Shagirde Razavi
Charlie Kirk, born in 1993, built his career on turning outrage into influence. As the founder of Turning Point USA, he positioned himself as the voice of a generation of young conservatives. His platform grew into one of the loudest megaphones for Donald Trump’s reactionary political agenda. His political identity was tied almost entirely to loyalty toward Trump, U.S. exceptionalism, and staunch support for Israel.
His unflinching support for imperialist agendas, critiques on culture through a reactionary lens, and career built on igniting racist hatred made Kirk the poster boy for American exceptionalism.
On September 10, 2025, Kirk addressed a crowd of nearly 3,000 at Utah Valley University, his first stop in a multi-campus speaking tour. The format was his signature “Prove Me Wrong” tent, where he sparred with students in open debate. The discussion that afternoon centered on gun violence and school shootings, a subject he had minimized in the past. As he answered questions, a shot rang out from what investigators believe was a rooftop 90 to 200 yards away. Kirk was hit in the neck. Despite being rushed to a hospital, he was pronounced dead shortly after.
Authorities have not identified a suspect or motive. Utah’s governor described it as a likely “political assassination.” The stark reality is that Kirk was killed while addressing the very issue that defined much of his career: the role of guns in American society.
Gun Violence and “Acceptable Deaths”
Kirk had long argued that the Second Amendment outweighed the human cost of gun violence. After the 2023 Nashville school shooting, he declared:
“I think it’s worth having a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Those words stand in contrast to the numbers. In 2023 alone, over 43,000 people in the U.S. died from gun-related injuries, including more than 300 mass shootings. School shootings have reached record highs, with at least 188 incidents recorded in 2022 and 2023 combined. While parents and children lived with constant fear, Kirk called these tragedies “a prudent deal.” His framing of death as a necessary price elevated ideology above human lives, and many who confronted him saw it as both callous and dangerous.
Public Health and COVID-19:
Kirk took a similar approach to the pandemic. Throughout 2020 and beyond, he dismissed lockdowns, masks, and vaccines as unnecessary coercion. Yet the data tells another story. By 2022, COVID-19 had claimed nearly 1.2 million American lives. Peer-reviewed studies estimate that stricter health mandates could have prevented as many as 447,000 deaths. States with mask mandates consistently reported lower death rates, while states that followed the line Kirk promoted fared worse.
In practice, Kirk’s rhetoric against public health measures carried weight. As the head of a youth-driven organization, he encouraged young Americans to resist vaccines and public health guidelines. In doing so, he helped fuel distrust that ultimately led to lives lost. His loyalty was not to science or health, but to a political narrative that cast safety measures as attacks on freedom.
Immigration and the “Great Replacement”:
Few areas showed Kirk’s influence more starkly than immigration. He repeatedly echoed and amplified the so-called “Great Replacement” theory, which claims that immigrants are part of a deliberate effort to replace native populations.
On X, he once posted: “Importing millions of Muslims is civilizational suicide. Europe must stop, or die.”
In another, he claimed: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
Meanwhile, under Trump’s second administration, policies Kirk endorsed began reshaping lives. Between January and June 2025, the immigrant population in the U.S. dropped by 1.4 million, the first decline since the 1960s. ICE carried out more than 65,000 removals in Trump’s first 100 days, a record pace. Executive actions stripped protections from naturalized citizens and cut asylum rights. For immigrant communities, this meant family separations, deportations, and fear woven into daily life. Kirk defended and promoted these moves, never acknowledging the devastation that those directly impacted experienced.
Gaza, Israel, and Civilian Killings In The Middle East:
Perhaps the sharpest critique of Kirk comes from his position on Israel and Palestine. At the very moment when global institutions, humanitarian organizations, and governments condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza as collective punishment, Kirk sided unflinchingly with Israel. He tweeted: “The deaths of women and children in Gaza are the fault of Hamas, not Israel, just like the deaths in Japan during World War 2 were the fault of Japan, not America.”
By 2025, reports from Gaza indicated more than 60,000 Palestinians had been killed since October 2023. Entire neighborhoods flattened, hospitals destroyed, and children buried in rubble. UN agencies described the crisis as “one of the fastest deteriorating humanitarian disasters in modern history.” Yet Kirk responded with lines like: “No, Israel is not starving Gazans” and “Zero people from Gaza should be allowed to come to America. Period.”
His foreign policy stances consistently glorified violence. When Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020, Kirk tweeted: “Don’t mess with America under @realDonaldTrump.” He praised military aggression in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. For him, these deaths were not tragedies but victories.
A Legacy of Hatred
What tied Kirk’s positions together was his devotion to Trump, which is a devotion to American exceptionalism and hegemony. No matter the policy — tariffs that raised consumer prices, immigration crackdowns that devastated families, or economic moves that contributed to rising inflation — Kirk remained a cheerleader. Unemployment and inflation spiked during periods of trade wars, yet he never broke ranks. His loyalty made him less of an independent thinker and more of a messenger for Trump’s reactionary agenda, regardless of the consequences for ordinary Americans.
Kirk’s career was built on framing loss of life, whether from gun violence in schools, preventable deaths during a pandemic, or the bombing of civilians in the Middle East, as acceptable costs for political victories. He dismissed immigrant communities as threats, amplified conspiracy theories about demographic change, and consistently sided with Israel as thousands of Palestinians were subject to genocide.
In every issue, his words and actions showed loyalty not to human dignity but to Trump, to U.S. exceptionalism, and to Zionism-imperialism. His voice was not one of compassion or reason, but rather one of justification for policies and actions that caused widespread human suffering.
His death does not erase his record. Charlie Kirk leaves behind a legacy as a political operative who weaponized ideology, dismissed empathy, and acted as a willing spokesperson for American imperialism and Zionism.
Shagirde Razavi is a multimedia journalist who digs deep into stories with a sharp curiosity and brings them to life across platforms.
