Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: To the 272nd episode of Objectively Speaking, I'm Jag. I'm the CEO of the Atlas Society.
Today is a very special episode.
Five weeks ago, Charlie Kirk was silenced by an assassin's bullet. And there hasn't been a day since that I haven't grieved and struggled to come to terms with this tragedy. That's why, with a bit of time passed, I wanted to have a conversation with a dear friend for whom this has been an immeasurably more painful personal loss and also professional one. And that is my friend, Draina Sixto, who for more than a decade has risen through the ranks of Turning Point and Turning Point Action and now serves as the Ladder's media spokeswoman. Draina, my friend, it's good to see you.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: So you and I became friends. I don't exactly remember how. Maybe you will. But we worked together across various collaborations between our two organizations, including a joint Hispanic Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, campus screenings of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, and of course you set the bar as the Atlas Society's mistress of ceremony at our seventh annual gala a couple of years ago. But part of what grew out of part of our bond grew out of a shared appreciation of Ayn Rand's literature.
So maybe we can just start with that.
What aspects of literature and philosophy have been most compelling for you, particularly as your job involved staying true to your vision and your principles, often in the face of intense and sometimes even violent disagreement?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's rare to come across different.
It's really rare to come across leaders and, and writers that highlight authenticity and sticking to one's own moral codes, no matter what the majority might be saying.
And I definitely experienced that for a better part of, for most of my time with A Turning Point. So I first started with the organization Turning Point USA, the 501 in 2016. I switched over to Turning Point Action, the C4 in 2022. But when I was with the C3, my responsibility when I oversaw these different southern states and the campus chapters that that were on them is just, you know, having being the moral support for students that that might be the only conservative voice on a campus and against them. They have their teachers, so they are facing a potential repercussion in the future for their personal beliefs, like their grades, can suffer because of it. Their friends or their colleagues, who unfortunately, after years of brainwashing and an educational system that pushes them farther left, might single them out as a right wing unicorn or conservative Unicorn or just an objectivist unicorn. Right. And also from the administration, which does not agree with these ideals. And I faced the same thing, obviously, when I was a student in college. And through my work with Turning Point, it's almost like I never left because I work so closely with these students on campus and, and being able to point towards the works of Ayn Rand, what she believed in, and showing that you can be. You can stand strong in your principles, no matter if the entire world is going up against you and believes something else because of the fact that they are wrong and irrational, then you need to stick to. To what you know, to what you believe in, to. Into reality.
And that's definitely helped me a lot with my job, with my career. I, thankfully, have never had to compromise what I believe in or my personal principles to keep a job, thankfully, because I've worked with Turning Point for so long, and I've never sought to.
I've never sought to take on any kind of opportunity that may have presented itself before me where I had to compromise what I believed in. And I really have to thank a lot of the characters, as you know, that Ayn Rand, you know, described in a lot of her, her greatest, her greatest works, they stood strong. They stood, you know, they. They took personal.
They made personal sacrifices just so that they could be authentic and not have to sacrifice who they are and what they believed in. So I think that this is such a natural match from the beginning between you and I, between the Atlas Society, Ayn Rand's philosophies, what I believed in, the point that I was at in my life, recently graduated from college, and I think that's why it's been great to work and to help the Atlas Society in any which way that I can.
It's been truly rewarding, though, to see this comeback of younger generations, younger than mine. I'm a millennial, by the way, just aging myself there. But it seems like these newer generations, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they have a much more individualist way of thinking, a much more innovative way of thinking, and I truly respect them for is.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: And a lot of that is due to the work that you and Turning Point and Charlie personally has done. And before we get to what happened five weeks ago, let's go back to 2015 at that time when you were.
You started out as a volunteer and an activist with Turning Point while you were still in College.
Charlie was 21 years old at the time, and Turning Point was 3 years old.
So any memories from those times, first impressions of Charlie? I mean, that it was, it was definitely a different time.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And I.
Very close to Charlie's age. I think I was 20 at the time, or 21 at the time as well. I was in my last year of college.
I graduated in the summer of 2016. So between 2015 and 2016 is that I was first introduced to Turning Point as an organization. I remember I was walking through the hallways of my university and I saw a friend of mine tabling for it. And there was a big sign in the front that said big Gov sucks. And that really caught my attention because I agreed with it. But I was more than anything, just surprised by the marketing of it, the fact that it was geared towards younger students.
