Don't be surprised if whoever killed Charlie Kirk has no coherent political ideology, didn't do it for any particular reason, and doesn’t fall anywhere neat on the left/right paradigm.
— Mike Rothschild (@rothschildmd.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Tom Scocca, at Indignity, on “The rational outcome”:
… The last thing Charlie Kirk tweeted before he died was a video denouncing—that is, celebrating as useful—the fatal knifing of a blonde woman, a Ukrainian refugee, by a Black man on public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina. The world that made Charlie Kirk and that Charlie Kirk helped make, from Charlie Kirk’s president on down, has been enthralled by watching the blonde woman die on video at the hands of the Black man, an exhilarating and exploitable death, a death for which they can demand more death. Even if the man who did the stabbing said he did it because “she was reading his mind“; even if the president might have deported the victim to a war zone if she’d lived…
This country seems inflammable right now, in large part because there is a well-funded industry dedicated to keeping it inflamed. Charlie Kirk was one of the mostly interchangeable products of that industry: taller than Ben Shapiro, less dysfunctionally flamboyant than James O’Keefe, more comfortable as a performer than Chris Rufo. Most normal healthy citizens had no idea who he was. Maybe, even so, his killing really will bring on a new and terrible crisis. Maybe nobody really cares, and it’s one more thing to shout about. Maybe both of those things will turn out to be true at once.
I have serious doubts as to whether, after all of its politically-motivated firings, the FBI has the capacity and expertise to actually investigate Kirk’s murder. The lawsuit filed today against Patel and the Bureau describes a complete clown show that leaves all of us less safe
— Asha Rangappa (@asharangappa.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Because we have people who subscribe to conspiracy theories running our government, it is highly likely that confirmation bias, rather than actual facts, are going to drive this investigation. Which means wasted time, wasted resources, and less justice. But I guess that’s what America voted for
— Asha Rangappa (@asharangappa.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 8:45 PM
But, for right-wing courtiers of the current Oval Office court, Kirk was a shining star. From the Atlantic, “The Funereal White House” [gift link]:
…Kirk was close friends with Vice President J. D. Vance and with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., regularly texting on small-group threads with them and a coterie of young male aides and allies. He was a frequent and welcome presence at the White House and at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club. And his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, helped elect Trump in 2024.
By early this evening—after the visceral, gutting visuals of Kirk, 31, being shot in the neck during an event on a Utah college campus, followed by the sudden, jarring news that he had died—the mood at the White House was, unsurprisingly, funereal. In the West Wing, young aides, some red-eyed, others grim-faced, watched the TVs, all of which were sharing images of their friend and news of his death…
Kirk was one of the most influential unelected people in America. He was not just a friend of the president’s family and a confidant to multiple Cabinet officials, but also an authority for millions of young people who flocked to his events and tuned in to his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. For Trump supporters, he was a crucial interpreter not just of politics but also of faith and family, a William F. Buckley Jr. updated for MAGA world.
Tapped as a teenager by Republican megadonors eager to create a unified conservative youth movement, Kirk delivered spectacularly on their investment. Turning Point USA remade MAGA for a younger generation, piercing the party’s stuffy image and taking over online turf once claimed by Democrats. Kirk was a tireless Trump evangelist, credited in MAGA circles for helping steer young voters—particularly white men—to the president. Trump regularly appeared at Kirk’s conferences, including one in Arizona just after his 2024 victory.
The president loved Kirk’s at-times-confrontational appearances at college campuses, all dutifully recorded on social media. Persistently, Kirk raised the alarm about right-wing bugbears such as critical race theory and transgender rights. In a booklet distributed to donors in 2022, to mark Turning Point’s 10-year anniversary, Kirk wrote, “Turning Point USA’s commitment to playing offense with a sense of urgency over the past decade has allowed us to FIGHT and WIN the American Culture War.” The booklet, titled Warrior Report, describes the victories that Kirk notched—dominating social media, dictating the terms of political debate, and deploying a 500,000-strong corps of campus activists to advocate for conservative causes.
