The News
Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old conservative activist and commentator who became one of the most influential activists of his time, was shot and killed on Wednesday during an appearance at Utah Valley University.
Kirk was a transformative figure on the right, the leader of a political media empire that started with anti-debt memes and eventually made him an Oval Office fixture under Trump.
He founded Turning Point USA in 2012 at age 18, using startup capital from conservative donors who wanted to reach more young people and who saw him doing it with content that looked native on Tumblr or Twitter.
“The fiscal cliff is coming,” Kirk said in his first national TV appearance, on Fox Business. “If we don’t get our fiscal house in order, our country’s never going to be the same.”
Other conservative groups had overlapping missions on college campuses, but Kirk’s drive and debating skills quickly grew the footprint of TPUSA. When Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid got traction, TPUSA launched a “Socialism Sucks” campaign that copied his logo.
After Trump won the GOP nomination, Kirk campaigned for him, though he told Wired that he was “not the biggest Donald Trump fan in the world.”
That would quickly change.
Trump’s victory gave Kirk much more to do, as well as close access to the president, his family, and his political advisors. Donald Trump Jr. was an early supporter of Kirk, speaking at the massive conferences TPUSA organized for its activists.
Kirk launched Turning Point Action, a political arm that could campaign for Republicans, in 2019. His organizations raised tens of millions of dollars, opened chapters around the country, and staged flashy live events that kept his activists organized year-round.
By 2024, its turnout operation was an integral part of the national GOP campaign apparatus, tasked with getting infrequent voters to turn in their ballots. It was on a Turning Point Action stage that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after suspending his own presidential bid, endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Turning Point Action reporters filmed left-wing protests, getting coverage that changed how the protests were seen.
“Targeted young voters were watching our content six, seven, eight, nine, ten times,” Kirk told Megyn Kelly after Trump’s 2024 win.
By then, Kirk had built a campus for his Turning Point organizations in Arizona. He hosted a popular podcast, , which had been a hub of organizing to support Trump’s attempt to contest the 2020 election; he appeared on campuses to debate liberals and far-right critics, which TPUSA turned into viral videos.
David’s view
The current round of liberal hand-wringing about how conservatives have become far better at driving the political conversation stems in large part from Kirk. He pitched the conservative movement not just as a club for tax cuts and law-and-order politics, but as a lifestyle.
That, Kirk believed, would help win over young people who felt they were being offered miserable choices by the left.
“Younger audiences love this contrarian heterodox approach,” Kirk told me in an interview at the 2024 Republican National Convention. “The mantra is not that, if you’re a man, you’re an oppressor. It’s not that having children is a plague on the planet.
“We’re here to say, actually, no, having children is a gift from God and it’s a wonderful thing,” he added. “We’re saying, getting married is awesome, and you can reject hookup culture.”
Kirk is survived by his wife, two children, and by the sprawling political movement he created on the US right.
His killing will doubtless exacerbate divisions in a country already shaken by political violence. But his influence will live on in the movement he helped shape — where his style of debate and argument, and his unapologetic Christian faith, have created a new paradigm for conservatives.
The View From Republicans
News of Kirk’s shooting circulated quickly on Wednesday, with the president, vice president, and prominent conservatives condemning the attack and asking for prayers.
“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot,” wrote the president in a Truth Social post. “A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”
Other conservatives saw a dark pattern in the shooting, blaming left-wing rhetoric and organizers for inspiring the attack. The shooter, as of Wednesday afternoon, had not been identified by law enforcement.
“The left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk wrote on X.
“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” wrote Chris Rufo. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”
The View From Democrats
Elected Democrats condemned the shooting, even as some commentators on progressive media hedged their critical comments by pointing to Kirk’s past rhetoric.
“​​The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible,” wrote California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who interviewed Kirk for the launch of his podcast this year. “In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”
“I’m horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah,” wrote Zohran Mamdani, whose mayoral campaign in New York had been condemned by Kirk. “Political violence has no place in our country.”
