GOP activist Charlie Kirk calls Trump the 'bodyguard of western civilization' as he courts young voters

WASHINGTON – He attacked Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Jill Biden. He went after Chicago's mayor, the mainstream media, and Black Lives Matter.

And he accused former President Barack Obama of lying and said he should be “under investigation for treason—NOT speaking at a political convention.”

As the Democratic National Convention unfolded online last week, Charlie Kirk’s Twitter feed looked a lot like President Donald Trump's.

Now, the 26-year-old conservative darling has taken his message from Twitter to the (virtual) big stage at the Republican National Convention. Kirk is a Trump family confidant and the head of Turning Point USA, which is devoted to attracting and energizing young voters.

Kirk blamed “bitter, deceitful, vengeful” opponents for the nation’s woes and described Trump as an antidote to that division. Kirk’s message offered a particularly bleak view of the nation, arguing the country is “locking up pastors” while “releasing violent criminals from prison” and “kicking doctors off of social media” while “promoting Chinese state-funded propaganda” on other tech platforms.

“Trump is the bodyguard of western civilization,” he said.

Going after the youth vote

That constituency could be pivotal in the 2020 presidential contest, and right now, Trump faces a yawning gap of support among Millennials and other young voters.

Voters aged 18 to 34 support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, over the GOP ticket by 22 percentage points, a CNN poll conducted in mid-August found. A CBS poll taken Aug. 12-14 showed a similar margin – with 62% of those between 18 and 29 saying they support Biden, compared to 27% in that age group who plan to vote for Trump.

"Even young Republicans – on issues of equality, public safety, climate change – are closer to the Democrats ... than to the overall Republican voter," said Morley Winograd, who has written three books on the Millennial generation with co-author Mike Hais. Both have worked in Democratic politics.

Winograd said voters under 40 could make up between 20% and 25% of the electorate this year, giving them make-or-break power in November.

The partisan age gap is not new, nor is it unique to Trump. But Winograd and others say today's political climate – fueled by the threat of climate change, the racial justice movement and deadly school shootings in Florida and elsewhere – has exacerbated the Republican Party's problems with young voters.

"We have an enormous ditch to dig ourselves out of with young Americans," said Kori Schake, who served as a policy adviser to GOP Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and is now a foreign policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank. She noted that in the 2018 election, voters under the age of 30 voted for Democratic House candidates by 35 point margin.

"That's an enormous problem for the Republican Party," she said. "And we sometimes try and persuade ourselves that you know, kids are liberal when they're young and they grow more conservative with age. But there's actually no data that supports that. Voter preference tends to be quite durable."

Who is Charlie Kirk?

Enter Kirk, who bills himself as "Twitter's 5th most engaged personality" and a vessel for the GOP to reach coveted college-age voters.

“I visit college campuses so you don’t have to,” Kirk told an approving crowd at the Conservative Political Action's 2020 conference. "You're welcome."

He proceeded to depict universities as "treacherous terrain" for conservatives, calling them "installations of indoctrination" that teach young students "to hate our country."

"... If the left is successful, college campuses are going to be the battleground for this election and for the next generation," he said, advising the assembled conservatives to "stop giving money to your alma mater."

Kirk got his first political break at the age of 18, when he delivered a speech at a youth government day at Benedictine University, in a suburb of Chicago near his hometown of Prospect, Ill. Kirk's speech caught the attention of Bill Montgomery, a retired entrepreneur who was wowed by Kirk's raw talent.

“You can’t go to college!” Montgomery recalled telling Kirk at the 2012 event, according to the National Journal. "... You need to start an organization to reach out to young people with your message." He and Kirk teamed up to start Turning Point the next month. (Montgomery died in July of a COVID-related illness.)

His rise to GOP stardom

By the time the 2016 election rolled around, Turning Point was a well-funded outfit and Kirk had become increasingly influential. He met Donald Trump Jr. at the GOP convention that year and glued himself to the president's eldest son.

“I traveled the country for about 70 days straight carrying Donald Trump Jr.’s bags and getting his Diet Cokes,” Kirk told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in 2019. “Helping book flights and taking pictures and coordinating media, essentially being the youth director of the campaign and also being Don Jr.’s body man.”

Now, Kirk enjoys influence and access at the highest levels of the White House, said Andrew Surabian, a Republican strategist with close ties to the Trump campaign.