To be honest, I was pretty much in my last year of college. I was set to graduate in 2016, in the spring of 2016.
I just had to take one final class in the summer of 2016. That's why I elongated a little bit. But so I was kind of in the last year of my, of my, you know, student life year, and I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do. When I graduated, I was set to get a double bachelor's in International Relations and Political Science.
There were a lot of options floated to me. I interned in certain offices that then told me, hey, when you graduate, graduate, we can hook you up with a job being a congressional intern in D.C. there were just a lot of options, but I still wasn't, I guess, impassioned about anything yet.
And to come across this organization on campus that pretty much had the, the branding that I liked, that I knew would be revolutionary and not boring, because let's be honest, the Republican side, the conservative side, has historically not been that great at marketing to younger people.
And to see that was a breath of fresh air. And when I was on campus, I was, I just, you know, went up to my friend and I'm like, hey, what are you doing? This is really cool. How can I help out? And I was just volunteering.
I had some time between classes, and so in that hour I would just go pick up a sign up sheet and just help sign up as many more new people as I could.
After a little while of that, my friend told me that, hey, you could do what you're doing as a part timer on campus, just tabling once a week and recruiting new members and new students to this organization. I'm like, you know what? Sounds exactly like, sounds perfect for me. I could do this between classes. I like what it is that I'm promoting.
And then that turned into Once I graduated and took my very last final exam that summer of 2016, being on a plane to Chicago the next week to do full time staff training.
So that is kind of how it all transpired started.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: And then at what point did you, did you meet Charlie? Was it when you. It was or.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it was in 20, it was in 2015 that I, that I met him through the winter in West Palm beach conference that was held in the lobby of this like rinky dink hotel.
Obviously didn't have too much one on one time then because it was still like a little mini conference.
But that was my first time seeing him in person, seeing him speak to us in person. I like the fact that he was so obviously bright, intelligent, authentic. And then when I first went in for my official full time staff training is when we had real personal one on one time. Remember it was a very tiny group. So back in the day Charlie would train his staff himself, especially when it came to the part on how to debate on campus. So we would obviously get talking points so that we would have the facts and the data. But then he also taught us about, you know, the tips and tricks. So the most important one being make sure to keep yourself calm, make sure to keep your breath down, your heart rate down so that you can communicate better. Because if you let yourself get flustered especially, and it's easy to do that when somebody is talking at you with nothing but lies or just, you know, fake news.
Have you, huh. So, so he made sure so he to be personally trained one on one by Charlie and have been part of that tiny group at the beginning that got to experience that is really a privilege because you know, being with the organization then afterwards for about a decade and having classes and classes of new staffers coming in and being there for it, Charlie obviously can't be there for all of those.
He's out. He was out touring the country, finding the money, the resources to grow the organization and keep doing what we're doing. So it's completely understandable.
But that was I guess my first one on one time with them. And then when I was finally asked to step out of my entry level role with with Turning Point USA and become a manager for the organization, he was the one. Him and Tyler Boyer are then coo. The two of them personally interviewed me for that position. It was in this little town in Illinois in the outskirts of Chicago. And you know, they sat me down and they told me, you know, this is what we want you to do. This is what, you know, we want you to oversee. And that was my first leadership role within the organization. And, and Charlie himself sat me down for it and, and asked me to do it, and I said yes.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: The rest is history.
So, you know, for the majority of your career at Turning Point and Turning Point Action, you were in the field, which means that you were organizing these students and also sometimes helping to table with them. And quite frequently you have hosted those prove me wrong sessions on campus. You set up folding table, maybe a little tent, and you invite students to debate with you. I'm wondering if, you know, in this decade of time, you noticed any changes in the tenor of such discussions, either firsthand where you were in the hot seat or from any of the dozens of representatives and volunteers that you trained and supervised over the years? Did they become more contentious with the rise in young people think believing that violence against political adversaries is justifiable? Or on the flip side, as Turning Point began to turn the tide of opinion in this demographic, did you find instead more young people being open minded and agreeing with you?
[00:14:46] Speaker B: So I started doing these prove me wrongs myself on campus to help out my field representatives that needed to put on a certain amount of campus events per semester. And sometimes it's difficult to get bigger names out there, right? It's difficult to get Charlie to your campus to do these.
