Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist and firebrand, developed an enormous following, particularly among young people, for his brash, unapologetic positions on social issues.
The investigation continues into the circumstances of his killing on Wednesday at a Utah campus event, including who the shooter was and what their motivations were.
But his death has reignited a debate about political violence and polarization in this country.
While many politicians have expressed remorse and condemnation for the killing, social media has been riven with factional debates. Some on the left have celebrated and joked about his death. Some on the right have blamed Democrats or liberals and have vowed revenge.
But how did Charlie Kirk, at such a young age, amass so much political influence and the friendship of the sitting president?
Today, Explained host Noel King discussed this with Kyle Spencer, journalist and author of Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and Its Plot for Power.
Charlie Kirk was one of the young people she profiled in that book, and in writing it, she got to know him.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Charlie Kirk was a central character in your book Raising Them Right. Tell me about him.
Charlie was a very, very charismatic leader of the modern Republican Party. He started out as a kid who cared about politics and morphed slowly into somebody who was able to transform the way people thought about Republicans.
Where did he grow up?
Charlie grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He attended a public high school. It was going from a mostly white school to a mostly Black and brown school. He was in a school that was very supportive of Obama. His classmates were generally very liberal. He was even early on a conservative. He had issues with what was being taught early on in his classes. He believed that, in history and economics classes, he was being taught from textbooks that were overly supportive of liberal policies and that students were not getting enough information on conservative policies.
He slowly began to create a following by starting a small organization of his high school students and of students from other high schools around him, a place that they could come to if they had conservative ideas and were feeling kind of left out. That was the beginning of Turning Point USA, which he officially launched after he graduated from high school.
At the time, the Tea Party movement was coming alive, and he was going all over the state and neighboring states to talk to Tea Party folks and to raise money. So first he made allies, and then he began very quickly to understand what he needed to do was raise money. And he proved to be very, very gifted and skilled at finding both people who supported his cause and also people who wanted to financially donate.
Tell me about Turning Point USA and how much of a following it grows to have.
Charlie Kirk was always a political junkie, and he was always conservative. But what he cared about originally were economics. He cared about what he thought of as a bloated budget deficit, of a government which was spending too much money, of taxes that were too high, of a China that he felt was overwhelming the economic markets around the world and bullying the United States. And he became very involved in 2016 in Trump’s election and also in the Republican Party at the time. And that’s when he evolved his views into a lot more of the culture war issues that we knew him for: issues around diversity and equity programs, reproductive rights, and Second Amendment rights. He became an advocate for conservative social stances that he believed young people, if they had them, were being silenced and were being discouraged from voicing.
How important was he to Donald Trump’s success?
What Charlie really brought originally to President Trump was an ability to communicate very effectively, energetically, passionately, and charismatically with young people who Charlie and Trump and other conservatives really wanted to bring into a movement that was seen, before Trump and before Charlie, as very stodgy and old-school. So he branded the GOP and MAGA to young audiences. That was originally his gift to Trump. Eventually, Charlie was able to show that he was an excellent strategist, that he could think about ways to bring in older audiences, more diverse audiences. A lot of the diversity that we’re seeing and reading about, that the Republican Party has developed inside its follower base, a lot of that was imagined by Charlie Kirk in 2012, early, early on.
He didn’t have a formal role in the White House, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t very powerful. I remember a couple of months ago when the Epstein files were kind of tearing at President Trump and at the MAGA base, he was the guy who came out and he calmed things down by saying, I’m done talking about the Epstein files. And many people seem to say, “Okay, if Charlie’s done, we’re done too.”
Charlie has millions and millions of followers who pay attention to him and what he says. On the one hand, Charlie had very radical views, a lot of views that were very far from the moderate positions that are held in this country, but the way in which he discussed those issues and presented them to his public were very folksy, no-nonsense, relatable, conversational. So when Charlie would say things, people would listen to him, because he often made a lot of sense to them. He was controversial. A lot of the views he held were views that people found really challenging and dangerous, but he also was able to convey those views to other people in ways that made them say, “Hey, I think this guy really knows what he’s talking about. I trust him.”
As his views became more and more conservative, he became more opposed to LGBTQ rights. He became more opposed to diversity programs. He became more convinced that white men were really the victims of racism in our country. He became more and more invested in traditional marriage in a role for women inside marriages that was very 1950s-esque. The more he moved to the right on these issues, the more he became interested in a kind of biblical leading of our country, a merging of church and state. The more that he held more conservative views, he actually grew his following with more moderate audiences. And that was really his genius — is that he got young people at a time when they have increasingly turned to podcasters and to social media influencers for friendships. Charlie became their good friend. And now what you’ll see is that young people that were supporters, knew Charlie, were inside Turning Point USA, worked for him — they are absolutely devastated because he had a kind of cult following. People, really, really adored him and looked up to him as much as he was feared and disliked outside of his movement. He was just absolutely adored inside, and they remain very loyal to him.
How do you think Charlie Kirk will be remembered?
Charlie Kirk has a stamp on the modern Republican Party that is really extraordinary. It is for many of his followers a terrible, terrible tragedy that he has passed. However, they can find solace in knowing that Charlie Kirk’s beliefs, his understanding of how the GOP ought to motivate around the country and how it ought to acquire followers, those ideas, those tactics, those strategies, they are embedded in the party now, and that’s not going away.
You’ve seen that there is a tremendous amount of politicized rage and fear right now. What do you think we should be prepared for?
I think right now you’re seeing two sides. You are seeing one part of the country trying to tone down the rhetoric. This was a horrifying event. And we’re going to see a big, big push as you’re seeing right now, to tone down the rhetoric, to tone down the violence, and to understand what it means to live in a civil society with rules of law. You have another side that is very enraged, very angry, kind of looking for a fight.
Unfortunately, this sad, sad turn of events is going to be one of the events that ignites more rage. And we’re seeing already online, with some of those folks, already [making] calls for, “this is war; this is clearly our enemy that has done this; we need to fight back; we need to attack,” even as we have no idea actually how this tragedy happened and who is responsible. And I don’t think any of us know how this is going to turn out. But the fact that you have the number of folks who are saying “let’s go to war” should be very, very alarming to all of us.
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