Jenny Beth visits the Turning Point USA Headquarters in Arizona and interviews Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer. Tyler has an impressive resume in conservative politics and he's using his experience to build the infrastructure to support the conservative movement, to win on issues and elections.
Jenny Beth visits the Turning Point USA Headquarters in Arizona and interviews Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer. Tyler has an impressive resume in conservative politics and he's using his experience to build the infrastructure to support the conservative movement, to win on issues and elections.
Website: https://www.tpusa.com/
Twitter/X: @TylerBowyer @JennyBethM
Tyler Bowyer (00:00):
Really proud of the fact that we've created an entire ecosystem, arguably much, much bigger than the establishments now, where now we are giving young people an alternative to say you can go out and live your conservative activism
Narrator (00:12):
Roots keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom to Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:45):
As America goes through a phase of major challenges, you may have a hard time finding hope for the future. This episode will change that. My next guest, Tyler Boyer, is a leader in the conservative movement. He served as president of one of the largest chapters of college Republicans in the United States. He was appointed by governor Jan Brewer to the Arizona Board of Regents when he was still in college, where even as a young adult, he was standing up to the establishment in the Republican Party. He has served as a precinct committee man, congressional advisory chairman, legislative district chairman, and county chairman of one of the largest counties in America. He's currently the National Committee man to the R N C from Arizona. He also helped organize the first Trump rally in 2015, and he did all of this before his mid thirties. Tyler joined Charlie Kirk at Turning Point U SS A in 2015 and now serves as the chief operating officer for both Turning Point U Ss A and Turning Point action. What Tyler is helping to build a turning point is incredible and will pay dividends for the conservative movement for generations to come. So Tyler, thank you so much and to Charlie Kirk as well for letting us take over your studios here at Turning Point. How did you get involved working at Turning Point?
Tyler Bowyer (02:08):
Well, first off, me Casa Sue caa. So anytime that Tea Party Patriots or Jenny Beth Barton or anyone else wants to be over down here, this is open doors for everyone in the conservative movement. Yeah, short history is, this is, I met Charlie back in, it was 2014 I believe it was. So it was about a year, a little more than a year and a half after Turning Point had started and he had done something, he was mainly in Illinois at the time, so that was where his fight was. And if you remember back in 2012, that was the reelection of Barack Obama and the reelection campaign was in Chicago where Charlie's from. And so that's really what lit a fire under him. And that's kind of where Charlie Kirk spawned out of, most people don't realize this, but he spawned out of the reelect campaign of Barack Obama being the oppositional force as this young kid that was just really supported by a lot of local activists, a lot of donors, a lot of tea party groups. That's where you got to start. And I was doing the same thing because I was a little bit older. I was in college a few years older than him, and I had gone through college and realized there was just not a ton of support for young conservatives. And I was one of the only young guys showed up to tea party meetings
(03:20):
In my group and relative, I mean, I was in college, there were some middle-aged people for the most part, but no college kids. Just realizing there wasn't anything that existed. I wanted to do my own thing too. That's when someone was like, you got to meet this kid Charlie in Illinois. And so I flew out there and it was negative 10 degrees outside.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:41):
That's cold.
Tyler Bowyer (03:41):
Illinois. Yeah, Illinois. And no wonder why we moved out to Arizona. But yeah, we became fast friends and I realized that there were very few people that have the enigmatic spirit like you do and Charlie does, which to get people to follow them and to do things for the right reasons, which is to save the country and put the country before everything else. And so that is where I think we became fast friends, but also really focused on building the infrastructure pieces that the movement hadn't built, which I know you're focused on too.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:15):
And you were in school at A S U
Tyler Bowyer (04:19):
A S U? Yeah,
Jenny Beth Martin (04:20):
At Arizona State University.
Tyler Bowyer (04:21):
So I was at A S U, and oddly enough, this is kind of a very, I'll give the abbreviated version of this. The governor at the time I became the student, I was the college Republican president.