So I, you know, went on there myself and I will say, thankfully, well, I oversaw, when I was in the field, the southern states. So I oversaw Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and those southern states are a lot more red.
And the student bodies are definitely a bit more conservative still, overall liberal. That's just the reality. But they were a lot more conservative and the administrations were a lot more protective of students and their rights and protecting free speech in comparison to other campuses that my colleagues went to and tried to do similar things at, like California. Right. Like these states in the Northeast. And so when I went on campus and did these prove me wrongs, I definitely had students come up to me that disagreed with me. But we were still able to have a peaceful conversation, I think a meaningful conversation. I would post some of these videos that like clips of those discussions and debates online.
And they did great.
I think that that's what then attracted more people to come up and talk to me.
They were pretty respectful. I think it's because the students that I spoke to, they were confused in.
So at this age, students have a big heart, right? They are very emotional, they have a big heart. And their teachers keep telling them that the way to help out others is by Having these left wing views.
I also want to help society as a whole. I want to make the world a better place. But I know that the way to do that is not by increasing the size of government, putting more red tape, but by releasing the individual's imagination and removing as many constraints as possible.
And so when I sat down, that's kind of where I first started, where I leveled with students. Hey, we want the same thing, right? We want to raise the quality of life for people. We want to take people out of poverty. Right.
I just have a way to do that that is something else than tax the rich. Tax the rich. Tax the rich, which is all that the left has to propose or offer to achieve their goals. Right. You know, how are we going to have a better society? Whatever. Oh, just keep taxing. Just keep taxing people. And it doesn't work that way. Obviously. Socialism doesn't work, Communism doesn't work.
So why don't you guys hear me out and maybe you can see that the, what I'm proposing is actually a good idea. And I actually had a lot of people come up to me and I could see that little, that little light turn on in their head once I explain things to them a certain way.
Of course, there were some campuses that were a little bit more contentious. I remember, my gosh, which was this extremely liberal campus in Louisiana, close to the French Quarter. And I remember we went on there one day and I set up my Prove Me Wrong and we had a lot of students come up to us.
It was pretty, it was a pretty normal good day. But then we were gonna do it again the next day. By that time, all of the more extremist left wing student groups on campus got the word out that we were gonna do that. And the next day it wasn't exactly as peaceful. It was extremely contentious. We had hundreds of students around us, swarmed. It was difficult slash impossible to have that one on one conversation even with the mic, because there was, you know, they brought out the mic, they brought out the megaphones, and they brought out the bullhorns. Of course, you know, the administration did not do anything about that, which is called, you know, the dissenters veto. So, so not allowing free speech by drowning out somebody else that you disagree with, which is again also against the First Amendment.
And so that second day, I had to get up from behind the table and walk around with my mic and somebody else with the camera following me, trying to interview these insane leftist students that were there to help shut the event down. And after we had a swarm of people there. Of course, the administration got involved and they. They shut the. They shut the event down after a few hours going back and forth with them. Definitely still got a lot of really good content from it. But that is. That's kind of the. The response that. That I saw happen going forward. Like whenever these extremist leftist groups on campus find out about an event like this is happening and they know that the administration is going to protect them and take their side, they're going to do everything to shut it down. That's why for future events and for bigger speakers than just myself, security is required. Which is crazy. The thought that you need a physical security presence there just to speak, speak freely and debate ideas on a college campus, of all places, which is where you're supposed to do that.
And I have co workers. I had colleagues of mine that would send me videos of their tables getting flipped and their stuff getting pulled and them even getting physically attacked. That didn't exactly happen to me and to us on the campuses that I went to because, again, we're still in the south, so. So it's a little bit different.
But that is. That's. It's definitely gotten progressively worse. There's a larger. Yeah, there's a larger amount of students that believe in what we believe, but that fringe group has become so much more extreme in their ideology and has definitely turned to violence.
