When Alex Clark, the podcaster and one of Charlie Kirk’s top deputies at Turning Point USA, found out Kirk had been murdered September 10, the nonstop poster was left with only a few words. On Thursday morning, she shared her memories of Kirk, but added that it was “tempting to want to close up shop.” By Friday, she was making plans for the future. “Yesterday I woke up wanting to die,” she wrote. “Today I woke up ready for war. We can do this. TPUSA will be bigger and bolder than anyone could ever imagine. We cannot and will not stop.”
She continued by sharing what she thought Kirk would want his followers to do next: “Go to church this Sunday. A solid, Bible teaching church. Keep going,” she added. “Buy the biggest American flag. Put it in your front yard. We will not let him die in vain.”
This summer, Kirk made headlines for telling young women at TPUSA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit to put their families first instead of focusing on their careers. Perhaps ironically, he had spent much of the previous decade supporting the careers of female influencers through his organization. Dozens of prominent right-wing influencers got their start at Kirk’s organization, including Clark, Candace Owens, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna. The contrast between Kirk’s public persona as a combative, occasionally insulting podcaster and his private reputation as a good friend to fellow conservatives helps explain the reactions to his death on both sides of the aisle.
The religious nature of Clark’s response reflects Kirk’s own pivot towards emphasizing Christianity in his public life. In the early years of TPUSA, which Kirk founded in 2012, his message was primarily secular. But in 2019, Kirk began working with megachurch pastor Rob McCoy. Two years later, they founded Turning Point Faith, which brought Kirk in contact with some of the country’s most prominent fundamentalist and charismatic pastors.
Isabel Brown, another social media personality whose career was supported by Kirk, returned to her YouTube show with a tearful remembrance of her friend. She praised Kirk as a mentor: He “personally handwrote my recommendation letter on my job application for my first job at the White House in 2018,” Brown said. By Friday, she was back to a more regular format, presenting clips of vigils for Kirk on college campuses across the country. Brown also shared a video of a child expressing his sadness about Kirk’s murder before beginning a reading from the Book of Matthew. She also reacted to an Instagram Reel from podcaster and missionary Bryce Crawford, who said that Kirk’s death was a sign that the “devil has overplayed his hand” and would start a religious revival in America. (By September 15, Crawford’s video had more than 8.4 million views.)
Brown added that she hopes Kirk’s death will inspire more members of Gen Z to embrace Christianity. “What I’ve seen more of—than support for America, support for the conservative movement, support for free speech and conservative politics—is a generational revival of faith, where young people everywhere are picking up our crosses. To bear the weight of this sorrow, but to move forward, to bring God into every fiber of our society again moving forward,” she said. On Monday, Brown continued in the same vein, with an episode titled “Charlie Kirk Was Right: America Is a Christian Nation.”
Influencer Brett Cooper, who launched her own YouTube show earlier this year after cutting her teeth at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, interrupted her maternity leave to share a message about Kirk in a video on her channel. “This was a person who was larger than life, who was so prolific, who genuinely only wanted to make the world a better place,” she said. “It wasn’t about politics at the core of it. It was about trying to promote goodness in the world and trying to promote understanding.”
Allie Beth Stuckey, author of Toxic Empathy and longtime host of Relatable from Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, used the language of spiritual warfare in her own video response to Kirk’s death. “Demons are rejoicing right now. Satan is glad that he took an effective soldier out of the fight, and everyone who follows Satan feels the same way,” she said on Thursday. “With enough time, he would have been president. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. That is in part why they killed him. He’s largely responsible for Trump winning and preserving what’s left of Western civilization.”
In an apparent attempt to show Kirk’s love for children, Stuckey played a clip from a conversation between the late podcaster and a Black woman holding a baby. “Unfortunately, in the Black community, dads are the most absent of any community. About two-thirds of all Black youth will be raised without a stable father around,” Kirk said in the clip. “That little precious angel of yours deserves to have a father around.”
On Sunday, a wave of Christian influencers also expressed dismay that their worship experience didn’t match the mood of online conservatism when it came to Kirk’s death. Michele Tafoya, a former sports journalist who has a podcast talking about conservative politics and culture, complained on X: “I went to church today for the first time in a couple of months. I was sad that the name of Charlie Kirk was not mentioned a single time,” she said. “Other tragedies were mentioned. But at this particular Catholic church, nothing about Charlie. What were they afraid of?”
Later that day, Stuckey had advice for her followers in similar situations. “A Christian was murdered for saying things all Christians believe. That’s called martyrdom, whether you’re comfortable with admitting that or not. Seems like an important thing for pastors to mention,” she wrote on her Instagram story. “If they talked about racism after George Floyd but didn’t mention CK for fear of being ‘divisive,’ they’re not solid and you shouldn’t be going there. My take.”
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