On Sept. 10, 2025, a cold-blooded killer fatally shot Charlie Kirk while the conservative icon was doing what he loved doing: engaging in the marketplace of ideas.
Kirk, a happy warrior in the fight for founding principles and in the struggle for America’s soul, was murdered beneath an azure Utah sky and a noon-day sun — the same kind of bright, clear sky that greeted Lower Manhattan as terrorist-hijacked jets exploded into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s sadly fitting, perhaps, that the founder of Turning Point USA, an evangelist for the good news and a torch bearer for the grassroots-driven America First movement, would be assassinated on the eve of the anniversary of the day evil men slaughtered what was left of America’s innocence.
The assassin took so much from the country that day on the grounds of Utah Valley University. Gone is the “glue” of the new conservative movement, as Drew Allen, author of For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, put it.
‘A Very Rare Type of Influence’
Charlie quietly, behind the scenes, helped the major players of the MAGA movement keep their eyes on the prize. His death left a kind of diplomatic vacuum in conservative leadership, and some nasty politicos — neocons, “influencers”, and other grifters — stepped in to fill the breach. They quickly grabbed the ear of President Donald Trump and top administration officials.
Let’s just say Kirk’s absence has been felt in some ill-advised policy choices and, at times, a lack of clear-headed focus on the mission of Trump 2.0.
“Something that was surprising to me that I’ve learned about Charlie over this last year from different people who knew him and who were around him, all these personal stories: Charlie was truly feared,” Allen told me on the latest episode of The Federalist Radio Hour podcast.
“And I don’t mean that in a negative sense. He was a force of nature, and when he saw things going sideways within our movement, with specific people, he would email, text them. He would pick up the phone and call them. He would put a stop to it,” Allen, who served as Kirk’s publicist in the summer of 2024 for the final book he authored, said in summing up his discussions.
Kirk, Allen added, had carved out a “very rare type of influence,” and he used it for good. Good in so many ways, including in recognizing and attacking the existential threat this glorious, 250-year-old republic faces from a Marxist left-led Democratic Party that wants to burn it down and, to borrow from a botched Biden initiative, “build back better.”
‘The Iran Thing’
Vice President JD Vance, a close personal friend of Kirk’s, said as much in April at a Turning Point USA event about a month and a half after the Trump administration launched into the military operations that would become the slog in Iran.
“This Iran thing. Charlie would be the guy talking to the people who really wanted to go to war with Iran and the people who really didn’t want to go to war in Iran and he would try to find ways for those guys to work together, even if they disagreed over one issue,” Vance said. “So Charlie’s absence is a huge thing.”
Kirk, of course, had his misgivings about military adventures in the Middle East. He had cast a critical eye toward the idea of regime change in Iran.
“So we are just going to take out the ayatollah? Oh really! What next? What happens after regime change?” he said on a podcast.
In a post on X in June 2025, the conservative leader said regime change in Iran would be a “catastrophe.”
Around the same time, Kirk predicted that regime change would result in a “bloody civil war, killing hundreds of thousands and creating another massive Muslim refugee crisis.”
It’s unlikely Kirk would have been able to help keep Republicans on the same political page and from stabbing each other in the back ahead of November’s critical midterm election. The scurrying for political power from the different factions, some at war with the president and his agenda, some preening and pruning for a presidential run in 2028, has been tough enough for Trump to get a handle on.
The knives are definitely out for Vance, the early frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Vance is the main threat to the whining RINOs of the old guard Republican Party who would love nothing more than to bury the Trump era under a go-along, get-rich return to business as usual.
Although he has yet to say whether he’ll seek the GOP nomination in 2028, Vance already has the endorsement of Erika Kirk, the conservative icon’s widow, who serves as chairwoman and CEO of Turning Point USA.
‘The Glue of the Movement’
Younger voters made a right turn in 2024, according to an analysis conducted by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University.
“One of the most surprising statistics from the 2024 presidential election was the surge of support President Trump received from Gen Z voters,” the center notes in its report. “While these voters, born between 1997 and 2012, turned out in fewer numbers across all demographics in 2024 as compared to 2020, their voting preferences shifted to the right.”
Turning Point’s fingerprints are all over the surge in younger voters that voted for Trump.
Andrew Kolvet, a longtime close friend of Kirk’s and spokesman for Turning Point USA, told The Washington Post this week that the conservative movement has lost ground with the youth vote over the past year. He said Kirk saw it coming, and was frustrated by the disaffection he was seeing on the policy front.
“And he knew that Iran — that it was going to be a tough pill to swallow for Gen Z,” Kolvet told the corporate news publication.
Kirk’s assassination also gave rise to a host of conspiracy theories peddled by narcissistic opportunists like Candace Owens. Andrew Sypher, Turning Point USA’s chief field officer, told The Post that Kirk “may not be proud of the movement as a whole right now, but he’d definitely be proud of this organization that he left in good hands.”
The big problem remains: There was only one Charlie Kirk. The assassin’s bullet claimed the life of a conservative leader who had the power and the ability to bring conservatives together. That is indeed a “rare type of influence.”
“Charlie Kirk really was the glue of this movement,” Allen said.
