Charlie Kirk asked me the first question when we sat down for an interview three weeks ago: “How are you doing today?”
The strange thing was, he actually seemed to want to know the answer.
I expected the confidence he radiated as one of the country’s most visible conservative activists. What surprised me was the warmth.
Speaking on the set of his show at Turning Point USA’s Phoenix headquarters, Kirk took breaks to joke with his Gen Z employees and laughed about having to ride a horse as a co-host of “Fox & Friends.”
The interview revealed that his career as a viral sensation on social media had not severed his ties to the spiritual foundations he aimed to promote among the next generation of Republican voters.
Behind the no-apologies approach to political debates, I found a healthy dose of introspection. Beneath the bold beliefs on hot-button issues, a humble commitment to daily religious practice.
On Wednesday, an assassin’s bullet cut Kirk’s life short at the age of 31. He was midway through his response to a student’s question at a campus event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
The horrific murder took Kirk from his wife, Erika, and their two children — a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son.
As of Wednesday night, the shooter had not been apprehended.
Immediately, the tragedy prompted statements of horror and grief from politicians and pundits across the political spectrum.
Prominent personalities decried the increase of political violence and condemned the use of demonizing rhetoric of political opponents.
But Kirk’s death, and much of the reaction to it, represented a fundamental misunderstanding.
His mission, he said, was not to provoke the other side for internet attention. It was to persuade young people to give “traditional” views a moment of their time.
If he could, Kirk would have chosen to discuss faith and family for our entire interaction. “I could talk about religion all day long,” he said.
On his wall hung a nearly 300-year-old sermon that had sparked America’s First Great Awakening. On his desk sat a recently played-with stuffed animal and action figure beside his white and gold Trump “47” hat.
What animated Kirk more than my questions about his vision for Turning Point and the future of MAGA, were his digressions about his worship routine as an evangelical Christian.
Kirk prioritized daily scripture study, a 10-minute “examination of the conscience” before bed and a phone-free Sabbath from nightfall on Friday to sunset on Saturday.
After penning “The MAGA Doctrine,” “The College Scam” and “Right Wing Revolution,” Kirk told me his next book was going to focus on how his followers could set aside one day out of every seven to honor God.
Kirk was clear: These kinds of “anchoring tools” are essential for students and celebrities alike to stay moored in a rapidly changing world and degrading political environment.
“The struggle is that when you’re involved in this kind of warfare and this kind of combat, do you have the spiritual technology to be able to withhold that?” Kirk said.
For many of Kirk’s admirers, including the 850,000 members of Turning Point’s 2,000 college and high school chapters, his legacy won’t be “owning the libs.”
It will be making conservatism cool again — not just by winning elections, but by influencing behaviors.
Whole sections of his most recent book are devoted to helping young men and women make decisions in their 20s that lead to healthy and happy lifestyles and family relationships.
As someone who believed politics was downstream from culture, Kirk said a political movement was detrimental if it didn’t create and sustain a community based on the values that enable “human flourishing for all people.”
The antithesis to this, Kirk insisted, were calls for ideological radicalism and violent uprisings, which he feared were becoming more common themes among his target demographic.
“My job every single day is actively trying to stop a revolution,” Kirk told me. “This is where you have to try to point them towards ultimate purposes and towards getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children.”
“That is the type of conservatism that I represent, and I’m trying to paint a picture of virtue of lifting people up, not just staying angry.”
The metrics that mattered most to Kirk’s sense of success weren’t online — though his content was viewed 15 billion times in 2024 alone.
His objective was harder to measure: helping young people “towards a more virtuous, deeper existence, or better life, more meaningful life.”
If this occurred, Kirk said America’s youth would spend less time on social media, his videos would get fewer views, politics would become less extreme, and the country would turn to point in a better direction.
Kirk was open about his shortcomings. He told me that “almost every day” he fell short of the Christian standard of declaring truth without fear, but with love and grace.
When asked about his impact, Kirk redirected me to his unique opportunity to listen to students for 100 hours a semester at “Prove Me Wrong Events” and to read every single listener email.
As he got older, Kirk said his future role as founder of Turning Point USA could change. But one thing would not: his legacy of reaching out directly to America’s youth, he told me, “will never stop.”
