Charlie Kirk, right, the right-wing influencer and founder of Turning Point USA, with US President Donald Trump in July 2019. Kirk was among the faithful who had helped Trump build a comeback. Trump brought him into his second-term inner circle. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times
Shortly after United States President Donald Trump was re-elected last November, Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, was busy helping the incoming president build a White House that prized loyalty above all else.
This meant rooting out anyone who had turned away when Trump had been shunned by other conservatives.
“The question is, now, ‘Where were you?’” Kirk, who was helping vet prospective Administration hires at the transition headquarters, said in an interview with the New York Times.
“Did you believe that President Trump had a future? Or are you a summer soldier? Are you someone that is just around when the weather is good, or are you someone that’s willing to kind of endure when there might be a dark winter as well?”
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University yesterday, the latest attack on a political figure in a horrific string of them this past year.
His death is a major blow to Trump, whose close relationship with the young activist almost five decades his junior dates back to the President’s first term.
The two spoke often, with Kirk relaying concerns from the greater conservative ecosystem and bonding with the President over shared grievances. One early pet concern of Kirk’s, also shared by Trump, was the idea that conservative voices were being silenced or muted on social media.
When Kirk was among the faithful who had helped Trump wage a comeback after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol had rendered him a political outcast, Trump never forgot it.
Trump occasionally appeared at events hosted by Kirk and took to calling the conservative wunderkind a “genius”.
With his Turning Point USA events and massive online following, Kirk provided Trump with a new generation of followers who cheered along as the President ripped into his political opponents, cast doubt on the reliability of American elections, and accused the news media of unfair coverage.
And Kirk, for his part, endeared himself to Trump by using his platform — which included a podcast, frequent television appearances and a large social media presence — to hit back at the President’s critics.
Yesterday Trump posted a video from the Oval Office, praising Kirk as the “best of America” and angrily vowing to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence”.
Trump, who was assailed by protesters who called him “Hitler” in a Washington restaurant on Wednesday likened some liberal criticism to acts of terrorism, linking the criticism to two assassination attempts on his life and other violent attacks against Republicans.
“It’s a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree,” Trump said, before focusing solely on liberal criticism.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Trump also ordered that American flags be lowered until Monday NZT.
Kirk had grown up both inside and alongside Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and few supporters of Trump were seen as more synonymous with it than him.
Well before he had ever reached his 30s, Kirk had ascended to the inner realm of Trump’s political and family life.
Kirk told a New York Times reporter who wrote a profile of his rise that he had visited the White House more than 100 times during Trump’s first term.
Kirk had deep relationships within Trump’s world. He had grown very close to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump jnr, as well as a number of the President’s current and former advisers. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was an early ally.
“Charlie wasn’t just a friend — he was like a little brother to me — and to millions of people around the world — he was a true inspiration,” Donald Trump jnr wrote on social media.
“There is no question that Charlie’s work and his voice helped my father win the presidency. He changed the direction of this nation.”
On social media, the bond between the President and Kirk had long been mutually beneficial: Trump elevated and amplified Kirk, who swiftly became a pundit on mainstream channels like Fox News.
And Kirk helped shape and deliver Trump’s message to a new generation of Americans who not only shared his views on topics from immigration to Democratic politics but also encouraged the often incendiary way he communicated his ideas.
Kirk’s own rhetoric was long cast as racist, xenophobic, and extreme by groups that study hate speech, including the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
For years, he used his various platforms to decry racial equity programmes, float an array of conspiracy theories and test out divisive messaging that Trump has later adopted. Trump did not start calling Covid “the China virus” until he retweeted Kirk, who had helped pilot the phrase.
When Trump was initially charged with three conspiracy counts and the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding relating to the January 6 attack, Kirk was among those who stood by him.
Trump later trusted Kirk to screen for loyalty among conservatives who were hoping to rejoin the President’s orbit. At Trump’s swearing-in, Kirk had a prominent seat in the Capitol Rotunda.
The President faced two assassination attempts in 2024 — one a near miss — and was conscious of threats to his safety long before that.
Democrats and Republicans quickly denounced the shooting on social media and in Congress.
Although the rhetoric online devolved immediately, with liberals and conservatives accusing one another of creating the kind of corrosive conditions that could result in this kind of bloodshed.
Kirk, who was criticised and celebrated for his rhetoric online, disagreed with the idea that he had contributed to a toxic political environment.
He said late last year that he saw his role as part of a functioning democracy, even though he was aware that a large swathe of Americans were deeply opposed to Trump’s — and Kirk’s — brand of conservatism.
“We won the popular vote,” Kirk said last November. “There’s a process for this.
“And you try to compete, and you get in the public sphere. If you think your ideas are good, then I guess we’ll see in the Midterms and in 2028.”
He added: “Disagreement is a healthy part of our systems”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Katie Rogers
Photograph by: Doug Mills
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