Turning Point leader tweets racist dig at Asian GOP state lawmaker

Turning Point USA and its more explicitly political arm, Turning Point Action, nominally exist to promote conservative causes. But faced with criticism on Monday from a solidly conservative state lawmaker — who happens to be a Vietnamese immigrant — Turning Point leader Tyler Bowyer decided to get racist.

The exchange began innocently enough. On Monday morning, Republican candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives Ciara Anderson flaunted her endorsements in a post on X. Among those endorsers were Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, the Arizona Police Association and Republican state Rep. Quang Nguyen.

Then Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer and a longtime friend of murdered TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, decided to weigh in. Sharing an image of Nguyen’s Turning Point Action scorecard, Bowyer shat on Nguyen’s endorsement, saying the lawmaker has “one of the worst scores in the state leg.”

Nguyen wasn’t going to take that lying down. “Are you still crying over my success at the legislature? My record of success doesn’t depend on your fakes (sic) scorecard. You’re a clown,” Nguyen replied.

Bowyer shot back in racist fashion, asking Nguyen, “Can you speak English”

“Better than you speaking any other languages,” Nguyen responded.

A Yavapai County Republican who was first elected to the legislature in 2021, Nguyen was 12 when he fled Vietnam as Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces at the end of the Vietnam War. He has been a staunch conservative legislator, especially when it comes to gun rights. 

He has also faced racism from the farthest-right wings of his party. A year ago, a news website run by disgraced former GOP lawmaker David Stringer ran a cartoon depicting Nguyen eating dogs. Nguyen called out the cartoon at the time and similarly confronted Bowyer about the “can you speak English” dig.

“Am I detecting a little bit of ugliness? Is that the best you can do?” Nguyen tweeted at Bowyer. In a separate post, Nguyen called out Bowyer for resorting “to the lowest form of life” when “they run out of arguments.” 

“I always knew why they don’t like me,” Nguyen wrote. “Yup, I’m always right.”

Facing criticism from other Republicans online, Bowyer attempted to justify his racist comment as merely being a reference to Nguyen writing “fakes scorecard” instead of “fake scorecard.” Nguyen “misspoke in a tweet. Like didn’t speak English,” Bowyer wrote. However, Bowyer himself is no stranger to grammatical errors. Also on Monday, he called another legislator, GOP Rep. Nick Kupper, a “total dousche.” For those inclined to toss around insults, it’s “douche.”

In another post, Bowyer defended his comments because “these guys came at me on Charlie’s trial day.” Monday was the first day in a five-day preliminary hearing for prosecutors to convince a judge of Utah’s Fourth District Court that they have enough evidence to put 23-year-old Tyler Robinson on trial for Kirk’s murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. But Bowyer’s explanation ignores that it was he who dragged Nguyen into the argument, not the other way around.

Once provoked, Nguyen was content to keep swinging. After a commenter told Nguyen that he belongs to a “political party that embraces racism,” Nguyen called Bowyer a “fk’ed up shithead” who “will not define the Republican Party or me.” In another interaction, Nguyen compared Bowyer to a “bunch of communists with daily intimidation of good people.” Nguyen has been a vocal opponent of communism in the legislature, citing his personal experience in Vietnam, and has introduced legislation (which failed) requiring schools to teach anti-communist narratives. 

Bowyer declined to comment when Phoenix New Times reached him by phone. Turning Point USA did not respond to a request for comment.

‘A shitter’

Speaking to New Times by phone, Nguyen said that despite Bowyer’s high ranking at Turning Point, he didn’t see the racist comment as a representation of the organization as a whole. Rather, Nguyen said, Bowyer was “a shitter” and “there’s always 10% shitters in every organization.” 

“Bowyer has never been anything but an unelected individual intimidating other people with his little insignificant scorecards,” Nguyen told New Times. “What I would like to see is maybe Tyler could learn from this lesson, and maybe be a little bit more measured in the way he says things.” 

“I don’t wish to harm the organization,” Nguyen added. “When an individual goes rogue like that, they just need to be called out.”

Nguyen admitted he made a spelling mistake, adding that he needs “to be more careful before I hit the send button,” but pointed out that if the same mistake had been made by the New Times reporter interviewing him — who is white — no one would question the reporter’s English fluency. 

“I don’t speak English perfectly, and I will admit it to you: I learned English very late in life, and sometimes it is very difficult for me to pronounce certain words perfectly,” Nguyen said. “I don’t think I have ever miscommunicated to the press, to the people in the gallery, to fellow legislators… I don’t think they had a problem understanding my English, so why even bring that up?”

Nguyen wasn’t the only state legislator Bowyer beefed with on Monday. Prior to Bowyer’s racist comment, Kupper chimed in to note that his own Turning Point voting score is only about 1.3 points higher than Nguyen’s, yet he had Turning Point’s endorsement. Like Nguyen, Kupper is very conservative. The West Valley Republican is known for passing a law to require providing ID to watch porn and for bringing up a colleague’s abortion underneath a picture of her newborn child. He also rose to political prominence by challenging a COVID-19 vaccine mandate while in the military.

“Not trying to create waves, but there does appear to be an inconsistency here,” Kupper wrote in a quote tweet of Bowyer’s original post. Notably, Kupper is white, though it’s unclear whether that was his intended point. Kupper was unavailable for comment before this story ran.

Bowyer did not take the gentle challenge to Turning Point’s kingmaking authority lightly. 

“We can unendorse you and run someone against you next cycle,” he tweeted at Kupper.

“Whatever floats your boat,” Kupper responded with a thumbs-up emoji. 

Kupper may get what he asked for. After the exchange, Bowyer posted that Turning Point had rescinded its endorsement of Kupper.

“Vote for him now,” Bowyer wrote, “but remember to never vote for him again in 2028 and beyond.”