And they truly, in their minds, feel justified to do what they're doing. I think that there's a mental health crisis. I don't know what's in the water, but these. These students are not okay. And sometimes, you know, you can't have a debate with those. With those people you have. There are risk to others. And I think for those individuals that can't live amongst, you know, civilized society, they need to be dealt with with the law. And no, I agree.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: I had a. As Candace Morena points out, I had a similar situation on the Mercer College campus in Macon, Georgia. Again, you would have thought that might have been a little safer, but there I was to talk about Atlas Shrugged and capitalism, and I got attacked by a young woman who was trans and holding a, you know, Palestine flag and ended up assaulting me. And the campus said, oh, you know, let us handle the consequences, and we don't want to ruin this young person's young man's life. I said, if we leave the consequences to you, I know what they'll be. You'll end up giving her an award and throwing her a parade. So, no, I'm definitely pressing charges to Provide a deterrent so that other. Other young people who want to have an exchange of ideas don't get victimized by this, as you say, kind of heckler's veto. Now, I want to recognize we've got a lot of questions in the chat, including a couple of super chats that we're going to get to. But first, let's tackle not the elephant in the room, but what happened on September 10th in Orem, Utah. I was right here preparing for my podcast. It was a Wednesday, and I started getting texts coming in.
Where were you? How did you find out? And what were.
What was going through your mind on that day?
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, so I was in West Palm Beach. I was actually at the breakers, which is only, you know, is very close to where I went to my first ever Turning Point USA event, the Winter in West Palm beach event.
And I was having lunch with this lady who's one of the, you know, original, like, first donors of Turning Point, and another friend of mine from another conservative organization. And while we're having lunch, my friend from Fox Noticias calls me, and I'm like, I have to take this just to see if, you know, they need a booking. And he's the one that breaks the news to me. He's like, did you hear what happened? You know, what's going on? Like, can you speak to us? And I'm like, wait, what did happen?
And he tells me that Charlie got shot. And I, you know, paralyzed. I'm like, oh, my God. What do you.
You know, it was just disbelief, unaccept. Like, you can't accept it. What happened? Where? What? He's like, yeah, you know, in Utah, on campus. And I'm like, okay, okay, let me, you know, find out more about this. And he just realizing that I had just found out about it, just let me go and figured he'd talk to me afterwards.
And so I go back to my table and I tell two people that I'm there with you guys. I was just told that Charlie got shot. And, you know, we stop what we're doing, obviously open our phones.
My phone had been blowing up. You know, when I'm having, like, a meeting, I. I silence it, but just hundreds of text messages.
And I find out that this was while he was doing his first prove me wrong of the semester on tour.
And the entire time, like, I'm holding my breath because I guess since because of the recent Trump incident where he got shot, I was hoping that it was a situation like that, that he got shot at, but it wasn't. You know, that serious. And we have witnessed what I think are just miracles or just impossibilities happen, you know, recently protecting a lot of our right wing leaders. And I thought, it's got to be that he's fine, he's fine.
And then obviously, you know, if you're scrolling on Twitter to find out info, you come across videos that people post.
And the first video I saw was the one, you know, from a farther distance.
And it looked terrible. It looked, you know, and it just, it made me pause even right now just thinking about it. I still, you know, it's something that nobody should watch. And if it was bad for me, I can't imagine for his family and his kids that one day in the future are probably going to come across that.
And so we stop everything that we're doing and we head out and we wanted to, before leaving, pass by a place to go, you know, meditate and send him, you know, just the best healing wishes that, that we could.
And you know, the different places there are, they were closed where we went to and where the three of us are in the Uber, I'm still scrolling on my phone and I come across the second video, which is extremely graphic, and I lose it. I lose it. You know, I think from then on, just my nerves were shot for several days afterwards. And even then, even when I saw that graphic video, I think it's just the denial of reality that, you know, Charlie might be gone from this world despite, you know, him being just such a presence in our day, to day life. I mean, to this day, you go online and you see videos of him on campus talking to students or talking on a podcast, it still feels like he's here.
So the, the realization, the contrast, it was just cognitive dissonance. Yeah, that this man could possibly just not be with us and, and in such a horrific way, having lived such a peaceful life. I mean, Charlie had an exemplary record. He did. Didn't have any kind of criminal background or anything. There's no debate on that. Whether he was a good person or not, you know, he didn't deserve that way of, of going out. And that, I think shook me. It shook people. I was with everybody that I knew in my circle were, you know, they were texting me, they were calling me, they were sending me dms because they've known me for such a long time and they know that I've been with Turning Point for such a long time and that it's such a huge part of my life that they knew I would be really really shaken up. And I was. I didn't get to those messages till much, you know, later on, but of course I'm thankful for people reaching out and.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: And I could just imagine, you know, if I felt that way, I could not imagine what his family felt like. I couldn't imagine what.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: In. In a way, I mean, this was his family. I mean, not just.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Biological or, you know, his wife or children. But. But I know because I've been there. And.