(04:34):
And so we had student body president elections and we decided we wanted to try to run our college Republican presidents at all four of the A S U campuses. And so I got kind of picked to do it even though I didn't have Greek life experience or anything like that. And in the midst of that, the governor actually appointed me to the Board of Regents. And in Arizona we have a very progressive student trustee position, student regent position where it's full voting privileges. You serve for two years and there's only 10 members that cover all three public universities. So it kind of threw me right in the political fire. And I realized really quickly, I was the most conservative member of the Board of Regents as well, even though a few considered themselves very conservative. And it came down to Medicaid expansion and so many people remember that fight. But I was in college, I was a young guy, I was on the board of Regents and the governor here, governor Brewer in Arizona had sold out to Obama at the time. And if you remember that same thing happened to Ohio and a few other states
(05:34):
To make Obamacare work and expand Medicaid. And she had come to the Board of Regents looking for an endorsement, a unanimous endorsement of the Regents. And I said, oh, I'm not going to do that. And I was the student regent the loan, the young guy that was like, and she put me in a room with her and she's like, I know you're going to end up supporting me. And I said, no, I'm not seeking to embarrass you, but I'm probably going to embarrass you because I'm not going to go out there and vote to support it. And I didn't. And then a lot of people were like,
Jenny Beth Martin (06:05):
You got to get more involved with the party,
Tyler Bowyer (06:07):
You got to do all these things. And that was about the same time that I had met Charlie, and that's when this entire thing of just dedicating life to activism became a reality. And it was a scary thing. Not a lot of money in activism.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:25):
So
Tyler Bowyer (06:25):
There's not a lot of career prospects, at least at the time in activism. There were no full-time Tea party employees at that time. There were no full-time grassroots activists. And so we had to build that ourselves and that story very well. We live as by our means as we possibly can, but the movement never had anything like that before. It was all professionals that were basically elements of the McCain or Bush factions or the establishment. And I realized real quickly that all of our young people were getting sucked up into those things because there wasn't an alternative. And so really proud of the fact that we've created an entire ecosystem, arguably much, much bigger than the establishments now, where now we're giving young people an alternative to say, you can go out and live your conservative activism roots and not have to be forced into a different career or have to go work for the establishment or have to go work in Capitol Hill. You can actually go do things that are going to save the country here,
Jenny Beth Martin (07:31):
And you employ people here in Arizona and around the entire country as well. So some people can be employed with you and still be at home,
Tyler Bowyer (07:40):
Make a
Jenny Beth Martin (07:40):
Difference at home.
Tyler Bowyer (07:41):
We have activists in all 50 states. We have employees I think in now 38 states.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:46):
That's amazing.
Tyler Bowyer (07:47):
Which is really cool. And we're focused on the C three side. We're focused on nonpartisan grassroots activism on the C four side at Turning Point action, which is what is my passion right now where I put dedicate a hundred percent of my time to is we focus on the key target states and the partisan politics that exist there. And so trying to make the Republican party a better place, trying to make the conservative movement a better place, and then ultimately trying to win elections in places that we've never won before that we're losing dramatically because infrastructure hasn't been built the same way that the left has built it
Jenny Beth Martin (08:27):
Right. And the left has amazing infrastructure. You and I have talked about that all the time. We can be completely at odds with them philosophically and still understand that they have amazing infrastructure.
Tyler Bowyer (08:41):
Yeah, it's like in high school, a lot of boys would argue over Chevy versus Ford, but ultimately you can always respect what the opposition has built and the faster your car and the more functional car vehicle. And that's really where we're at right now is infrastructure is just building the building blocks. It's operational stuff. And a lot of that's not very sexy. It's a lot
Jenny Beth Martin (09:08):
Sexier
Tyler Bowyer (09:08):
To argue over Trump versus DeSantis or whatever, but when you step back and you realize neither Trump nor DeSantis nor anyone else can win if you don't build the infrastructure because the left right now has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into things that we have even batted an eye at. And once you realize that and you understand that and you preach that gospel to others, you start realizing what it actually is going to take to win. And the good news is that organically we're already doing very well as a country within the movement, but it's going to take extra effort in those key target states and those key target districts in order to win.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:54):
That's right. Let's talk about that in just a moment. Let's talk a little bit more about what you've built here, because in order to build the infrastructure to help activists around the country, we can look at, you and Charlie have done here. You've built infrastructure here just supporting your own organization, and now you want to take a similar model. And you and I and our teams have been working a lot behind the scenes and at some point we'll talk a lot more about that publicly building infrastructure for activists to run the country for next year. Did you have a business degree? How did you get, because you're running a business here,
Tyler Bowyer (10:35):
You're helping
Jenny Beth Martin (10:35):
Charlie run a business. It's not just activism.
Tyler Bowyer (10:39):
Yeah, I was really blessed. I worked for some Fortune 100 companies prior to coming here at a very young age. My dad has always been worked for a big business. Actually, it's really interesting. A lot of different elements of what we've built at Turning Point have been based around really direct reflections of small to medium sized businesses, some large business practices as well. So the most part is the sales aspect of what we do. Almost every dime of what we raise goes into bodies. So we put almost everything that we raise. We have very little overhead at turning point. Almost every dollar for dollar that goes in goes into staff salaries because ultimately you, what the left has figured out a long time ago is you cannot support a grassroots movement without having full-time people there to help shepherd those people or to be a resource or to be in the community.
(11:31):
And so they've put a heavy emphasis on the left into, on the C three and C four side, the soft money side of making sure that you have embedded people into the communities that you have to win. And so for us at Turning Point U S A on the C three side, we've been trying to win background with young people. And actually this last election cycle, there was a couple of surveys done that showed massive drop-off on the left where people have abandoned the Democrat party to become more independent or more conservative. In fact, Obama voters that were about 40%, there's a 40% difference between Obama versus Romney and Obama versus McCain are now just voting for Democrats at a plus two or a plus four, depending upon what survey you look at. So there's been massive drop off with millennials that are under the age of 41st time voters that voted for Obama that are seen like, oh my gosh, this country's going in the wrong direction. And that's been our work, right? It's like, okay, well, we have to embed people in the right places. That starts at the collegiate level, which is so hard. High schools, we are now our operational and churches and we have church chapters and working with church relationships across America, and then on our C four side is embedding into the right areas precincts to make sure that we have full-time people there to again, cultivate a culture of voting and voter activism. And then also keeping an eye out for nefarious activities, which we know exist
Jenny Beth Martin (13:09):
In all
Tyler Bowyer (13:10):
These key target states to the left tries to perpetrate in order to manipulate elections. And so that's our work in our glory at this point.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:18):
That's very good. Okay. And then you learned, so you were active in college, you were on the Regents, and then you met up with Charlie. You also wound up becoming a county party chairman for the largest county in the country. Is it the largest county?
