I was in Las Vegas for a couple of days for a speech, and people of all ages kept coming up to me and, having recognized me, launching right off the bat into one conversation after another about Charlie Kirk. If they were older, they were talking about their kids’ reaction. If they were my age, they were stunned by the whole thing, shaken that it could happen to a non-politician, someone with such a young family. People who I had never met were moved to the point of tears in front of me. I haven’t experienced anything like this since my father in law got sick. I didn’t really know what to say. I did my best to say things would be okay. And I called home to check on my girls a lot.
For the American Left, Kirk may just be the caricature they never even actually listened to — they believe an astonishing number of things about Charlie that just aren’t true, even to the point that some of them are getting fired from their media jobs over it (Matthew Dowd, Karen Attiah, and I’m sure there will be more if it hasn’t happened already). And the ubiquity of nationwide acknowledgement of the young man’s importance is a sign of how much we really don’t live in the same country together any more:
NFL franchises, including the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tennessee Titans, and Arizona Cardinals all held moments of silence or special recognitions. In baseball, the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees paid tribute. College football teams, such as the South Carolina Gamecocks, LSU Tigers, and the Wyoming Cowboys, joined in — as did the UFC and NASCAR, showcasing the broad reach of Kirk’s influence.
Last night, a vigil was held at the Kennedy Center for Charlie, and I noticed that these same very online leftists were insulted by the whole thing — and of all decisions, that C-SPAN would air it. Some of them are smart enough to try to bury this for all the obvious reasons. Others just don’t get it, at all.
People have asked me about my relationship with Charlie, and I’m going to be honest and tell you we were friendly, but we weren’t close. I first met him back in 2014 when things were just ramping up with Turning Point and he was still in the post-Tea Party movement, a partisan activist who believed in reaching young people and convinced big donors to back his effort.
I thought it was an aspirational idea at best given the climate at the time, when Barack Obama’s ratings were still strong among young people and the idea of a foothold in Gen Z seemed like a foolish thing and a waste of time and resources. But he was right and people like me were wrong — and even though he originally wasn’t a Trump fan, his advocacy took off like a rocket in the Trump comeback era. There’s no question that whatever you think of his impact on politics, the massive increase in support by young people on college campuses after he started Turning Point can’t be denied.
In my experience, Charlie was always polite, kind, and good at listening — more willing to hear criticism than other people in this industry. In recent years, his association with Candace Owens even after her turn toward insane anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was a point of contention with me and others — but after October 7th, he heard those critiques and shifted in response.
In the time since then he’s become a far more forceful advocate for Israel and for Jews in America than ever before, and it was something that earned Kirk a ton of criticism from the very people that the Left falsely associates him with. That was the great irony of calling Kirk some racist white supremacist bigot — he was explicitly spending time standing against such awful things, even on his own side. And even when he did that, he did it with more kindness than was necessary.
I’ll have more thoughts on this in this week’s podcast. For now, here’s more:
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