Paxton Urges Conservatives to ‘Take on the Evil’ of the Left to ‘Save America’
By Natalia Rodriguez
Photography By Natalia Rodriguez
Reporting Texas
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaking at Monday’s Turning Point USA event at UT Austin
State and federal Republican officials called for conservatives to wage war against leftist ideologies in a Turning Point USA event on the University of Texas campus Monday, stating that it was their “life purpose to destroy them.”
“I mean, that’s almost what’s necessary is a sort of counter revolution that we need to wage,” said Aaron Reitz, former assistant attorney general for the U.S. Office of Legal Policy and current candidate for the Republican nomination for Texas attorney general. “Victory looks like a country in which a leftist wants to just self-deport and go to another country.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spoke for about 10 minutes of the almost two-hour event. He encouraged young conservatives, especially those in UT’s Turning Point USA, to speak up against liberal ideologies after the September slaying of Charlie Kirk, the group’s founder.
“Difficult times have become horrible,” said Paxton, who is challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in next year’s GOP primary. “Let’s not let down the turning point. Let’s not let down the memory of Charlie Kirk. Let’s not be fearful of the fight. Let’s take on the evil. Let’s save America.”
Reitz said people who participated in the Black Lives Matter movement should also be targets.
“When I think about the domestic enemies of the Constitution,” he said. “I think about the people who, in 2020, engaged in an actual insurrection to overthrow the United States through the BLM Terror Summer of 2020.”
Reitz also went after the LGBTQ+ community.
“Why do I have to live in a country in which I have to explain to my children the meaning of the so-called Pride Progress flag?” he said. “I have to explain to them that there are actually people who are delusional enough to believe that they were born in the wrong body and that are demanding my tax dollars to genitally mutilate themselves.”
Savanah Hernandez, a political commentator whose work is promoted by Turning Point USA, asked the crowd, “Is being a conservative worth dying over? Because that’s where we are in the country right now, and as I mulled over this question, the immediate answer that came to mind was yes, absolutely, because the United States of America is worth saving, it’s worth standing up for, and you guys are at the forefront of that.”
University of Texas senior Mikey Rush attended the event to confront Paxton, but the attorney general didn’t participate in the question-and-answer part of the event. Rush said he saw the opposite of unity.
“Some of that — point for point — is Nazi rhetoric,” he said. “If your belief or the way you vote gets rid of my vote or my ability to live, they’re right — we can’t be friends.”
Reitz said that if nothing else, he wanted the roughly 100 people in attendance to take away one message: “I want conservative students at the University of Texas and students everywhere to know and exercise courage in the face of an oppressive, aggressive, violent, hateful left. Courage, that’s the takeaway.”