Turning Point USA, the extremist-friendly, Donald Trump-loving organization for MAGA youth, is having one of its worst weeks yet from a public relations perspective.
And this is an organization that’s made a habit of backing losing candidates and whose leader is known to rant against Martin Luther King Jr., so this is a sign things have truly gone off the rails.
Last week, Arizona state Rep. Austin Smith, a Republican and a senior director at TPUSA’s nonprofit arm Turning Point Action, suspended his re–election campaign after accusations of election fraud. Smith is accused of forging signatures to qualify for re-election, a charge he called “silly” in the announcement ending his campaign. It’s a seeming act of karmic justice, given he’s shamelessly peddled the right-wing conspiracy theory that Maricopa County officials have fraudulently altered ballot signatures to Republicans’ detriment.
But the election fraud allegations looming over TPUSA don’t end there.
Less than a week later, two men with deep ties to the organization are among the 11 “fake electors” (18 people in total) who were indicted in Arizona over their alleged role in the Trump campaign’s so-called fake elector scheme. That was the harebrained 2020 election plot that involved conservatives in states that Joe Biden won sending “alternate” slates of electors to Congress on the false premise that Trump had won them instead.
One of those accused is Tyler Bowyer, a Turning Point higher-up who has rankled conservatives online with his TPUSA chest-beating. Bowyer is chief operating officer for Turning Point Action, and he’s a committeeman for the Republican National Committee, as well. Interestingly, he tried — and failed — to pass a resolution earlier this year that would have obligated the RNC to pay fake electors’ legal bills. How prescient. And though he’s yet to address the charges on social media, his boss, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, is claiming the indictment is a political hit job. On X, Kirk said Bowyer and others involved in the fake elector scheme were just doing things liberals have done in past elections. (If you feel like you’ve heard that before, that’s because it’s a conservative talking point that’s been debunked many times over.)








