In this conversation…
It’s the grassroots sensation sweeping the internet and, by extension, the culture—proof that conservative values are mainstream, conservative women are hot, and their rapidly proliferating attendant revolution is finally overpowering the excesses of liberalism. “We aren’t running from culture anymore,” as Alex Clark put it, “We’re running it.” They’re courageous enough to stand up for countercultural ideas like, “Women should be wives and mothers,” or, “White people are superior,” and there’s one thing they want to make absolutely sure you know: They’re taking over.
…or are they?
What do “conservative values” mean in this context? What does it mean to be a conservative, when the tent has metastasized beyond the point of recognizable cohesion? And most importantly, is there any proof that this “movement” is growing more popular with young women? Diabolical Lies investigates.
References in This Episode
Every once in a while a short-form video appears in the hellscape of your infinite scroll that is so distressing—so unabashedly mask-off—that you have to stop what you’re doing and spend the next 72 hours learning as much as humanly possible about the propaganda convention nonprofit that produced it.
I am, of course, referring to the brief Q&A at the Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summit wherein Charlie Kirk tells a 14-year-old girl who asks a question about studying political journalism that she should “be honest” about why she wants to attend college (read: to find a husband).
This is, somehow, boilerplate right-wing ideology in 2025, but when paired with this performance from Alex Clark1, I decided the text was too rich to bypass:
This year’s conference—the 10th annual summit, boasting 3,000 attendees—was themed “Home Sweet Home,” and the speaker lineup was a veritable gang-bang of Problematic Queens2. Turning Point USA, a 501(c)(3), bankrolled the operation (according to their 2022 tax filing, they took in $81 million in tax-free grants in 2022).
Much fun was had! Charlie and his wife Erika held an unbelievably tense panel discussion in which she managed to look moderate by comparison thanks to her bold stance that women over 30 are people with rights. Nancy Mace was checking genitals in the bathroom.3 Riley Gaines announced her pregnancy mid-anti-trans tirade!4 They even had a Burn Book with pictures of Democratic politicians and buttons that said “Home Making is Hot” and “Hot People Eat Red Meat” and “Dump Your Socialist Boyfriend,” which one can only assume are part of a long con to get more young women on board with…immigration and trade policy? Unclear.
Anyway, The Washington Post was in attendance, noting that at least a few of the girls in attendance were skeptical of the blinding contradiction of their 32-year-old, single, childless, career woman headliner at a conference that repeatedly urged them to get married and have children:
Later that day, Nicole Hadar, a high-schooler from Massachusetts, approached the microphone in a smocked blue dress to press Charlie Kirk on what, exactly, he thought women should be aspiring to. “I was wondering if you could clarify what the mission of this summit is, because it’s a Young Women’s Leadership Summit, and all of the women that spoke on that stage today and yesterday were there because they pursued a career.” As far as Hadar could tell, the takeaway from the conference “was that I should, quote, get married and have babies.”
Murmurs and some giggles rippled across the room.
“That’s interesting,” Kirk replied from the stage. His face scrunched into a thoughtful grimace. “I wouldn’t say all of them are there because they pursued a career — maybe I’d have to think about the entire career.” He stammered a bit before continuing. “I could flip it on you,” he told the high-schooler. “The people that pursued a career are telling you to pursue kids. Maybe they know something you don’t know.”
Despite all5 the mainstream coverage of this event, I was still hungry to learn more—so I reached out to
, author of the forthcoming book Pick Me (2026) about conservatism, gender, and Gen Z, to talk about her experience at the conference:
You’d think for the foremost conservative conference for women, there’d be at least some mention of current events or policy debates—but no. What you will get, though, is a shit ton of advice about dating, parenting, fashion, and nutrition, and plenty of fear-mongering about the Pyrrhic fingertrap of modern feminism.
This is Turning Point’s bread and butter—while their official mission is to “educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets,6 and capitalism,” their unofficial slogan is, “Win the culture, win the country.”
TP USA is no stranger to scandal: In 2018, a Politico profile raised questions about just how much influence the organization really wielded on college campuses. How come the student government candidates who TP claimed to back said they’d never worked with the organization?
Later, in 2020, TP became embroiled in an election-fraud related scandal when it broke that they had been paying minors to seed the internet with misinformation about vaccines and mail-in voter fraud.
Basically, Kirk was a known liability, and more moderate members of the GOP7 believed his worldview was “radicalized” and that TP needed to be sidelined and defanged.
Enter: Donald Trump ousting the leaders of the RNC in 2023, and outsourcing his field operations to Charlie and Turning Point.
All of this paints the picture of a seriously powerful, influential organization funded by tens of millions of dollars in scary right-wing dark money, and that’s partially true—but all signs point to the fact that their influence is vastly overstated, on college campuses and elsewhere. Madeline noted that TP field representatives were going through the followers of the Pepperdine Republicans Club Instagram account before the Women’s Leadership Conference, DMing the women, and offering them free attendance at the event.
To quote their favored “Econ 101” parlance: Supply outpaces demand for these ideas.
It’s at this point that I began to wonder: Is the entire “cultural conservative” “movement” as astroturfed as the 2020 election fraud scandal?
As you may recall, Alex Clark declared during her remarks that it’s “never been hotter to be conservative,” a nod to the valiant efforts of the New York City triad garnering so much press coverage for their “Make America Hot Again” parties that I assumed they must be commandeering small legions of spray-tanned acolytes in order to line up back-to-back features in New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and yes, even The Free Press8.
I learned that one such media mogul, Jayme9 Leagh10 Franklin, founded The Conservateur11, a self-described “brainchild of style aficionados and conservative politicos.” Another, Raquel Debono (who actually agreed to be interviewed for this episode), started “Make America Hot Again.” Together, they host parties for right-wing singles in the city, and would you believe the Google Photo Libraries are…just open for anyone to see?
These women—while heavily profiled and studied in a way that would imply an outsize role in culture—have curiously small platforms. (Debono, who I interviewed, has fewer than 20,000 followers on Instagram, yet was quoted across nearly every piece of media as the source for corroborating the ubiquity and popularity of these young, right-wing women.) According to SimilarWeb, The Conservateur had fewer website visitors in May than Zohran Mamdani had real-life volunteers.
Regardless, it becomes apparent from reading these women’s biographies (multiple degrees from Wharton; Manhattan lawyers; Boston College graduates with impressive careers on the Hill) that we’re talking about an entirely separate demographic from the low- and middle-income women drawn like (comped) moths to a flame in Grapevine, Texas.
Understanding the center of the Venn diagram between these two subcultures was the skeleton key that unlocked the whole clusterfuck.
Bonus Material and Background Reading
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991) by Susan Faludi
“Worse for Women, Bad For All,” a January 2025 study that examines both hostile and benevolent sexism in 62 countries (!) and finds women most under threat from hostile sexism were the ones who most strongly endorsed benevolent sexism, because it seemed like the most realistic path to protection from violence and dependence.
This interview between Lara Trump and Brett Cooper in which Brett insists to Lara that conservatives are “an elite” crowd, a seemingly insignificant soundbite that made the lightbulb go off in my head about why anti-neoliberalism messaging simply does not work on these people
regrettably I do want her periwinkle platform louboutins and I’m just going to sit with that for a while
including like three sitting congresswomen lol
ok I made that part up but I had you for a second, didn’t I?
this part is real lol
give EJ Dickson a Nobel Peace Prize
rest in power
b.w.a.,s.
yes,
this is real
it’s like if kirkland brand produced evie magazine but without peter thiel’s money
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