At an event hosted by Steve Bannon’s War Room ahead of this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, conservative campaign consultant Raynard Jackson seemingly criticized Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s recent campaign against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kirk has been under fire from his peers in the right-wing movement over his racism and TPUSA’s questionable spending ahead of the 2024 election. After a widely publicized Boeing 737 Max malfunction last month, Kirk stated on his Thought Crime podcast, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” (The panel of co-hosts defended Kirk’s statement.)
Addressing a group of War Room fans gathered at the hotel where CPAC will kick off later today, Jackson said: “Until Conservatives and MAGA deal with the issue of race and the Black community, you're never going to penetrate the Black vote.”
He later added, “To have one of our MAGA compatriots go on his podcast and call Martin Luther King a rapist, for a 30-year-old guy to sit up and tell me that the civil rights bill of '64 was bad for America, that makes my job almost impossible.”
Jackson appears to be referring to a slew of racist comments from Kirk, a syndicated Salem Radio host, including a planned campaign reported by Wired to discredit King. On Martin Luther King Day, Kirk dedicated part of his show to these attacks, claiming the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake” and calling King a “bad guy.”