Simon Van Zylenwood

TPSA continued after his death.

And they brought VIPs to kind of speak and debate with students in his stead.

So Erica Kirk, Charlie's widow, and J.D.

Vance came to Ole Miss.

So not only was Leslie Lachman, the TPUSA president, sort of presiding over this newly ascendant campus organization, she was also kind of helping run this, you know, this massive confab on campus.

And I was there for all of it.

Some of them, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, are finding a way to kind of achieve some sort of catharsis, I think, some way to honor his legacy or some way to get further involved in campus politics.

A lot of them are, even before his death, were trying to fulfill Kirk's legacy of kind of retaking the campus from the left.

I mean, it's not an accident that Charlie Kirk started his organization on campus.

This has been a goal since William Buckley on for the last 50, 60, 70 years, which is to kind of, to do counter-revolution basically on campus.

And Charlie Kirk arguably was the most successful of it of all time.

But it really isn't until his death that TPSA becomes something that feels like hegemonic in its own right.

I mean, TPUSA existed.

My character, Leslie, was running this chapter before his death, but it doesn't boom until afterwards.

It doesn't become a kind of social signifier that you are the top dog on campus, that you are not just sort of running a club for engaged students, but you're doing something possibly godlike.

I mean, the University of Mississippi is the kind of place where, like, all the pressure runs in not just a kind of—

baseline conservative direction, but also Christian.

It's the kind of place where if somebody asked you, do you believe in God, you'd feel kind of awkward saying no if you didn't.

Whereas in a lot of liberal campuses, the pressures run in the total opposite direction.

And so the implicit Christian element of a group like TPUSA, just like the baseline pro-Trump conservatism, and it's very aligned with Donald Trump, TPUSA, in a way that some of the other campus conservative groups are not actually.