Tyler Bowyer (13:36):
It's the fourth largest county in the country, largest Republican held county at the time. This was almost, it's hard to believe it was over a decade ago.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:45):
It starts to make you feel old when you can say that.
Tyler Bowyer (13:47):
I feel very old
Jenny Beth Martin (13:48):
Almost 10 years ago. You're very young. So
Tyler Bowyer (13:49):
It was right about the same time that I met Charlie.
(13:52):
It was just slightly after that I became the chairman of the Republican Party of Maricopa County. And at the time, it was the largest Republican held county, if you remember 2016, so that was my term, 14 to 16. Trump won Maricopa County beat Hillary Clinton. And a lot of people don't know this or remember this, but we hosted what became the first Trump rally ever. So in 2015, it was about a couple of weeks, maybe two weeks after he came down to the golden escalators and get a message from, at the time, Corey Lewandowski, who was the campaign manager for Trump, and he said, Hey, your state party doesn't really want to host us. Because remember, we had McCain and Flake at the time.
(14:39):
Our state party was really controlled by those guys. They hop skipped and jumped to whatever John McCain said at the time, even though they were kind of lying and telling people they didn't. And so it was like, yeah, they won't host us because we want to host an non-legal immigration rally. And I said, oh, non-legal alien rally. Sure we'll do that. And we were excited to do it. And I was the young chair and that turned in. They were like, do you think you can get 200 people in a room? And I was like, yeah, we can handle 200 people. I've got 4,000 precinct committeemen here. And they're like, what? You
Jenny Beth Martin (15:13):
Have
Tyler Bowyer (15:14):
That many precinct committeemen? That's why it's the largest county committee in the country is 4,000 precinct committeemen a lot,
Jenny Beth Martin (15:21):
And they're all elected on the ballot,
Tyler Bowyer (15:23):
All elected, and then if you don't get elected, you can get appointed afterwards. And so we ended up hosting this thing, turned into, it went from 200 people and offering free refreshments to, we had 8,000 people sign up and we filled the room with 5,000 people, and I was trying to get people to speak. Nobody wanted to speak. They were all committed to other candidates, whether it was Cruz or
(15:47):
So many others. And we were big fans of Ted Cruz and others. But my big, the way that I look at the party is we should be getting as many of these people who want to run for president in front of people as possible. And I kind of liked what Donald Trump was saying, but it only been a few weeks. And so we get there, and so they're like, I had to speak because nearly nobody else spoke. So I opened up that thing and I had to convince Sheriff Joe at the time to speak, who was a Rick Perry guy. Ultimately, it turned into the bonkers, what we know now as Trump rallies. They're like wash, rinse and repeat. And they started doing that over and over and over across the country, but that's really what kicked everything off in the Trump media. He went from 14th in the polls to second or third at the time in Iowa, and then the rest is history. So it was a lot of fun.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:37):
Yeah, that's very good. And so you've taken that knowledge of how you run things at the precinct level and now you're applying what you know about that to what you're doing with Turning Point action and explain more about the targeted counties and districts and precincts.
