By Trevor Kraus, Managing Editor

Asher Boekestein rolled up after a six-hour drive, late on a frigid Michigan night, after a grueling weekend conference, looking like a million bucks. He looked like he was ready to make a video.

“Well, I thought I’d look at least presentable to meet you guys,” he said.

He wore a tweed overcoat; he had combed his hair; and he gave a firm handshake.

I was there with my producer to interview Asher and to follow him around his Cornerstone University campus in Grand Rapids — to learn how he lives and what gets him out of bed in the morning. What inspires him to work so hard.

Because Asher Boekestein (pronounced Book-uh-steyen) is a video-making machine. While double-majoring in Marketing and a special, new sequence called Creativity and Innovation, and while maintaining daily devotion to his church, and while working as an intern for Students For Liberty’s social media team, he churns out high-quality, liberty-based educational videos that have reached 300,000 people (and counting) as of late February 2026. And those aren’t vanity views, either; they’ve contributed to more than 200 applications to join Students For Liberty, part of SFL North America’s best year yet.

Even more impressively, Asher manages a team of 10 — many of them fellow SFLers — whose script submissions and video production work he reviews on weekly, 1-on-1 calls … one of which I watched him run with a maturity that belies his youth.

He was motivating and encouraging. He offered constructive criticism on the script’s introduction — how to make it snappier, and what words might sync well with visuals. I’ve worked on a video team for nearly five years now, and I’ve worked up close with John Stossel’s team in New York. Asher is already doing everything the pros do.

All while working, roughly, the equivalent of three full-time jobs, if you’re keeping score at home. And while you’re at it, score this: He’s not even able to buy a drink. He’s 20 years old.

“I’m passionate about this,” he said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And he never really has had it any other way. He’s been making videos since he was a kid — starting with simple Lego animations, to hone his production skills, and basic, sometimes satirical news reports to hone his on-air presentation. He was bashful to break into his vault of old videos, embarrassed by the quality. But he gave us a sneak peek:

The Legos are boxed up in the attic now. The glasses are gone. He doesn’t have to do everything by himself anymore. His skills have improved dramatically, and the content of his videos has become more sophisticated and philosophical. But his recording space might have actually taken a step back. Whereas he used to have his parents’ entire house and yard as a playground for backgrounds, now his studio is a whitewashed cinderblock corner of his (shared) dorm room.

The Arthur Ashe quote, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” came immediately to mind when I saw it.

“I never want to lose that startup, entrepreneurial mindset,” Asher said. “I want to live out the values I believe in. Government is wasteful and extravagant, so I want to stretch what I’ve got as far as it’ll go.”

That includes relentlessly reevaluating and tweaking his lighting setup — and frequently telling his roommate, “Hey, I’m gonna need the room to record.”

See for yourself how his videos look and sound. Here’s his most-viewed:

No, they don’t look like Fox or the NBC Nightly News. But then, what he has to say is somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times smarter and more principled than what they do.

“I’m probably gonna lose a lot of subscribers from this video,” he said in his September 2025 video Using Charlie’s Death to Justify CANCEL CULTURE. “But I’m gonna stay consistent to my values, whether they’re attacked from the left or the right.”

No doubt, the Charlie Kirk assassination shook him. It shook all of us who speak publicly about what we believe in. But Asher ultimately used it as fuel. The day after that assassination, Asher released what he considers his most personal video yet: So This is Where “Us vs. Them” Gets Us.

His process had previously involved at least some improvisation. But, he said, “That was the first time I decided to write a full script and have it prepared ahead of time. I knew I needed to express exactly what I was thinking. And I did.”

That says it all. Asher Boekestein is the real deal, the genuine article. The next John Stossel, perhaps, or the Libertarian Charlie Kirk, if that’s what he wants to be.

I think, though, that all Asher Boekestein wants to be right now is humble. Committed. Grounded.

“Grounded” might have to wait. He had just driven six hours home from the Austrian Student Scholars Conference in Pennsylvania. And the day after I left, he was traveling to Bulgaria — you read that right — on a scholarship for the Why Liberty? conference, where he’ll go through training on public speaking in defense of liberty. (He might end up GIVING the training; he’s already head and shoulders above most people his age, when it comes to public speaking.)

And in April of 2026, he’ll join us at LibertyCon Europe in Madrid, as one of the nominees for the David Boaz Impact Project of the Year award. He had been too humble to even toss his hat in the ring for that honor, but his impact — his inspiration and leadership of his team of contributors, in addition to his reach on social media — were so clear and so bright that he was an obvious nominee.

Until then, and in between it all, he’ll be making videos, educating and engaging a — yes — sometimes humble audience. He freely admits that he hasn’t cracked some code to earn clicks, views, or comments. All he can do, he said, is study what works and what doesn’t, and to appreciate an enduring, free-market reality: It’s hard to create a product that people want to consume.

He sure is trying, though.

The night before he left for the conference in Bulgaria, and after trips to the chapel to pray and to the library to study, he recorded THREE fresh videos, this time from a new, more intense camera angle that my producer had recommended.

But the angle he took on the stories he explored did not and will not change. He came from a — no surprise — humble and grounded, liberty-first perspective.

“I’m gonna stay consistent to my values,” he said last September. I’ve never believed anyone more.