“As he became more successful, he's developed similar relationships with pretty much everyone in the family, from the president himself to Ivanka,” he said. “I think he's got the respect of the White House because they know he actually represents, and is representative of, an important constituency.”

Surabian said Kirk is a natural speaker and an organizational whiz, and it would be crazy for the GOP not to feature him at this year's convention.

“He took an organization with a little bit of seed money, and in only a few years, turned it into an absolute juggernaut,” he said.

Not everybody is a fan

But not everyone sees Turning Point as a juggernaut – or Kirk as a formidable political force.

"Everybody knows they’re a punch line on campus," said Kristi Johnston, press secretary for the Arizona chapter of NextGen America, a group founded by one-time Democratic presidential contender Tom Steyer to register and mobilize young voters.

"All their doing is spreading misinformation and attempting to distract young voters," she said. "They’re not really registering young voters because they know that when they turn out, they're turning out for progressives."

She said NextGen's goal is to get nearly five million young voters to cast a ballot for progressive candidates this election, including the Biden-Harris ticket.

" ... NextGen is about winning elections and Turning Point is about finding the next Tucker Carlson," Johnston quipped, referring to the controversial Fox News host who has Trump's ear.

Turning Point's spokesman, Andrew Kolvet, sharply disputed that. He said young liberal groups are nervous because Turning Point "has built a massive grassroots network of campus chapters and student activists" across the country.

"The left does not have a monopoly on the youth vote," said Austin Smith, the field director for a Turning Point sister organization, Students for Trump. He said his group has a goal of registering and mobilizing 1 million new voters this election.

When Smith first met Kirk in 2016, they faced off in an intense game of corn hole at a celebratory dinner after a Turning Point training session. Smith quickly learned that Kirk is hyper competitive – about everything.

"He continually pushes himself to 100% every single time, no matter what he does," Smith said. So it's no wonder Kirk knows how "to get people fired up" and make the case for Trump's reelection, Smith said.

Smith argued that Trump has "a much broader appeal to young people, because he's the pop culture president," while Biden simply doesn't generate enthusiasm among the younger generation.

Selling Trump to young voters

But Winograd and others say Turning Point has a tough sell with Trump. The president has alienated some younger voters with his racist and sexist rhetoric, Winograd said. And while voters under 40 may not be as jazzed about Biden as they were about other Democratic presidential contenders, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, they are very motivated to oust Trump, he said.

The pandemic has made this year's election choice all the more stark, said Azza Abuseif, NextGen's state director in Arizona. Americans are losing their jobs and their health care coverage because of the pandemic, she noted. And younger voters are facing another economic recession, just 12 years after the 2008 financial meltdown, which also unfolded on a Republican president's watch.

"It definitely has shown all the cracks in our system," she said. "The youth is so fired up right now about all the things that are happening. They're not seeing leadership."

Schake said Trump and his GOP allies are not putting forward policies that connect with young Americans right now. She noted, for example, that the Trump administration has dismantled much of Obama's health care plan without offering an alternative vision for reducing costs and increasing coverage – even though health care is a big concern for younger voters.

"The culture wars that the Trump administration favors as its political organizing tool have much less appeal to young Americans than they have to the electorate at large," she said.

David Kalk, a 20-year-old junior majoring in political science at Ohio State University, said that was a mistake for the GOP. He is chairman of Ohio State College Republicans, and he plans on voting for Trump.

"I personally do not support Obamacare but I don't support repealing it without replacing it," Kalk said.

On climate change, Kalk said he agrees it's an important issue, but he fears the Democrats will "tank the economy" with the Green New Deal.

"It's a great way to destroy our country," he said of that proposal to shift U.S. energy sources to renewable fuels, such as wind, solar and hydropower. "There are conservative ways to go about ... dealing with climate issues without simply spending us into like trillions and trillions (of dollars in) more debt."

Trump will get the economy back on its feet, Kalk said, and that's the biggest issue for him this November.

"This is choosing the future and what we want to see," he said. "Do we want to see freedom? Do we want to see actual like development ... ? Or do we want to see just useless legislation that doesn't address any issues."

Contributing: Sarah Elbeshbishi and John Fritze

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RNC: Charlie Kirk, Trump family confidant, goes after youth vote