Transcript
A (0:00)
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed destroyed countries, destroyed lives. And we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here.
B (0:40)
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C (2:13)
well, I want to start. I bet a lot of these people know you. Some of them don't. So I want to start at the beginning. Tell us about growing up, you know, your family, your faith. How did you become who you are now?
A (2:30)
Well, honored to be here. First of all, I want to say before we get started, Kelly, what you're doing is one of the most important efforts in the entire country. I've been more made aware of what you're doing in the last 24 hours than I was previously. And something the left has really perfected is what I call lawfare, like warfare in the law arena, which is overly using the courts to basically get their backwards and malevolent worldview by fiat. And what you're doing to fight for first principles is incredible and so important. So everyone who's supporting Kelly and First Liberty, it's incredible. It really is. I'm born and raised in Chicago, Illinois or the suburbs of Chicago. Went to public high school, Wheeling High School. I had a pretty traditional upbringing. My father an architect, my. My mother a mental health counselor. I always wanted to go to West Point. Kind of my whole life designed around going to West Point. I guess you could say Eagle Scout football, basketball captain. Did good in school and got it other plans for me, it actually was the best thing that never happened to me. Ended up not getting into the United States Military Academy at West Point. And I just took a pause and my parents said, you're on your own for college. You got to pay your own way through. We're not going to help you at all. And that was a great, great thing they told me because I had to try to. I had to grow up in a hurry. And so I would. I was then had to go through the decision is it worth me going 70 to $80,000 in debt like this for college? I really wasn't that passionate about. And so I told my parents like hey, I'm going to take a gap year. And they said, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. I'm going to try to save the country. They laughed. I said yeah, go do that. Sure. And prior to that grew up as a Christian most important thing thing in my life saved early in my life around when I was 12 or 13 years old. But that means more as you get older, right? There's a salvation and there's a discipleship. As you get older really start. You start to grow in your faith. Raised Presbyterian until they decided to basically become not. Not the. There's. I always get the piece USA and pca. I grew up in the liberal one. As soon as they decided to be kind of like a spokesperson for the Democrat National Party, our family left. And not kidding. It's if you know. If you know that tradition of Presbyterianism. As soon as. As soon as they were spending more time commenting on Rachel Maddow's Opening segment and not on the gospel. I was like, there's something wrong here. Right? It's church should not be hard. Hardball with Chris Matthews at organ music. So, so, so anyway, really faith is always very important to me and convinced my parents to let me take this gap year, which was really a gap 6 months. I felt like we were losing our country back in 2012. I felt like our generation was completely unaware of the type of intergenerational theft that was happening and the kind of decisions that were being made on our behalf or we were making in the ballot box. So I started this organization, Turning Point USA on June 5th of 2012. No money, no connections, and no idea what I was doing. Lot of energy and some sort of a vision to try to get started. And I just. That's exactly what I did. I got started and I visited all sorts of different Tea Party rallies, Republican groups, talking about how we needed to have a youth conservative organization that would really recapture this country and really re educate my generation in particular. Never actually thought it would work, but I thought that we would make some sort of an impact. And I didn't even know what success looked like. And for those of you that have been entrepreneurs, you know exactly that feeling. You just get started and you kind of God takes you in a different path. And so fast forward eight years now, it's been actually incredible and one of the most incredibly humbling journeys. Actually, the individual helped me get started passed away just last week. Bill Montgomery. He was the first person I called in June of 2012 and he believed in me when I was an 18 year old, when he had no reason to, by the way, when everyone said, go to college, sit in line, stop doing what you're doing, go get a degree, no one's going to take you seriously. I mean, I heard everybody told me that except this guy. And he was an incredible mentor and friend of mine. And so, yeah, look, the God has had his hand on our journey. Eight years later, we're on 2000 high school and college campuses across the country. We have done something that everyone thought was impossible. We've organized hundreds of thousands of young people in the places that quite honestly are the most hostile to conservative, reasonable, pro American, patriotic ideas. We have a great relationship through our political arm with the President. Just last month, we had 3,400 students in Phoenix, Arizona, in the midst of a pandemic, 107 degrees outside hosting an event for the President, United States. Absolutely incredible. Not one seat open. Joe Biden couldn't have like 50 people show up, you know, even without a pandemic. And so there's something very special happening. And I, I've just been blessed to be on this journey and I really think that we're just getting started.