And I mean, to. To grow from this very tiny team to sk. Scale up the. Just endless days and nights and weeks and years of, you know, unpitying effort and unswerving dedication towards a goal that. That does create a band of brothers and sisters.
Question for you, and then I. I will get into the. The chats.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Were you surprised by the kind of macabre celebrations online about.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: I wasn't surprised, but I was equally as disgusted.
I feel like this is something like I. This is the reaction I've come to expect from that unhinged left. I guess what surprised me the most was the fact that it wasn't such a minority of people as I once thought it was. I really thought it was just a fringe of people that wished death upon their political enemies and people who disagreed with somebody else, philosophically, ideologically.
And, you know, I would see these heinous, heinous tweets on X.
And there were. They had hundreds of thousands of likes. So it's not just the one despicable person that posted it. It had, again, hundreds and thousands of likes. And so it made me realize there's a lot more people than I thought that are mentally unhinged, that have completely lost their moral compass.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: The.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: I guess the one good thing that I saw come out of this is that for the first time ever, ever, I saw repercussions for people that were speaking ill of Charlie, that were celebrating his death.
For the first time ever, I saw stories of people getting fired and losing their jobs for. For wishing death and. And speaking negatively about this guy who. All he did was go on campus and have public, civil debates with other people.
This kind of accountability from the left has never been put into place before.
Definitely has happened with the right, but with the left, they protect their own. I mean, we still kind of see that be the case today with a lot of Democrat leadership and some other crazy local. Well, candidates nowadays that are in the news. But I thought that it was great because I don't condone censorship, obviously, but if you are an employer, why would you keep Somebody on staff and on payroll that wishes the death from an innocent person again, somebody that's never hurt anybody before just because they think differently than them, that is an unhinged individual, somebody that has some kind of a mental illness, somebody that's unsafe to be around. Right. And I thought it was great to see some of that accountability.
But yes, it pissed me off.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: It was terrible. So. All right, two super chats here.
Fountainhead forum. Thank you for the super chat. Not really a question, but maybe you have a reflection on this. He writes, Javier Malay spoke about Charlie on the 16th of September at CPAC Paraguay. He was so somber, so different from other Malay speeches.
It really affected him. So, I don't know, maybe, you know, given your.
As not the Hispanic, you know, but you do have had various roles as a sort of conservative Hispanic spokeswoman on different venues. And so that means that you have a need to be in touch with kind of the pulse with both Latin America and also Hispanic Americans here. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yes, actually it was, it was truly wild for me to see that this, that the news of Charlie's untimely passing affected so many people in Latin America and that they knew who he was or quickly upon learning about this tragic news, looked him up online, saw his videos, translated to Spanish. Thankfully we have technology that does that, automatic AI translations where people can see these debates and these, you know, discussions that Charlie had in Spanish. And they were so passionate about sending their support for Charlie. I have a weekly show slash podcast that I do in Spanish and it goes live every, every Sunday. I obviously didn't do one the week that that happened, but when I did finally come back, it was, you know, crazy to see how many people would say in the context in the comment section, I'm from Spain, I'm from this country. We're sending our thoughts and prayers.
This had worldwide repercussions because this isn't just an American politics thing. It's. It's a worldwide problem where you have this group of individuals, these collectivists, these, you know, people that support ideas that go against human nature are our natural tendencies towards freedom, towards individualism. And you always are going to have that fringe group of people that go against that because they don't want to stand on their own and they, they harbor the absolute worst thoughts for others. And once they come to power, I mean, they destroy entire nations. And so this individualist versus collectivist theme is definitely not a limited to the United States. And so I feel like that's why so many people across the globe could empathize with what happened. And anybody that looked up Charlie then and looked up any of his videos could quickly see that he's not this monster that the left wing media had put him out to be. Right.
Which is another huge problem. The fact that so many outlets mischaracterize and just slander somebody's name for having these thoughts and these beliefs in, in freedom and individualism.
