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Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, leveraged an audience of millions of fervent conservative fans and fierce liberal critics to create a youth-oriented movement on the right, emerging as one of the most prominent voices in the age of Donald Trump.
He specialized in debates - especially at college campuses - in which he took on liberal opponents, often creating moments that went viral and captured audiences across the political spectrum. It was during one such session Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, that Mr. Kirk, 31, was shot and killed, sending shock waves through Trump's base of supporters and beyond.
Trump confirmed Mr. Kirk's death in a statement on social media, a sign of his importance to the president's political movement.
He later recorded an Oval Office address in which he called Kirk's killing a "heinous assassination" and described him as a "martyr for truth and freedom."
"This is a dark moment for America," Trump said. "Charlie Kirk traveled the nation joyfully engaging everyone interested in good-faith debate. His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody, ever."
The shooting happened on the first stop of Mr. Kirk's latest series, the American Comeback Tour, during which Mr. Kirk sat with a microphone under a tent labeled "Prove Me Wrong."
That was a regular format for Mr. Kirk, one in which groups of young people - thousands at times - would gather to listen to him debate students on issues such as affirmative action and transgender rights.
The attention generated by those debates helped Turning Point's rapid growth from a controversial student movement rebuking feminism and diversity initiatives to one of the most active groups in conservative politics. That growth came as once-mighty forces such as the Conservative Political Action Conference and National Rifle Association suffered leadership scandals and diminished followings - while attendance at Turning Point's student summits skyrocketed.
As his influence expanded, so did Mr. Kirk's relationship with Trump, which had long been warm but deepened after the November election.
During the 2024 campaign, he spearheaded a pro-Trump get-out-the-vote operation that mobilized thousands of field workers in swing states. Turning Point Action's field operation was one of several that Trump's team relied on as it slimmed down its own canvassing effort.
During the presidential transition after the election, Mr. Kirk was a regular presence at Mar-a-Lago - at times taking part in meetings about potential Cabinet picks, according to people who were present at Trump's estate at the time.
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday praised Mr. Kirk, saying on X that his events were "one of the few places with open and honest dialogue between left and right."
"He would answer any question and talk to everyone."
He also frequently generated outcry with provocative statements - saying last year that women in their 30s are "not at their prime" for dating and commenting that he thought twice about flying on planes with Black pilots because he questioned whether they had the job because of the airline's diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
After Trump reentered the White House, Mr. Kirk remained in touch with the president and top aides, particularly about issues that were dividing the MAGA base, such as efforts to avoid deporting undocumented immigrants in certain industries, including agriculture and hospitality. That was among the topics Mr. Kirk regularly fired up his audience to raise their voices about - warning that the Trump administration should not "grant amnesty" to any immigrants in the country unlawfully - while also keeping in touch with Trump and his team and seeking to calm tempers among MAGA followers.
In an interview in July with The Washington Post, Mr. Kirk warned that the Republican Party needed to do more to address the financial troubles of young adults to better compete with the economic message pushed by progressive populists like Zohran Mamdani, New York City's Democratic mayoral nominee.
"We have a serious problem of massive debt, sports gambling debt, credit card debt, medical debt of a generation that I speak to," Mr. Kirk said. "This is going to be on us. We have to deliver. We have to deliver a better economy, materially, for them, with better wages, higher incomes, hopefully more affordable housing. And I think we can, and whether we will or not is a probability thing."
He called for the party to take "dramatic" action, such as announcing that "we're going to build 10 million homes, Marshall Plan-type thing."
Mr. Kirk told The Post he was loyal to Trump "because he's a friend," but noted that on occasion he would push back on Trump's decisions.
Charles James Kirk was born Oct. 14, 1993, and grew up in the Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights, Illinois. His father was an architect, and his mother was a mental health counselor.
Mr. Kirk said he experienced a political awakening in middle school, when he began reading books by free-market economist Milton Friedman. By the time he was in high school, he was debating classmates and teachers whom he considered militant leftists. He also began making YouTube videos and speaking to tea party groups, where he caught the attention of Bill Montgomery, a conservative activist and retired restaurateur.
Montgomery encouraged Mr. Kirk to skip college and helped him launch Turning Point USA in 2012, just after Mr. Kirk graduated high school.
In 2021, Mr. Kirk married Erika Frantzve, an entrepreneur and former Miss Arizona USA. They had two children.
