The Villages MAGA Club hosted a guest speaker, Charlie Kirk, on Thursday night at Rohan Recreation Center, and he offered some insight and predictions about the White House race.
More than 350 members of the MAGA Club listened in awe to the speaker, who is the co-founder of Turning Point USA. He is also the chief executive officer of Turning Point Action, Turning Point Academy, Turning Point Faith, and is president of Turning Point Endowment. Kirk is also a member of the conservative Council for National Policy.
Kirk was introduced by Julia Temple, a student at The Villages High School, where she has formed a chapter of Turning Point USA. The 17-year-old is the daughter of state Rep. John Temple, who was in the audience.
The VHS student enthusiastically told the assembly of how Kirk became a conservative activist, when in 2010 in his junior year at Wheeling High School in Illinois, he volunteered for the successful U.S. Senate campaign of Mark Kirk, no relation. That year he also had an essay printed in Breitbart News, in which he alleged there was a liberal bias in high school text books. When he spoke at Benedictine University’s Youth Empowerment Day, Kirk met Bill Montgomery, with whom he later co-founded Turning Point USA. It was originally a grassroots organization aimed at countering MoveOn.org, a liberal Democratic organization.
Kirk briefly attended Harper College, near Chicago, but dropped out during his first year. He told the MAGA Club that they should not send their children or grandchildren to college, because the universities are in the business of indoctrinating students.
In July 2019, Turning Point Action acquired Students for Trump. Kirk became chairman and launched an effort to recruit 1 million students volunteers for Trump’s re-election.
Asked to sum up his thoughts about the November election, Kirk said that Trump is in a better position this year than he was in 2020. He told the audience that Trump is ahead in the two most important issues to American voters – the economy and immigration. He also indicated that there must be a big turnout for Trump to make it impossible to steal the election “like they did in 2020.”