Last Updated on February 19, 2020
A 2016 video made by Turning Point USA’s “Chief Creative Officer” comparing President Donald J. Trump to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has resurfaced on the internet.
Thanks to Twitter user @ZoomerMatthew, Johnson and TPUSA’s grifting tendencies were put on full display.
https://twitter.com/ZoomerMatthew/status/1230175482965970944
The short video (archived here) is titled “Mussolini + Trump: Trumpolini.”
Four years later and after his sudden departure from The Daily Caller after his ethics were called into question, Johnson works for the allegedly pro-Trump TPUSA, a college Republican organization that has faced scrutiny in past months from young conservatives.
Termed the “Groyper Wars,” several conservative college students crashed the Question & Answer sessions at TPUSA’s campus events in late 2019, asking serious questions about the merits of mass legal immigration, along with the acceptance of homosexuality in mainstream “conservatism.”
Flustered, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk did not know how to react to the questions that came from his political right.
TPUSA, along with other soft Republican organizations like the Young Americans Foundations (YAF) which often hosts admitted grifter Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, bank on questions coming from their political left. The successful gambit of squashing 19-year-old socialist leftists has been quite lucrative for them.
But the Groyper Wars split the young contingent of the GOP along clear ideological lines.
Establishment organizations like YAF and TPUSA continued to defend their brand of big tent “conservatism,” which, other than the promotion of endless wars in the Middle East, strikingly resembles libertarianism.
Meanwhile, the America First side of the GOP has pressed for serious immigration reform, including building a wall and a total moratorium on legal immigration, trade protectionism and military isolationism, along with a return to social conservatism.
Accusations of grifting off the Trump presidency and gatekeeping on behalf of the political establishment have always flown into the direction of organizations like YAF and TPUSA, but have been renewed and are louder than ever after the “I’ll debate anyone, anywhere, anytime” crowd has failed to address the grievances of America First conservatives.
Such accusations are supported by today’s uncovered evidence from Johnson’s 2016 anti-Trump Facebook post.
Jaden McNeil, a prominent young conservative in the America First camp, summed up the current climate nicely.
“Benny went from attacking Trump to Conservative Inc. Gatekeeper. Remind me, who are the real conservatives again?” he said on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/McNeilJaden/status/1230180635098198017
National File reached out to Johnson for comment, but did not receive a response.