And so it's easy for people to become brainwashed. But around the world, I think the consensus was is that, well, they, they, they martyred, they martyred a young, intelligent, kind person. And our hearts go out to that.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that has always been. Of our nearly 2 million subscribers here at, on YouTube, at the Atlas Society, I think maybe 250,000 are from within Venezuela. So I, you know, I think that in places that have experienced socialism firsthand, there's a real hunger for people who are talking about alternatives. Okay, this one is another super chat, but it's kind of a logistical question. I don't know if you'll have the answer. Drain. Christopher Baker asks, why does TP usa why does Turning Point have America Fest so close to Christmas?
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so that is a question I, we got all the time. And it really just boils down to the fact that it's when people are off of work for the holidays the most. It's very close to. So students.
And remember, all of these conferences started out student centered.
These conferences were done during the summer and during the winter, those periods of time when students would be out of classes. And at least here in the United States, most students are out of classes from December 15 to around January 7. This has been the case for years. It's always like on my birthday, I had to go back to school.
And so those few weeks are, you know, the moments where students are out and a lot of adults also, because for America Fest, it's, it's for absolutely everybody. It's not just for students.
Those few weeks are the only weeks that everybody has the most time off. And once you start, I think just, you know, the holidays, as in like New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and all of that, you know, you just lose people. So it has to be done between that period of when kids get out of class on the 15th and before Christmas. That has seemed to be the sweet spot. Really wish we could do more to accommodate others. But there are different conferences year round.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: As well.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, that's the only time that. That another campus tour or Young Women's Leadership Summit, or, you know, I mean, of the summits, high school leadership summits. I mean, I remember the first one I went to, it was like a couple of hundred students in a hotel, you know, meeting room. And now you go, and there are 5,000, 10,000 people there.
So when you and I spoke five weeks ago, you had a prediction that this tragedy would become a true turning point, that many young people who may have been on the sidelines would step forward and want to get involved with the movement that Charlie started. So what has happened?
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah, and it's crazy to think about the coincidences that, you know, it's the name of the organization, and it. And Charlie's passing, truly, I think, has been a turning point in this nation's history from here on forth. But since I last saw the numbers, apparently there have been almost 132,000 inquiries into starting new Turning Point USA chapters on campuses. This includes high schools and colleges.
And there have been more than 800,000 new online signups to get involved with the organization.
So something that I have never seen, that nobody has ever seen working for either organization before.
And in such a short, quick period of time, the amounts of new donations and the amount of new donors that have come in to give in any kind of contribution is also historic. So I think that this has definitely lit a fire amongst people that before, we're just sitting on the sidelines, I spoke at a vigil for Charlie at my alma mater, Florida International University, about, I think, a week or a week and a half after it happened. And from the crowd, and there were about probably 300, 400 people at that auditorium. I asked those in attendance to raise their hand if they've ever been involved with anything Turning Point related, had come to a conference, started a chapter, done anything, a lot of hands went up. Naturally, I knew also a lot of people in the crowd, so it was emotional for me. It was kind of like a family reunion that brought different generations of people involved with Turning Point back together again.
And then I asked people to raise their hand if this is the first time you ever come out to anything quite quasi political.
And a lot of hands went up, and I told, you know, everybody, look around.
This is what the left has started.
This is going to be a turning point in our nation's history for the better.
I think that Charlie is smiling from up above in and seeing this and seeing that so many more people have found their voice. Um, I know just in my personal circle and in via social media that there's so many people that are just like, I am done being quiet about what I believe in. I'm going to post what I believe in to my stories to my Instagram on X.
I don't care. I don't care anymore about being censored. Like, what have I to lose? What have I to lose if I stay quiet?
Then we let their side win. A side that doesn't allow us to live freely. Right. Why would I want to live in a society where I can't speak freely? That's being bound. That's almost like living under a dictatorship or a dystopia.
So the consequence of me not speaking up, the consequence of me not taking action, the consequence of me not getting involved is losing my personal freedoms, myself and future.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Losing generations, losing freedom, but also losing integrity. Right.
Losing a sense of authenticity.
And when you're falsifying your preferences, when you're self censoring, yes, there are external stakes that are there, but there are also internal stakes as well. And I think that what Ayn Rand talks about is living an integrated life and living, you know, a life of principle is, is something that is, is also can be lost. Now, when I joined Turning Points Advisory Board nine years ago and started speaking at some of the events, including my absolute, very favorite, the Young Women's Leadership Summit, seemed to me at the time the focus was free markets, limited government and fiscal responsibility. You know, Big Guv sucks.