Tyler Bowyer (16:54):
Yeah, and you guys have been tremendous at this with the Tea Party Patriots and I really view, for better or for worse, tea Party Patriots has a real center with some of our older activists, like our middle age to retiree community. And we've been in the younger community,
Jenny Beth Martin (17:12):
Which
Tyler Bowyer (17:13):
Is more of the high school and college. And it really requires an entire village to go after these things because once you start realizing that everything depends on the precinct, everything down to making sure that our voters are accounted for, that we are covering our polls, our poll, watching that, all of those things, and you start realizing how important that is to protect the precinct. And so our efforts, what we've really tried to get into is take the knowledge of being involved with the party and that interaction with some of our more older precinct committeemen, who, that's our typical activist in the Republican party, retired and all that, and then marrying them with some of our younger activists who historically got hijacked by the establishment to go work for campaigns. Now we're kind of redirecting them into a more activism element, which is saying, Hey, campaigns are great, and you can kind of go visit those and pop in, but what we want you to be focused on are these core activism elements that need focus throughout the rest of your life, which most of our people don't usually figure out until they're 55, 60, 65 years old. So now we're educating them and making them aware of these things that now 15, 20, 25, which those are seeds that are planted for a lifetime and will ultimately, I may think about how awesome our activists are going to be. I know the work that you guys have done is educate and organize so many people who were new at an older age,
(18:46):
Which I know nothing,
Jenny Beth Martin (18:48):
Teach
Tyler Bowyer (18:48):
Me what I need to do activism wise. We're planning hundreds of thousands, millions of these kids now imagine where they're going to be when they're retired. I think so much further ahead, and again, I think that's where the left has been good. The left has just been better at like, oh, you need to organize in your community at an earlier age. And that's why we see today, I think so many of those hippie babies from the sixties and seventies who became actively involved at that time on the left where they are today, your John Kerry's for example, is like they were activists and then he ended up ultimately becoming a major factor within an administration. Those are things that never existed on our side. You had this one track way of getting into politics. Now we have all these activists who are going to grow up and the movement be a lot more centered around their ideology, which is cultural, which is religious, which is family oriented. And I think that that's going to help us a lot.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:50):
And I think that those activists who are conservative in college, it's very rare for them to waiver from that. If you can continue to be conservative when you leave home and while you're in college, it's unlikely that you're going to waiver from that foundation. And it's very good that they are educated and understand what it takes to be active. Because what we saw when the Tea Party movement began, and I think also as the Trump movement began, which a lot of the Tea Party movement went into the Trump Trump movement, but the beginning of both, you have these people who are very, very angry at the government and at what's happening in society, and they don't know how to solve the problem. And constantly, my team and I we're constantly saying, okay, how do we take all this passion and energy and love for our country and turn it into action, into productive action? And what can we do that will make a difference? Sometimes making a difference is fighting a noble fight, even if you're not going to win the debt ceiling fight. And there are other times I wanted to win that, but we did not ultimately win. It was still the right battle to fight. Other times you're engaged because you know have to be smart enough to be able to win, otherwise you're not going to make a difference.
Tyler Bowyer (21:13):
And I talked to Jeff Davis on your team quite frequently about this, which is relationally centered politics, which is we have to build real, and obviously we've had this conversation about relational politics, which is we need to be focused on. I think a lot of times, number one, we haven't provided the right tools to people to make it easy. Like a new person walks into the door and they don't know what they're doing in politics. You have to be able to give them something to do rapidly or they
Jenny Beth Martin (21:51):
Lose interest or flame out, they
Tyler Bowyer (21:53):
Lose interest or they
Jenny Beth Martin (21:54):
Think it's pointless.
Tyler Bowyer (21:55):
And a lot of this is like I equate it to you have a lot of friends that listen and talk radio and they'll listen and talk radio. They'll be into it for a month and then they'll delete it off their dial. Or sports is the same way people get fanatical about sports for a time, especially if you're in the playoffs and then they're like Fairweather fan for the next four years. And so it's the same thing. It's just human nature. And so the more that you can show people, again, people are more likely to remain a fan, they're more likely to remain engaged if they have a friend and if they have something to do, we got to provide the tools to help them do things. We got to provide a place where people, oh, I'm a lot like that guy. I'm a lot like that girl. I'm a mom and there's moms here and I'm a dad and there's dad's here. I'm a young guy and there's young guys here. I'm a retiree and there's retirees here.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:49):
And not being the 20 year old who walks into the ri and you're two decades younger than everyone
Tyler Bowyer (22:55):
In the room. Honestly, that's part of the story with me and Charlie is we shouldn't exist. We pretty much don't exist. We didn't at the time because that's what happened. A young person walks into that room and they don't feel
Jenny Beth Martin (23:09):
It happened to me in my twenties too.
Tyler Bowyer (23:11):
You don't feel the warm, cuddly, inviting spirit of politics. And that's politics is prickly, right? Not many of those situations happen. So it's thinking about those things and thinking about, okay, well how do we create those environments because we deserve those. How do we create things where at least if they don't feel the warm cuddles, the warm vibes from those, how do we give them something to do where they feel like they're making impact right away? That's where my focus is every day. And again, that's a lot of relational driven things,
Jenny Beth Martin (23:45):
Right? It is. So you guys just had a conference in West Palm Beach and you rolled out a whole new project, talk about that project.