Over time, Turning Point’s influence came to eclipse that of the GOP establishment. The MAGA movement that twice elected Trump is inconceivable without Turning Point, a vital instrument for conservatives seeking office at every level, from the school board to the state house to the White House. Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman and Trump’s first pick for attorney general, told us in 2022 that he wanted to see Kirk take the helm of the Republican National Committee. “He’s the most energetic organizer in our movement,” Gaetz said. In recent years, others speculated about Kirk possibly running for governor of Arizona, where he resided with his wife and two children. But he stayed put. He had more influence where he was…
His association with Trump turned Kirk into a household name. Turning Point USA opened an office in Mesa, Arizona, in 2016 and a new national headquarters in Phoenix in 2018. The growth of the organization can be seen above all in its fundraising. Turning Point brought in $85 million last year, according to tax filings. Millions flowed in via bidding wars among donors at winter galas that Kirk hosted at Mar-a-Lago.
Kirk spoke at all of Trump’s presidential-nominating conventions, and in 2020, Turning Point and affiliated groups promised to turn out voters in Arizona and across the country. Kirk was stunned when Trump lost and, on January 5, 2021, said that Turning Point affiliates were sending 80 “buses of patriots to D.C. to fight for this president.” Kirk later pleaded the Fifth Amendment when he testified before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
With Trump out of office, the Republican grassroots groups looked to Kirk to help carry the MAGA flame. Kirk was so closely associated with Trump by 2022 that a local Republican group in Illinois disinvited Kristi Noem, then the sitting governor of South Dakota and now Trump’s secretary of homeland security, from a dinner because Kirk was available instead. “By the time of your amazingly and highly desired acceptance to our invitation, we had already contractually committed ourselves to Charlie Kirk at a price of $30,000 plus expenses,” the chairperson of the group wrote to Noem in a letter that we obtained.
In 2024, Kirk’s groups again turned their attention to voter turnout, this time with better results. Kirk’s associates organized the rally in the Phoenix suburbs that brought Kennedy, who would later become the HHS secretary, onstage to endorse Trump, complete with pyrotechnics displays. When some of Trump’s Cabinet picks seemed in doubt, Kirk mobilized his online supporters to rally around them…
Kirk was so unfailingly devoted to Trump that it sent shock waves through the White House when he briefly broke with the president over the Jeffrey Epstein files earlier this summer. But after a call from Trump, Kirk said that he would defer to the administration’s handling of the matter. That approach, even more than his incendiary statements about American culture, represents the brand of politics that Kirk practiced, and that Trump most appreciated: loyalty to the leader.
Speaking of two-bit grifters Trump’s courtiers…
The killing of Charlie Kirk is hitting Congress hard.
Some lawmakers were close with him. For others, his death is the latest reminder of their own exposure to attacks.
“It’s changed the atmosphere in the place,” Mike Johnson said.— Politico (@politico.com) September 11, 2025 at 8:33 AM
… “Something happened on Capitol Hill,” Johnson said on CNN on Wednesday night. “It’s changed the atmosphere in the place.”
The shooting has sparked “a deluge” of members calling for heightened security, Johnson said in the interview. He had already been raising an alarm, warning in recent days of rising threats against members of Congress. He said earlier this month that Capitol Police had tracked close to 14,000 assessments of threatening and concerning behavior this year, up from 9,000 in 2024. Lawmakers were already working this year on ways to enhance their security…
Congressional leaders are emerging from the tragedy united in calling for an end to the rise of political violence, without pointing fingers at each other. But emotions briefly boiled over on the House floor Wednesday, with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) yelling “silent prayers get silent results” after a moment of silence for Kirk. Democrats shouted about a school shooting in her state that also occurred Wednesday, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) hurled expletives at her colleagues across the aisle…