What? Well, that has kind of remained at the core. It seems to me, at least as an outsider, that that focus has expanded over time to include more of an emphasis on social issues like abortion and much more religious in its tenor. Is that a fair assessment?
[00:45:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. And definitely what Charlie himself would speak on the most towards, you know, the final years of his short life was more on culture, was more on social issues, was more on his personal faith.
Obviously the core of the organization is still strong and it's still centered around limited government and supporting capitalist ideology.
But they say that politics is downstream from culture. And so he went to the root of what he believed was the problem. Turning Point expanded and created a separate department for faith. So they had a faith department separate from what is a student like just student on campus activities.
And to really dive into that. And the reason for it is he thought, and well, he didn't just think this is a statistic reality that a lot of people that have more right wings, values and views attend church. They're regular church Goers, however, they are not voting in the same percentages that people that don't regularly go to church do. So we have. So it was an untapped demographic, an untapped block of people with values that mostly similarly aligned to conservative principles, but that were not going out to vote and that they. There were so many churches in America that had leaders that just kept completely silent on all political issues and matters, despite them, you know, despite them having really a moral obligation to somehow lead people and lead their congregations in a way that, I mean, it just supported and defended their right to exist. I mean, if I was, if I was a church leader, if I, you know, if that was what my life centered around, I would think that it would be in my own personal self interest to support political side political causes that defend my right to exist. And that's something I believe in as well. You know, you have your freedom of religion and freedom, freedom of, you know, not having any kind of religion. That's just a core western value that we have in this country.
And these people were just sitting it out on the sidelines.
So Charlie went to this kind of untapped demographic and really brought them in. And he personally, he personally did stick to, to this moral code that was, that came from his faith in God.
However, as a whole, the organization, you know, it still is very much, very much centered and principled around, you know, limited government, because that is what we're trying to. That's what we're trying to bring this country back to. Exactly, exactly.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes.
So what I'm hearing from you is that it was both kind of a strategic move as well as a reflection of Charlie's kind of personal evolution. So for those not as familiar with Turning Points Trajectory, and I know we've touched a little bit about Turning Point versus Turning Point action.
Tell us what.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: Yes, the difference is. Yeah, yeah.
So Turning Point USA was the first organization that Charlie started. It's a 501C3, meaning it is a non profit organization. It's an educational organization.
It's got its chapters on high school campuses and college campuses. It's a student educational nonprofit organization, meaning that at these different campuses and in these different chapters, students can talk about capitalism versus socialism, advocate for capitalism instead of socialism, advocate for limited government instead of big government.
What they can't do is endorse the candidate. Right. They can't say, vote for this person, vote for this party that delves into.
That would violate C3 status. So it is an educational organization to teach students about the differences between Big government and limited government. And then Turning Point action started in 2019. That is a C4.
So it can definitely endorse candidates. It can definitely tell people to vote for a certain person party.
I transitioned to that C4 in 2022.
The difference there is we work with the community. So it's not really a student led organization or movement. We work with absolutely everybody and our focus is getting people to.
Getting people to.
Yeah, to register to vote and more importantly turn in their ballots. The biggest effort Turning Point Action has had recently, like all we're doing right now is putting out ballot chasing efforts, especially those like absentee ballots in the states that have early voting and that send those out. Obviously we would want, you know, a one day voting situation. But since that is not the case, we have to beat the left at what they do. And the numbers have been ran by our teams and we have the numbers to win elections. So we have enough registered Republicans on our side. But unfortunately not all of them are turning out to vote. Not all of them are turning in their absentee ballot. And so our efforts revolve around targeting those people that don't, especially in those swing states via temporary workers, also via our Chase the Vote program. Getting. Because we're chasing ballots and in states where we don't have paid staff to chase ballots, we have these things called coalitions. So it's kind of like clubs for the community. Again, any age can join and we teach them to first download the Turning Point Action app so that they know how to use it. This is a revolutionary thing that was officially launched the year before last. So not 2024, 2023 and anybody can download it. And if you download it, you will be able to see who your 15 closest Republican neighbors are. So let's say I opened up the app right now on my phone. I could see based on Geolocation, who is registered Republican in my vicinity. And the idea is to get people involved within their, their block. Right.
