A mass of shrieking protesters confronted Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and his colleague Candace Owens Monday morning while they were eating breakfast at a Philadelphia hotel.
After spotting Kirk and Owens through a hotel window, the crowd entered the hotel and began harassing the young political activists.
After being cleared from the hotel, the protesters gathered outside and awaited Kirk and Owens’ departure, at which point one woman threw a drink on Kirk while another shouted into a megaphone about the evils of white supremacy.
The incident comes one week after CNN’s Jim Acosta prompted a flurry of media coverage focused on threats to journalists’ safety by posting a video depicting dozens of Trump supporters verbally harassing him during a rally.
Kirk and Owens, who serves as TPUSA’s communications director, have courted controversy in the past due to their commitment to confrontational political activism. Owens was briefly banned from Twitter last week after quoting the recent New York Times hire Sarah Jeong’s anti-white tweets and replacing “white” with “Jewish.” Kirk, who enjoys a close relationship with the Trump family, has found considerable fundraising success since launching the groupe in 2012 with just over $78,000; it now has a budget exceeding $8 million. Despite its financial success, the group has been criticized by fellow youth conservative advocacy organization Young Americans for Freedom for exaggerating its reach and influence and allegedly partnering with avowed white supremacists.
