The Legacy of Charlie Kirk

Top Story: Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

When I first met Charlie Kirk in 2018, I was working on a book — Raising Them Right — about Charlie and the new, ultra-conservative youth movement he was fortifying. At the time, Charlie was still a burgeoning leader; still talking to reporters, still eager for press.

He was doing a stop for one of his early speaking tours; this one inside a university ballroom in Cleveland. It was Turning Point USA’s Big Government Sucks era and the room was packed.

Afterwards, he told me about his running habits, his eating rituals, his rigorous reading schedule. I was thirty years older than him and I was acutely aware that Charlie Kirk was a lot more disciplined than I was; then I’d ever been. And I hardly consider myself a Type-B personality.

Knowing I was a reporter who had worked a lot for The New York Times, a publication he deemed extremely lefty, he would often say to me: “Are you writing a guide for ‘The Left’?”

It seemed funny at the time. But in retrospect, not so much. Charlie’s ability to envision (an unimaginable) future for the new GOP, raise money for it, corral donors, wow young fans, cozy up to billionaires, befriend Christian Nationalist leaders, become a premier President Trump advisor, hang out with rap stars, mix on-the-ground-organizing with social media prowess, run a podcast, pinpoint future ultraconservative stars, normalize very extreme ideas…and keep doing that year after year, growing his empire bigger and bigger each passing month…That made him unique.

There was no replicating those talents by anyone on “The Left.” No burgeoning leader with this mix of multi-faceted political agility. No infrastructure in Democratic circles that would take a chance on a rambunctious kid with a dream. No gaggle of donors willing to listen to a new vision for their party. No collaboration, coordination, common sense feeling that a kid with his heart pretty much where your heart is might have some good ideas, even if they seemed bit crazy.

The popular story line is that Charlie Kirk was always faking it; not a true believer. But to understand Charlie is to understand that he did believe. He believed everything he said; and when he contradicted himself, it was because he had changed his mind. He had willed himself to believe something else. Period.

Perhaps that makes me sound like I am complimenting him. I’m not. I’m stating a fact about Charlie Kirk and the movement he had a big hand in creating. The sheepish kid from the Chicago suburbs with a yen for conservative politics catapulted head first into a movement that was ready for him, that saw him coming and pulled up the money trucks, that was (and is) led by people who are ever searching for new disciples to spread the word, to join them in their all-consuming passion of “owning the libs.”

Charlie Kirk did not succeeded in “owning” liberal America. But he did succeed in owning a very big piece of the GOP. He helped build something we are all now living with. That will be his legacy.

Those who believe that Charlie Kirk’s vision is a terrible, backwards one for America may want to think a bit the way Charlie did, when he first launched Turning Point USA, his primary vehicle for making the change he wanted to see.

It was 2012 and Charlie Kirk was “suffering” through the Obama presidency, filled with fear and loathing for Obama’s policies (and deep admiration for what he considered to be the president’s extraordinary political skill). Charlie Kirk loved Barack Obama’s charisma and his ability to connect online and off, to lead campaigns that mixed in-person gathering with online communications, to send inspiring messages about the things he valued. At the time, the GOP was dormant online, stodgy and out-of-touch with the country.

Charlie told his future donors he was going to change that —by mimicking what Obama, a guy he hated, had done. He was going to connect people who shared his vision and persuade others to come along. Charlie looked at someone whose politics he believed were destroying America and saw his future.

-Kyle Spencer

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Executive Editor Kyle Spencer

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Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability

David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy

Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations

Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.

Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

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