being able to get into the conference. Now, Turning Point did not perfectly communicate the capacity issues to the attendees. However, the real problem lies with the government officials of Palm Beach County.
Secondly, Mr. Dreher discussed a speech given by Bang Energy CEO Jack Owoc without mentioning the other speakers and topics discussed at the convention. This fact shows me that Mr. Dreher is only demonstrating his personal vendetta against Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. Sure, I did not enjoy the Jack Owoc’s half hour infomercial for Bang Energy. It was crude in my opinion. That being said, it’s intellectually dishonest to characterize the entire event and organization by this single event. Mr. Dreher is using the exact same tactic that atheists use to discredit Christianity whenever they say that Christianity is bad because of the Spanish Inquisition. Moreover, Mr. Dreher’s depiction of this event’s attendees as hedonistic frat boys is quite dishonest and disgusting–especially considering he did not talk to the students who actually attended the event. I met so many attendees who were excited to hear from such inspiring and informative speakers in the conservative movement.
Also, I find it suspect that Mr. Dreher failed to mention what other speakers discussed at the conference. Why did Mr. Dreher fail to mention what the other 20+ speakers said at the event? Did he not know that several Christian pastors spoke at the conference and confessed Jesus Christ as LORD ? Did he know speakers such as Brandon Tatum and Mike Lindell discussed their personal testimonies of becoming Christians later in life? Even better, Mr. Dreher failed to mention that Vice President Mike Pence also spoke at this conference. Last time I checked, I thought that VP Pence was a socially conservative Christian. I guess he must be a hedonistic frat boy too. Lastly, it truly bothers me how Mr. Dreher virtue-signals about Kirk being a false Christian and even depicts TP USA as a pagan organization. TP USA is not a perfect organization, and Charlie Kirk is not a perfect person. Regardless, Mr. Dreher shows his personal bias by not mentioning any of the amazing work that Charlie and TP USA has done over the last several years for young American conservatives.
On a more positive note, I have personally experienced how Turning Point USA has done so much for conservative college students like myself–who feel alone on leftist college campuses throughout the United States. Charlie Kirk cares about conservative college students. He has helped them to not feel afraid to voice their beliefs in a place where conservative values are despised. If it were not for TP USA, I would still be a closeted conservative. Before joining my college’s TP USA chapter, I was not willing to publicly share my conservative values in fear of being reprimanded by my peers and school. Charlie has inspired many conservative students by his willingness to do the grunt work that most conservatives aren’t willing to do–which is to push back against leftist professors, students, and administrators. Overall, Charlie Kirk has done what no other older conservative has done for college students–he tells them that they are not alone. With over 2,000 TP USA chapters across the country, he has done a lot more for American conservatism than any conservative media outlet/thinktank has ever done.
If Rod Dreher or The American Conservative does not issue some sort of apology or retraction for this article. Then, you will have lost me as a reader.
Sincerely,
Nathan Koenig