On Thursday, Nov. 30, Wheaton College’s chapter of Turning Point USA hosted a lecture and Q&A with Brandon Tatum, a conservative social media commentator, podcaster, and former Arizona police officer. About 80 people attended the event, held in a lecture hall in Meyer Science Center.
Turning Point USA (or TPUSA) self-identifies as a nonprofit organization on a “mission to build the most organized, active, and powerful conservative grassroots activist network on campuses across the country.” Wheaton College’s chapter is a group of approximately 40 students who participate in monthly meetings, various social events, and host one guest speaker event per semester.
Dolan Bair, senior political science major and TPUSA chapter president, said he is passionate about how the promotion of conservative ideas can add to the richness of campus life.
“I think there is kind of a comparison between evangelizing people and spreading political activism,” said Bair. “We want to be actually educating people and letting people know that there are other viewpoints here on campus. As far as that goes, I think there is a link between Billy Graham’s crusades for spirits, and the crusade for minds here on campus.”
Tatum’s talk resembled a stream-of-consciousness monologue on politicians and culture wars from a conservative perspective. Tatum’s broad argument for conservative values touched on his dream plan to combat illegal immigration, banning sexually inappropriate literature at school, President Joseph R. Biden’s attitude toward China, inflation and “Bidenonomics,” and fatherlessness and lack of leadership as the primary cause of mass incarceration, and gender roles in marriage.
Before discussing his own childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, Tatum asked the audience, “How many of you guys know me from social media?” Almost every hand in the room rose. Tatum smiled and then followed up with, “And how many of you don’t like me that are in the room?” According to eyewitness accounts, nobody raised their hand.
“I was a Democrat in my mind,” Tatum said of his adolescent years in Fort Worth.
“I believed that America was racist. I believed that white people hated me. I believed that police officers were nothing but racist white guys waiting to pull a Black man over for no reason. I used to believe that.”
After moving to the University of Arizona for college, Tatum’s political views began to change.
He remarked that he was expecting to experience frequent, overt racism like the segregation his grandmother had told him about. However, he was surprised when he was judged and graded based on merit, rather than race. He said he believes that the “generational hurt,” as he describes it, in Black communities is sometimes overemphasized.
“So it started to unravel in my mind of my perception of America,” Tatum said. “I’ve noticed that generational hurt in most parts of the Black community from where I come from is passed down, and I believe in some cases it’s unnecessarily passed down.”
At the same time, Tatum began attending church, and converted to Christianity in 2008. Now, as a media personality with TPUSA, Tatum spoke about how he sees his role speaking at college campuses around the country as part of the Great Commission.
“As you can hear tonight, I’m talking about Jesus,” he told the Record. “I put my testimony in how I would say it. And that testimony, in conjunction with telling the truth and exposing the lies of the enemy, doing that throughout college campuses all over the country is something that I think God has called us to do.”
Tatum said he views it as antithetical to profess Christ and support the Democratic Party. When he refers to the “lies of the enemy,” he means a liberal political agenda.
“You cannot say that you are a Christian and you believe in Christian values and you turn around and vote for a party that believes in mutilating kids and gay marriage and all this other stuff,” said Tatum. “And they push anti-Christian rhetoric. They don’t want Christ in schools.”
When it came time for questions, the line was almost always several people long. Most questions were from undergraduates or local high schoolers asking Tatum for advice on how to stand up for their conservative values in a world that feels increasingly hostile.
More critical questions tended to be asked in regard to Tatum’s tone and his personal theological views. Noah Reimer, a sophomore Bible and theology major, asked Tatum if he denied that Jesus was God, and if so, how it was that he had spent the entire event referring to Jesus as Lord.
Tatum said that he considers himself a Unitarian because he does not see the word “trinity” in the Bible and is unwilling to use a description that he doesn’t directly read.
Acadia Fitzpatrick, sophomore international relations major, said that after the event, she expressed some of her frustrations to her roommate about Tatum’s presentation.
“As he discussed the need for people to respect one another in order to have conversations that push our society forward, Tatum simultaneously made derogatory comments concerning our president, in addition to those about women,” said Fitzpatrick.
Sally Schwer Canning, professor of psychology at the Wheaton College Graduate School, also questioned the way Tatum described individuals as “crazy” for their desire to indicate their gender pronouns, as well as his description of Biden as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and Vice President Kamala Harris as “the dumbest woman in the entire world.”
“I wonder how that’s loving and gracious and Christ-like to mock someone’s cognitive ability and to actually enact that,” said Schwer Canning at the mic. “And I wonder what qualifies you to make a diagnosis of someone.”
Tatum responded by reiterating that, just like when Jesus was speaking the truth to the Pharisees, “Some people deserve to be rebuked.”
