Charlie once spoke at Cambridge University in a room that was totally against him. When he talked about it on his show, he said: “We need to be unafraid to go into those environments… We need to be unafraid to go into the place where we’re not always going to be applauded. We’re not always going to be celebrated. We’re not always going to be welcomed with open arms.”
Vanity Fair put me on their New Establishment list and I understand why some are asking why I would sit down with them. The answer is two-fold: 1) They were going to write something whether I participated or not. I could leave their audience with a story about me told entirely by other people, or I could speak for myself. 2) Growing our movement means going places where everyone doesn’t already agree with us.
That’s what our students do on campuses every day, by the way. They set up a table and talk to whoever walks up, including people who disagree with them. They don’t pack up and go home just because someone says something they don’t like or flips their table or spits on them. I ask them to have that courage every day and I should be willing to do the same thing.
As conservatives, we know that legacy media outlets are often hostile to us. But it doesn’t make sense to retreat until every magazine, university, cultural institution and media platform we disagree with comes to our side. Charlie didn’t do that, neither do our students, and I won’t do it either.
Will they take digs at me? Of course. They spent plenty of time on my appearance, clothes and mannerisms rather than our growth, momentum, and resilience. There are things in the piece that lack context, that were petty, and in some cases even sort of mean, but that was to be expected. But now faith, freedom, and family are sitting in the pages of Vanity Fair, and a whole lot of people who don’t follow Turning Point USA are reading about those principles.
To keep taking back ground as conservatives, we need to boldly walk into the left’s “safe spaces,” sharing our values, and talking about why America is worth fighting for. If we actually want to win the culture, we can’t just surrender huge parts of it to the left and then complain that they control it.
There are a lot of opinions about the list and the profiles. Mine is that we need more dialogue, not less, and a lot more conservatives willing to walk into rooms where we aren’t expected, aren’t always welcomed, and certainly aren’t guaranteed applause. My plan is to keep walking into them.
Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list:
1. Sam Altman: The Oppenheimer
2. Dario Amodei: The Paradox
3. Elon Musk: The Mad King
4. Jensen Huang: The Man Selling Picks and Shovels for the Gold Rush
5. Kevin Warsh: The Market Mover
6. JD Vance: The MAGA Heir
7. Marco Rubio: The MAGA Spare
8. Sundar Pichai: The Constant Gardener
9. Ted Sarandos: The Winner
10. Neal Mohan: The New Hollywood Mogul
11. Andy Jassy: The Big Chop
12. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: The Prodigal Son-in-Law and Favored Daughter
13. John Ternus: Not Far From the Tree
14. Zohran Mamdani: The Merry Mayor
15. Josh Kushner: The Good Kush
16. Gwynne Shotwell: The Adult in the Room
17. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The Free Radical
18. Pope Leo XIV: His Holiness the Humanist
19. Meredith Kopit Levien: The Lady of the Gray Lady
20. Satya Nadella: Macro at Micro
21. David Ellison: The Son Also Rises
22. Gavin Newsom: The Californian
23. Marc Andreessen: The Edgelord
24. Sheik Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan: The Gamesman
25. Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara: The Odds Couple
26. Christopher Nolan: Zeus
27. MacKenzie Scott: The Giver
28. Alex Karp: The Philosopher King
29. Delphine, Antoine, Alexandre, Frédéric, and Jean Arnault: Their Father’s Children
30. Josh D’Amaro: Not Named Bob
31. Lachlan Murdoch: The Fortunate Son
32. Laurene Powell Jobs: The Benevolent Billionaire
33. Tucker Carlson: MAGA’s Savonarola
34. Kaitlan Collins: The Anchor
35. Taylor Sheridan: The Lone Ranger
36. Ryan Coogler: The Virtuoso
37. Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, Nicolette Aizenberg: The Only Studio With Drip
38. Matthieu Blazy: The Crown Prince
39. Jon Ossoff: The Prospect
40. The Democratic Socialists: The Insurgents
41. Bad Bunny: The Headliner
42. Bari Weiss: The Arriviste
43. Shayne Coplan: The Blockchain Brat
44. Donald Trump Jr.: The Grifter
45. Donna Langley: That’s Dame Donna to You
46. Ryan Murphy: The Counselor of Camp
47. James and Kathryn Murdoch: Gone Their Own Way
48. Alex Soros and Huma Abedin: The True Blues
49. Hasan Piker: Island in the Stream
50. Erika Kirk: The Widow’s Peak
vanityfair.com/story/the-new…