Tyler Bowyer (23:57):
So we just launched Chase the vote. So we've been working on it for probably about a year and a half, about 18 months, and ultimately culminated in this event, which is one of the largest in the movement. I think it's really the tone setter for this next election. And we saw that because I think we saw some stabilizing happening in polls for those people who showed up and those that didn't from the presidential field. But yeah, we hosted this event down at West Palm Beach. It was called Act Con, which was short for action conference for Turning Point action. And we invited everybody. We had a lot of our friends there, you guys were there in a big way, tea Party Patriots and so many others. And we launched Chase the vote, which is this focus on offense. We've heard a lot of things on defense, and this is the critical place to talk with our activists is that we're never going to abandon election integrity. Election integrity is number one, and good defense is when championships, that's your defense election, integrity's defense, the
Jenny Beth Martin (24:58):
Defense,
Tyler Bowyer (24:58):
It's protecting the sacred vote that we all have individual vote that represents our individual voice in an individualistic society, which is our republic. And that is we don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. We vote in numerous different ways to send representatives to represent us for our constitutional right at the state level, at the federal level. And that's a defensive method. You cannot win defenses win championships, but you cannot win a championship without putting a point on the board. And so the one thing that's horrifying when you actually look at it is that there is no offense, the offense that the left is built has made up for their lack of defense. They have built such a strong offense, a juggernaut that they're winning things they shouldn't win. Quite frankly, you can disagree with me all day long. I know you don't, but so many others, a lot of establishment guys can disagree with me all day long. John Federman should not be a US Senator, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (26:03):
No, he
Tyler Bowyer (26:04):
Shouldn't. Even in the fifties where they had no social media and public people would figure out that John Federman is missing half his brain and he's a potato, they would've figured this out. And today, what's horrifying is we live in a society where information and access to candidates is at its peak. If you want to have access to candidate, you want to go visit a candidate. If you want to see them live, if you want to see them in person, if you want to see them on social media, follow them and debates everything else. We have the most literate society in human history that has the most access to technology, and you have access to that. And yet John Federman was still elected. So the question that we should be asking ourselves is how was John Federman elected? Well, a piece of it is the defense part, which in Philadelphia was we don't have a defense. They are manipulating elections in places like Philadelphia and Detroit. They're doing that, we know this, but they are also employing an extraordinarily effective offense, which is full-time ballot harvesters or full-time ballot chasers where they're identifying the ballots and then targeting those people and making sure those ballots get in any way that they can.
(27:18):
And the way they're doing it is relational.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:20):
That's right.
Tyler Bowyer (27:21):
So what they're doing is they're identifying, they're microtargeting around one issue. They're microtargeting around one relationship, and they're saying, Hey, I need you to get in this ballot for this one purpose or for this one relationship for this one vote. That's it,
Jenny Beth Martin (27:35):
Right?
Tyler Bowyer (27:36):
That's it. So they're saying, you know what? This is where the abortion thing comes in, right? Everybody was like, oh, abortion messaging messed this up and our candidates dah, dah, dah, dah. No, no, no. That's not what happened. What happened was very simply is that they were able to message a bunch of young people and say, do you support abortion rights? And as soon as they said yes, then they knew they were on their side.
(28:02):
So they went to these people's doors and said, Hey, your friend Jenny Beth told me that you support abortion rights. Oh, Jenny Beth told you that. Yeah, I do. And she wanted you to know that John Federman is the only important vote that you can make today to help protect those. That's it. And we got to just get that one vote in. I don't need you to fill out your whole ballot, just fill that one part and I can take it for you and walk you to the ballot box or walk you to your mailbox. That's it. That's all they're doing. And they're doing that over and over and over, and all it's taking is a hundred thousand of those 200,000 of those 300,000 of those, and they've swung an entire country. They've done that now in five or six key target states in really less than 10 counties that matter.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:44):
They've even figured out that you may know this particular voter, John Adams, and you're the only one who knows him. So they will tell you, Tyler, you go, you have to make sure John Adams turns his ballot in because you're the only one with a relationship to him. That's how sophisticated they are.
Tyler Bowyer (29:04):
The sophistication is they'll group text you with that one voter. They know that they have to get, they will send someone to the door saying that you sent them because you're the only person that knows him. Yeah, I mean the level of sophistication, it's not brainiac work. It's not rocket science sophistication doesn't have to be rocket science. Sophistication has to be, is even just in the most simple of, it's actually sophisticated model. I tell people this all the time. The world that we live in today with Pop-Tarts, right? It's a pretty sophisticated society where you can create a pop-tart put into a package and make that accessible to anyone. That's a
Jenny Beth Martin (29:42):
Process
Tyler Bowyer (29:42):
Of Kellogg's or whoever owns Poptarts. I think it's whoever it is, putting that into a package, delivering that out to millions of people every single day, that's a sophisticated process. The process of eating a poptart is not rocket signs. It's two steps. They even put the steps in the box,
Jenny Beth Martin (29:59):
Take
Tyler Bowyer (29:59):
It out of the package and put it into the toaster. What they, that's not rocket science, but the process to get pop the Poptarts to you is sophisticated. It took work.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:13):
They had
Tyler Bowyer (30:13):
To build a process for this of whoever owns Poptarts. I can't remember if it's Kelloggs or whoever, but that is basically what we're saying is that we need to build the process for that. It's not hard. Ultimately when that process is done to get people to stick a pop-tart in a toaster, it is hard though to distribute millions of Pop-tarts into really beautiful boxes where people know where to buy them and how to get them and get their hands on them and grow a taste for it. By the way too, because I don't know if Pop-Tarts are my favorite breakfast,
(30:47):
But still billions of Pop-tarts are sold across the world every year. So this is the process, this is the problem. And for us, it's just figuring that piece out, which is alright, how do we build the system? And I think we're on our pathway to do that. And I think once we do that, the left is going to have no choice but to come at us really, really hard because they know the game. The jig is up because won't have any, there's nothing else for them to do at this point other than just straight up cheat or throw all of us in jail.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:21):
And I think that part of what we're seeing with all of the indictments of Trump and of the electors and everyone else is I contend that part of the underlying intent is to have a chilling effect
(31:35):
On the people who are active and the people who are talking and the people who are showing up. And I see that beginning to happen right now. What I'm hearing from people around the country is very similar to what I heard as we were being targeted by the I R S. People are saying I support him, but I'm a little bit afraid that if I'm out there saying it, I might get in trouble and now is not the time to be weak. Now is the time to be bold. We can't let that fear, the fear is real and it's legitimate, and we have to look that fear in the eye and keep taking action.
