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A new report from The Associated Press details how leaders of a well-known pro-Trump organization have enriched themselves while the MAGA movement has suffered major losses at the ballot box.
And the eye-popping numbers have some conservatives incensed.
Turning Point USA, the Arizona-based organization of extreme activists who claim they know how to reach young voters, is highly controversial among conservatives. The organization, led by right-wing agitator Charlie Kirk, portrays itself as a kingmaker for Republican elected officials. But this peacocking hasn’t netted the group much in terms of actual election victories (which is why I have labeled TPUSA the “most shameless grift in politics today.”)
That grifting is the focus of the AP’s report:
The nonprofit rocketed to prominence by latching on to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and has raised roughly a quarter-billion dollars since, much of it spent cultivating conservative influencers and hosting glitzy events. The organization also enriched Kirk and his allies, according to an Associated Press review of public records, which found top Turning Point officials collected pricey salaries, enjoyed lavish perks and steered at least $15.2 million to companies that they, their friends and associates are affiliated with.
A Turning Point spokesman told the AP that none of the group’s leaders have inappropriately benefited from their financial arrangements, and he attributed much of Kirk’s wealth to his podcast and radio show, as well as speaking engagements.
Even still, the lavish spending is a bad look, given the lack of political success. As the AP put it:
But for all that money, the group has struggled to help Republicans win general elections. That’s particularly true in Turning Point’s adopted home of Arizona, where its slate of deeply conservative candidates in the longtime Republican stronghold lost statewide races last year, among them Kari Lake’s unsuccessful bid for governor.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the organization has milked millions of dollars out of right-wing donors, some of which appears to have been used for some rather bizarre organizational materials.
In the AP report, conservative commentator Erick Erickson voiced skepticism of Turning Point’s planned $108 million get-out-the vote campaign in Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona.
“Any donor who thinks an organization needs $108 million for a three-state grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign is being taken advantage of,” Erickson said, adding, “It sounds like a grift.”
That’s a refrain from TPUSA-averse conservatives online, who frequently bicker with the organization's leadership. And there’s a fair share of conservative animus toward the organization within Arizona, where TPUSA’s rise over the past decade has coincided with the GOP’s decline in the state.
Earlier this year, Kirk accused Republican National Committee leadership of making “massive expenditures” on “junk” that helps “party apparatchiks feel important” but doesn’t “help win seats on election night.” Such behavior, he wrote, warranted ousting RNC leadership.
But if self-serving fundraising is a fireable offense, it seems Turning Point USA is in need of a shakeup itself.