The beginning of Turning Point USA’s nation-wide “The Turning Point Tour” was a stop at the University of Minnesota that was originally slated as the third stop in the “American Comeback Tour.” The tour rebranded following the assassination of the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, only 12 days prior to the stop in Minnesota.
The on-campus event saw heightened security and a religious revival-like fervor that permeated all of the speeches that night. As Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputies rested their long guns on the roof of the neighboring buildings, inside Northrup Auditorium Pastor Dale Witherington led the rally in prayer: “Would you please join me in praying to our father of the USA.”
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles was the night’s key speaker, and his hour-long segment was no less ecclesiastic. It dripped of Biblical justifications and underhanded calls for retribution against “the left,” who supposedly took Kirk from them.
The speech even echoed the latest conspiracies at the time emanating from the former Turning Point associate Candace Owens, who was telling viewers of her independent talk show that Kirk had been playing footsie with the idea of becoming Catholic.