Tyler Bowyer (32:11):
I mean, I can just speak from personal experience here that fear is not something that is unique to the left. I mean, we have a lot of establishment Republicans who've employed that. In fact, when I was first getting involved, the McCain faction tried to employ that against me, and I was blessed. I learned at an early age, you really don't have anything to fear the most by the debilitating function that they're trying to is mostly just bark. And they want you to be out because a party with this Republican party was party. Party that you throw is only comprised of whoever shows up. So they're trying to scare you out of involvement just like they're trying to scare Trump out. I think where they know they don't have teeth on all these things that they actually try to throw at him is because they ultimately want to live in a dictatorial society. They want to live in a where Despotism is unveiled. And so it requires us to get out of the way. It requires us to do nothing or say nothing or
Jenny Beth Martin (33:30):
To accept the lie or
Tyler Bowyer (33:31):
Just accept the lie and turn. And we've seen so many Republicans do this
(33:36):
And it's unfortunate. I mean, there's a number of people we won't get into necessarily names, but I mean, look, I take somebody that's out of office now. Adam Kinzinger is one of 'em, which is just a lot of rolling over and some of it's personal for personal gain. I think some of it is just because people legitimately are scared because they're scared of being exposed for some kind of personal thing or their lives are at stake. And again, I just kind of point to our founding fathers, I point to the framers and those who came before that, which was like you talk about the Sons of Liberty and individuals who fought and they were willing to spill blood, their own blood in order to defend basically what comes down to your God-given natural rights, which is that at the core is what we're fighting for.
(34:30):
And so we have to look at this and the way that we have to look at it and say, is what I'm doing giving quarter to those who want to eliminate my natural rights? And almost always when you ask that question, the answer is yes. That's what they're want. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to eliminate those from us. And so that has to be the driving force is that weak men give quarter to these people, and we cannot give any quarter at this point. We have no option probably. I actually think that we're probably in the closest patriotic time period to those who've helped found this country where it's going to require probably some people to basically lay down their lives, maybe not necessarily with blood spilled, but lay down their lives and sacrifice to step up against these tyrants because that's what they want. They want you out. They want me out. They want everybody that listens to this out. And that has to give you enough resolve to say, I'm not going to have these petty fights about Trump versus DeSantis on Twitter. I'm going to be focused on the things that are pertinent to preserving not just this republic, but are natural rights and the only free country that exist that can possibly do that longterm. And that's here.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:58):
And the fight on Twitter or in your Facebook group or Signal or Telegram or wherever it is, the chances of you swaying somebody's mind in those kind of fights like Trump versus DeSantis or whatever the issue of the day is probably you're not going to change many of their minds, but at the end of the day, we're going to have a nominee no matter what. There will be a nominee.
Tyler Bowyer (36:19):
Yeah. I mean, the way that I look at it is even if you do sway people on Twitter, which there's a lot of influential voices on Twitter, even if you do sway sway people, if you do influence people, again, where's your heart coming from? Right?
(36:34):
Ultimately, whoever the nominee is, whether it's Trump DeSantis or whoever, right now, it's looking like it's going to be Donald Trump is how do we take what we have and apply it for good? Right? That's, and I see a lot of people, everybody has the right to an opinion and that's fine. But again, where are you anchored? Are you shallowly anchored in just candidate politics or are you anchored in, okay, look, there's only going to be probably two guys that have a shot at becoming our nominee on our side. How can we best influence them for good? And that's the tough part about partisan politics. That's the tough part about party politics is that sometimes when you abandon a person, particularly the person that's the front runner, you no longer have the influence that you could have had.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:39):
And
Tyler Bowyer (37:39):
If you're a fighter, I like to think that I am that you are, this is a long-term battle
Jenny Beth Martin (37:45):
Where
Tyler Bowyer (37:46):
We have to help influence these people for good to save the country because not every decision, even the best the politicians has are good. We have Freedom Caucus members who frequently get off on the wrong path, and we're fighting against the establishment constantly with that. So yeah, that's just kind of the thing that I'd point out. And that's where our work with activists is so important. And I get super frustrated with people all the time personally because it's like I know how good of an activist they are, and they've relegated themselves to just simple party politics or fights, and they get so emotionally driven on those things. And everyone's been emotional before on these things I'm sure you have in those situations. But again, I think the more anchored you are on the things that matter, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (38:40):
When
Tyler Bowyer (38:40):
I say things that matter, I'm talking about the things that the Sons of Liberty were focused on. It always cracks me up when I'm thinking about history. Like none of these people were out wearing their favorite politicians pin while they were out doing these things, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (38:55):
They
Tyler Bowyer (38:55):
Were out actually undercover
Jenny Beth Martin (38:57):
Or carrying flags that say, give me liberty or give me death
Tyler Bowyer (39:00):
Carrying the flag. They were doing one of two things. They were either fighting undercover to help upend what the British were doing, or they were fighting carrying banners, marching together as a unit for a bigger, greater purpose. And both of those things are necessary, but none of them were partisan. None of them were party. None of them were candidate driven. And so again, it's fun to be a fan girl or a fanboy people of things, whether it's Trump, whether it's DeSantis, whether whoever it is. But again, we have to remember that the things that we're doing, the infrastructure that we're building has to be much bigger than that. It has to drive protecting this great country.
