A number of Republican insiders are warning that former President Donald Trump is making a potentially fatal mistake by employing right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA group to turn out votes for him.
The Guardian reports that there is growing apprehension about Kirk's growing influence within Republican circles, and they point to his organization's failed efforts to swing key elections to Republicans during the 2022 midterm elections as proof.
"As a candidate who didn’t win, and who was promised that Turning Point would have a big influence in Michigan, it makes you crazy,” said Tudor Dixon, a failed Michigan gubernatorial candidate who points the finger at Turning Point's efforts as a reason for her loss. “I gave up a salary for 18 months, sold my car, did everything I could to run for office. And people like [Kirk] are the reason we are not winning.”
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Tyler Montague, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, argued to The Guardian that Kirk's entire shtick revolved around pushing anger and division, which he said was poisonous when it came to courting swing voters.
“Turning Point has become toxic in Arizona,” he explained. “They’ve helped to cement an extreme worldview, creating anger that in turn generates political energy that they harness. That’s their game.”
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Montague argued that Kirk's embrace of 2020 election deniers in particular hurt Republicans' cause as evidenced by the losses suffered by 2022 gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and 2022 Senate nominee Blake Masters.
“They doubled down on angry messages that were not winning messages,” Montague said. “Winning messages are based in truth – Kirk is dragging us away from that.”
And Pastor Darrell Scott, himself a staunch Trump supporter, said that he doesn't think that the former president should be associating with someone like Kirk who has made openly racist comments, including when he infamously said he'd be frightened to fly in a plane flown by a Black pilot.
"Kirk talked all this negative s--t about Black people, and his proximity to President Trump caused people to wonder is that what Trump is thinking too," he said. "I have publicly refuted Kirk because every vote counts.”