Turning Point's annual AmericaFest - among a slate of periodic conferences held at convention centers around the country - has drawn large crowds of college students as Trump and top right-wing officials and influencers have taken the stage. Pyrotechnics, loud dance music and an energetic crowd have been the markers of the conferences, where Mr. Kirk and others in the organization have urged students to embrace not only conservative politics but traditional family values, too.
In July, Mr. Kirk told the crowd of young attendees at his Student Action Summit that they should marry and have children as young as possible.
Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and another leading voice in the MAGA movement, on Wednesday called Turning Point's conferences "the most important events of the calendar for the conservative movement."
"Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the political war going on in this country," Bannon said on his "War Room" show Wednesday evening after Kirk's death was confirmed.
Mr. Kirk toured college campuses for combative public debates, in which he jousted onstage with mostly liberal questioners.
In September, he starred in a viral debate video on the YouTube channel Jubilee titled "Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?" that was been viewed more than 30 million times.
On TikTok, where he had more than 7 million followers, Mr. Kirk's account posted a video taken minutes before the shooting showing him commenting on the size of the crowd. "That's a lot of people, Utah, I tell you what," he said. "We're gonna be here for a couple hours. Get comfortable. Bring the best libs Utah has to offer."
Hasan Piker, a left-wing influencer scheduled to debate Mr. Kirk in two weeks at Dartmouth College, processed the shooting in real time Wednesday on his Twitch stream. "This is the ultimate fear for a political commentator. This is it. This is the thing you don't want happening. This is the thing you never want happening. This is what a lot of people fantasize happening to me all the … time," he said, adding an expletive for emphasis.
On a video posted to social media depicting the moments before the shooting, Mr. Kirk was shown responding to a question about gun violence. "Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?" the questioner said.
"Counting or not counting gang violence?" Mr. Kirk responded, just before the shot rang out.
Mr. Kirk reached millions of followers through his "Charlie Kirk Show" podcast on Instagram, Rumble and YouTube, on which he spoke often about gun violence and American crime.
His friends and allies described Mr. Kirk's daily videos as part of a technological and political revolution that has transformed the country.
"He's almost as close to monoculture as Gen Z gets," said conservative media commentator Emily Jashinsky on "The Megyn Kelly Show." "Everybody felt like they knew Charlie Kirk, even if they didn't like Charlie Kirk."
In a sign of his broad cultural relevance, Mr. Kirk's debate style was parodied last month in an episode of "South Park." Mr. Kirk called the lampooning a "badge of honor" and said, "We as conservatives need to be able to take a joke, right?"
Mr. Kirk this week sparred with CNN commentator Van Jones, after the former Obama administration official accused him of "race-mongering" with his commentary on the stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte.
Mr. Kirk responded that the attacker "racialized" the incident when he said "I got the White girl" following the stabbing. The Post could not independently verify that Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., who is charged with the killing, said those words. Mr. Kirk called Jones a "Marxist" and a "race hustler" - then invited him to appear on his show.
"He fought with words not weapons," Jones wrote on social media, offering his prayers to Mr. Kirk's family and calling the shooting "horrifying and heartbreaking."
Mr. Kirk grew up in a household that was not particularly political.
"He was always more clear on his surroundings and always better at questions," Robert Kirk, his father, told the local Daily Herald in 2013. "Always better able to understand what's happening than your typical kid."
He was a multisport athlete at Wheeling High School, a varsity basketball captain and an Eagle Scout who had ambitions of attending the United States Military Academy at West Point.
"I saw something in Charlie that I knew down the road we more than likely would be hearing his name. Seeing him," Wheeling football coach Jim Golden told the Daily Herald. "Sure enough, he's on Fox News and C-SPAN. I happened to turn on the television the other day, and there he was."
As a high school student, Mr. Kirk volunteered for the campaign of U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R), a candidate to whom he bore no relation but joked that he worked for because of their shared last name. At the start of his senior year, Mr. Kirk and some of his friends protested the school cafeteria's decision to double the price of a cookie, to 50 cents.
"Together we can show the establishment the power of our generation," he wrote on the page of a 400-member Facebook group he created, according to the Chicago Tribune. "Cookies are the highlight of most school days, only to be DOUBLED in price without our consultation? NO! Enough of the manipulation. We must stand together in this fight. Fight the Power!"
Cheaper cookies returned.
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