Not everybody has the time, the energy or anything to make 500 phone calls, knock 500 doors, get involved with any one political campaign or anything like that. But you can introduce yourself to your neighbors and say, hey, I'm Trianna, I'm your local, like conservative and you know, I, I'm here to help with anything that you want. By the way, did you know that you know the Atlas Society is having a gala here in Miami, which it did, you know, in a month or two. Do you want to go to that with me or do you want to go to a Miami Young Republicans future meeting with me, we could go together. And so you build that natural, organic relationship with people. And then when it comes time to vote, when early voting starts, I can contact those people and say, hey, it's Driana again. Did you know that early voting just started for this election?
Or if there's a special local election like there is here in Miami right now for Miami mayor? Did you know that early voting started for the Miami mayoral race?
Did you get your absentee ballot? No or yeah, you did. Do you want me to drive you to go turn it in? It's just getting as many people as possible to do to put in their little grain of sand. Again, we're not trying to get.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: It is definitely a lot of work and I think that people need to be willing to put in the work, otherwise it's not going to happen. So of course we now have just four more minutes and I had like 10 other questions to ask you. Tomorrow I am flying to Pennsylvania to give a speech in Philadelphia at UPenn.
And especially given my experience on one of my most recent campus speeches, I have donors, not to mention parents, who are like, well, are you going to be safe? Is there going to be security there? I can only imagine that those concerns would have to be exposed exponentially larger for you and for anybody who has a public facing role at Turning Point. So I'm wondering if there, you know, have been any reviews or changes in terms of handling the threat of violence and how do you handle fears about your safety to the extent that you can talk about it?
[00:55:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
I am thankful for definitely not having said, seen even a smidgen of the kind of repercussions and violent threats that some of my coworkers have in more left wing states. Remember, I live in Florida, I'm based out of Miami. We don't play that here.
You know, leftists don't get just a pat in the back or, you know, slap on the wrist if they do anything that's illegal, threatening, harassing, attacking, any of that.
So I'm in a state where I'm a lot more safe. I also take personal responsibility and accountability for my own personal safety, if you know what I mean.
So I'm not an easy target or an easy victim. Definitely.
Open carry passed as law just the 6th of this month. So a few days ago.
Thankful to live in a state like this one.
[00:56:25] Speaker A: Yes. Just, just remember to check your purse dream before you go to the airport.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: And that's. Yes, that's a personal story. Maybe we can talk about in the future, I accidentally, you know, living the crazy life, passed my. My personal weapon through tsa. That was not fun.
But I haven't gotten those kinds of security threats. However, back at headquarters in Arizona, there's definitely been a lot more security, set up a lot more stricter measures to come in and out of the campuses and the different buildings, making sure that, you know, ID and like, key cards are used. There's a fence that went up around the campus that hadn't been put in there before.
So, yes, they definitely are taking a lot more measures to ensure our staff security, especially at HQ and then remotely. I would definitely say, you know, we definitely feel supported, though, in getting tips and suggestions for keeping ourselves safe.
But at least for me, I come from a generation of, well, my grandfather left Spain because of Francisco Franco, ended up in Cuba. My father and my mother came from Cuba because of Fidel Castro, ended up here in the United States. And so there's a family history of political persecution and repercussion. And if I don't take a stand here, where else is there to go? So I'm not afraid to stand on principle and for what I believe in, come at whatever cost that it may come.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: All right, well, next time I go to campus headquarters of Turning Point, I guess on one level I'll be relieved to see the stepped up security, but I'll also be sad that it's necessary in this day and age. So, anyway, this has been really wonderful, Draina. I know that you are doing dozens of interviews a week in your new role as media spokeswoman. So I'm glad that you took a little bit of time to be with me, and I hope that I see you very soon. So thank you.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thank you guys.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: And thanks to everybody for your questions and your super chats.
As I said, it was going to be a bit of a different and special episode, so if I didn't get to all of your questions, I hope some of the questions I asked covered what you wanted to know.
I hope you will join us. Next week. After my trip to Pennsylvania, I will be interviewing again, returning historian Jonathan alongside his fellow historian, co author Lucas Morel, to talk about their new book, Measuring the Man, the Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln. See you then.
