More than 500 people listened to liberal political livestreamers debate audience members at a Thursday event in Bruin Plaza.
The debate, hosted by UCLA’s chapter of the National Ground Game political action committee – which focuses on recruiting young Democratic voters – invited audience members to debate left-wing political livestreamers on several topics, including foreign policy, philosophy, health care and immigration. Steven Kenneth “Destiny” Bonnell II, Twitch creator Guy Cohen and liberal commentator David Aguilar spoke with audience members while PAC organizers simultaneously ran a voter registration table.
Students filtered through Bruin Plaza during the three-hour event, with up to 150 people gathering around the debate stage to watch students challenge the commentators on an open microphone. NGG founder Zee Cohen-Sanchez said the Thursday debate was the PAC’s largest campus event ever.
Bonnell – who livestreams himself playing video games and making political commentary on several online platforms, including Kick – posted a video of the debate to his YouTube channel on Sunday, which amassed more than 250,000 views by Wednesday afternoon.
Cohen-Sanchez founded NGG in 2024 to serve as a liberal alternative to Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit founded by Charlie Kirk, according to the PAC’s website. Kirk was shot and killed at a debate event at Utah Valley University in September 2025.
Since April 2025, the NGG has held events across college campuses which intend to secure votes for Democrats in local and national elections and get video clips of contentious debate moments, Cohen-Sanchez said.
The NGG coalition of content creators does not take any specific stance on political issues aside from the superseding directive to support the Democratic Party, according to its website.
The PAC and its UCLA chapter solicit donations on ActBlue, a Democratic Party fundraising platform, which they link to on their social media accounts. Aguilar also encouraged the Thursday audience to donate to NGG, which raised $854,856.34 last year according to the Federal Election Commission.
Pedram Malek, a second-year political science student, asked Bonnell about how rational egoism – or the view that actions are only rational if they support one’s own well-being – can coexist with wanting to reduce others’ suffering, especially in other countries, at the Thursday debate.
Bonnell said in the debate that he believes minimizing global suffering aligns with supporting one’s self-interest, as other countries’ problems eventually impact the United States.
Malek said in an interview that he mainly agrees with Bonnell’s politics, but disagrees with his philosophical views.
“It seems like he makes a weird jump where he goes, ‘I’m super selfish, I don’t care about other people unless it benefits me,’ and then he goes, ‘Then we want equal rights,’” Malek said. “There’s some tension there.”
Will Ryan, a third-year philosophy student, said he hoped to challenge Bonnell’s beliefs on veganism, as the streamer has said during other debates that he does not morally care about animals. However, Bonnell said the topic was off-limits when Ryan brought it up at the event.
Ryan, the captain of the Debate Union at UCLA, also asked in the debate if there is a place in the Democratic Party for foreign aid policies that follow effective altruism – the philosophy that everyone in the world’s population is morally equivalent and politicians should prioritize solving issues that affect the most people.
Cohen said he believes Democrats already strive to alleviate global suffering, but activists need to demonstrate to Americans how foreign aid benefits them, because of inherent human selfishness. Bonnell added that he believes no country would ever willingly make significant sacrifices for the benefit of others.
Ryan said in an interview that he finds campus debates to be ineffective. He added that he thinks liberals exaggerate TPUSA’s impact, especially at UCLA, where many students are already politically progressive.
“I’m a little bit skeptical of the format of walk-in college debates for changing people’s minds,” he said. “It’s a little bit terminally online to think that really what we need to be doing is we need the left-wing version of Turning Point.”
Ezequiel Ortiz, who founded and serves as president of the NGG chapter at UCLA, said he discovered NGG last December and promptly founded a UCLA chapter to provide liberal students with an alternative to TPUSA. Ortiz, a fourth-year political science student, added that UCLA’s chapter also aims to challenge leftists, especially those who claim that both major political parties are the same.
On weekends, NGG at UCLA members canvas door-to-door for local Democratic Party candidates to encourage Los Angeles residents to vote blue, he added.
“It’s important to keep young people that are vulnerable to political polarization and extremism, to keep them confident in the institutions, to keep them civically engaged,” Ortiz said.
TPUSA at UCLA did not respond to a request for comment on NGG’s event. In March, the chapter held its own debate event in Bruin Plaza with conservative speaker Chloe Cole, who opposes gender-affirming health care for minors.
[Related: Students debate activist Chloe Cole at Turning Point USA at UCLA event]
The event also attracted non-students. Hailey Neely, a UC Santa Barbara alumnus, said she attended the event as a fan of Bonnell, adding that she appreciates NGG’s efforts to engage with people in-person, rather than just online.
Ortiz said he recognizes that sharing debate videos online is how NGG makes money, but added that posting abrasive debate clips is a weak strategy. Going forward, he hopes the PAC focuses more on open dialogue, he added.
“Very often now, we’re pretty much discouraged from having these really difficult conversations, because we feel that the other side is trying to get ‘gotcha’ moments on us,” Ortiz said. “We want to really emphasize, to students especially, that it’s still possible to have good-faith conversations.”
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