Jenny Beth Martin (39:45):
That's right. And you can have what you said a minute ago about there are a lot of influential people on social media. That is absolutely true, and you can influence people on social media. I don't disagree with that at all. What I was trying to see is if you get too embedded in just the fights and down in the thread way too deep, no
Tyler Bowyer (40:04):
One sees it.
Jenny Beth Martin (40:04):
No one sees it, and you're just, you're not helping us get where we need to be next November.
Tyler Bowyer (40:11):
Yeah. I mean, look, the way that I put this is there's nothing wrong with people. Again, there's nothing wrong with people spending time doing things that are not productive. There's nothing that's your choice. There's lots of unproductive things in this world. Actually, I think that Satan's greatest tool is to make us unproductive. I think that that's part of what sin is at the epitome of sin. This is just, again, my take is that it's all unproductive. It's not leading you to the greater good versus evil. And so what is good, right? Well, good is doing things that are going to be productive, that are going to be helpful to building. And so you've at least got to anchor yourself in the things that are good. I actually think that people deserve breaks. People deserve to do whatever they want in their free time. You're allowed to eat, you're allowed to have breaks, you're allowed to do these things. And so
Jenny Beth Martin (41:06):
Sometimes my team doesn't think that I allow them to eat, but I do.
Tyler Bowyer (41:11):
They may have to remind me of it every once in a while. We don't take a lot of rest and breaks. But my point is, is that if you're doing a lot of good things, you almost have more of an ability to spend time doing those things. But oftentimes I see people on social media in particular, I ask them the question, have you become a precinct committeeman? Are you actively involved? What organizations do you get out and support? And it's like none of 'em, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (41:33):
So
Tyler Bowyer (41:33):
They've spent their only expendable hours, only a few hours a month or whatever it is, arguing on social media. Well, that's unacceptable, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (41:42):
Yeah.
Tyler Bowyer (41:42):
Now, if you're spending your lunch breaks arguing on social media, okay, okay, that's fine, whatever. But it's like if you're spending, we need everybody to go out and spend a few hours a month just doing things. Maybe it's just one hour a month, right?
(41:56):
And this is the way I tell people, it's like, you go to church every week. I hope you do. I hope you go to church every week to better yourself and whatever religion you subscribe to, great. I'm a believer. I believe that it's important not just for myself, but for my family, but I view as next to my religion, next to my family. I believe that the third place is the civic involvement, the civic engagement. How many hours a month are you dedicating to the movement? Is it one hour a month? Do you have an hour a month? Do you have a couple hours a month? And so if you're doing that, great, I think you have license to go out and say and do whatever you want and spend your time. But the admonition here is if you're not doing those things, especially if you're not going to church, you're not spending time with your family, then you're not contributing civically.
(42:45):
It's like, well, what are you doing? You're wasting your time. That is, again, in my opinion, the greatest epitome of sin, which is the greatest epitome of your time wasted the devil wants you to do, which is he wants you to quarrel, he wants you to fight. They want you to do all these negative things that are going to handicap you from the ability to go out and make a difference. And that's just what you got to keep in mind, right? It's like, is this preventing me from doing something that's really going to be fruitful and productive and move the needle for the movement? Because one person can make a huge difference,
Jenny Beth Martin (43:21):
Right? So what do you tell people if they want to get involved?
Tyler Bowyer (43:24):
Well, we always have opportunities. So actually@tpaction.com slash get involved, you can go there. We actually have five things that are on there that are ranked really easy, really graphically easy. If you click on them, they'll walk you through everything from making a plan and getting involved to vote, all the way down to helping us chase ballots and everything in between. Becoming a precinct leader, showing up at our events, getting involved with a coalition on our side, and then ultimately chasing votes. So that's what we're encouraging people to do. Like you guys, we have an application that you can download on the app store right now. It's Turning Point Action. You can search for it and it'll come up as TP action. That's different from TP U SS A. So if Turning Point U S A has an application, but Turning Point Action also has an application, and this is super important because on there, and this is something that we've worked really closely with you guys on immediately, you can go out and start building relationships, knocking doors, making phone calls, and then building lists of relationships through the election cycle that you can harness for the next two years, basically.
