Conservative activist and pundit Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Wednesday, becoming another victim of America’s epidemic of gun violence.
Kirk’s death was a tragedy for his friends and family. But the response to it from many political leaders, journalists, and news outlets has whitewashed the substance of Kirk’s activism, which involved an endless geyser of hate, bigotry, and misinformation.
President Donald Trump baselessly blamed Kirk’s death on the political left in a video released Wednesday night, arguing, “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. 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 then announced on Thursday he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Trump previously awarded to notorious racist Rush Limbaugh.
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Kirk was a bigot, a misogynist, and a racist who regularly excused the very same sort of gun violence that ended his life.
In 2023, Kirk said, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
Kirk said in 2018 that gun violence in Chicago was the fault of “a lack-of-father problem in the Black community.”
Promoting racism was one of Kirk’s most consistent stances as he led the right-wing pressure groups Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action.
In 2024, he launched a campaign attacking the legacy of revered civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kirk said King was “[a] myth has been created and it has grown totally out of control.” At a conference he held the previous year, Kirk said King was “awful” and “not a good person.”
Kirk claimed that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 had become a “beast” and is an “anti-white weapon.”
In 2023, Kirk said, “I don't believe Black History Month is worth the kind of full month that it is, at all.” He said the celebration “only deepens any sort of racial wounds and creates more bigotry.”
Kirk was a promoter of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely claims Latino migrants are attempting to replace white people. As part of that crusade in August, he falsely accused Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is Black, of engaging in an “attempt to eliminate the white population in this country.”
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