(44:35):
And so that's what we're driving people to do right now. And we are working closely together with you guys with a special alliance predominantly. Again, I think the two largest organizations, our historic Tea party organizations across the United States. And then what we've done, again with our younger people at Turning Point, those are two massive grassroots organizations that unified, I think can make a real difference, particularly in 2024 in those states. And so that's where we're focused. I think the big thing is ultimately a lot of people are like, well, hey, how can I help Chase votes and Chase ballots? And I want to put this timeline out there. We are actually hiring full-time people in Arizona, Wisconsin, and hopefully Georgia as well, starting in January.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:26):
So
Tyler Bowyer (45:26):
We are actually going to be putting out a call for applications and those things. We also, if you can't work, we also are going to have volunteer opportunities. But those volunteer opportunities are not going to exist until basically next summer, right?
Jenny Beth Martin (45:40):
Because
Tyler Bowyer (45:41):
That's when ballot chasing will start to happen. But what you can do now is go out, download the application, whether it's ours or yours or so many others, and start building relationships today. So a lot of people ask me, well, I just don't know what I'm talking about. Well, you don't have to know what you're talking about. What you have to do is go out and start building relationship with every person on your street so that your street trusts you enough so that when the time comes, you can make sure that they vote. You can make sure that they are going to vote and support our people. And so that's what you got to do. Go out. You don't need to go out and talk with people about Donald Trump right now. Go out and bring 'em a plate of cookies. Bring your neighbors a plate of cookies. That's going to be the relationship that you, I don't hardly ever talk to my neighbors. I need to talk to them a lot more. But I need to do things that are relationally driven. And that is today what everyone within the sound of our voices needs to do. Go out. Start with the first five houses on your street. Start there, turn that into 50 houses. If everybody in our movement was responsible for 10 to 15 houses, 25 to 50 houses, we would never lose an election again.
Jenny Beth Martin (46:58):
No, we wouldn't. And the left does that, and they've invested in that. And
Tyler Bowyer (47:02):
They're not even that good at it, to be honest, because they're losing elections in these key target states still. So they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars into these things and they're still losing. So this is where it's like everybody's like, well, I feel so down in the dumps. We're never going to win or whatever, guys, if they can elect John Federman, we can elect anyone we want. We just have to do the same thing.
Jenny Beth Martin (47:25):
We don't even have to be better. We just have to show up and do it. Just
Tyler Bowyer (47:28):
Do, do it, do it. Do it. Yeah. I mean, our estimation is if we did half as much as they did, we would win in huge numbers.
Jenny Beth Martin (47:35):
So
Tyler Bowyer (47:35):
That's our call is get involved. Find the ways to get involved on your street today. You can go to the Turning Point Action, download this on iOS or Android today. Go in on the left, you'll see a tab. You press that tab, it'll ask you to input your phone number and it'll pull up houses on your street right away that you can go contact. Go do that right now. Go make those relationships, build those relationships, recruit those people to be on your team so that, again, when we're next year or next July when we need to chase down 500,000 outstanding votes in Arizona or Georgia, that you can help do that,
Jenny Beth Martin (48:15):
Right? But you have to build those relationships right now in order for it to be more effective next year.
Tyler Bowyer (48:22):
Yeah. Cookies, barbecues, block parties, game nights, hanging out, friendly smiles, pulling back people's trash cans for them, all those things, getting their mail for them. Uber Eats delivery comes across to your house instead of your neighbor's. Don't keep it. Go take it back over to your neighbor's house and tell 'em. Remind 'em that you're involved with the community and that you want to help them when the time comes. But that's the name of the game. That's how we win.
Jenny Beth Martin (48:50):
That's exactly right. So they can get that turning point action on the App store. And then your website, what is your website?
Tyler Bowyer (48:59):
Tp action.com. You should look up Turning Point action on Google tp action.com. Tp action.com/get involved has our get involved page. You can see that right on there. And we have a number of resources on there, including our scorecard that we do for the federal level, which is really aggressive. It's one of the only realtime scorecards that exist in the movement, which we rate and evaluate everyone pretty very directly. You can see all the votes right on there, whether or not you agree or disagree with that. And then we do some endorsements. But our big focus right now is again, getting involved, becoming a registered voter, making a plan to vote, joining a coalition, showing up at our events, meaning like our Get Out the vote events that we're going to have next year ultimately, and then ultimately helping Chase ballots.
Jenny Beth Martin (49:48):
It's not just young people who can get involved in Turning Point action so anyone can get involved.
Tyler Bowyer (49:53):
Yeah, a turning point action at all age is a fair. So even though Turning Point U S A, we've been predominantly focused on young people and we have that core base, it's definitely a turning point. Action turning point action is everybody can get involved, young and old, all ages.
Jenny Beth Martin (50:10):
Alright everyone, so be sure to go check that out. And Tyler, thank you so much for spending time with me today.
Tyler Bowyer (50:15):
Thank you, Jenny. Beth, I'll tell you this. Jenny Beth Martin is doing the most important work with Tea Party Patriots, and we're so grateful for everything that you're doing and the warm partnership that we've had with you guys.
Jenny Beth Martin (50:26):
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Tyler Bowyer (50:28):
God bless you.
Narrator (50:29):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (50:49):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications on whichever platform you're listening to. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I appreciate it very much.