This week, we skip our In the News feature to focus on what has dominated the national narrative since last Wednesday afternoon: the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. We want to emphasize our sorrow at this event, our exhaustion at an epidemic of gun violence in the United States that most frequently harms people who are not politicians or celebrities, and our heartfelt sympathy for Kirk’s parents, his wife Erika, his two children, and friends.
Listeners can follow a chronology of the shooting and the manhunt that resulted in the arrest of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson here. Robinson was identified to authorities as the shooter by his father. Here is an account of the arrest.
The episode begins with a clip of Spencer Cox, the Republican Governor of Utah, speaking to the media a few hours after Kirk was murdered on stage at Utah Valley University in Logan, Utah on September 10, 2025.
Mourners at a Los Angeles vigil for conservative influencer, youth organizer, and Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk on September 11, 2025. Photo credit: Ringo Chiu/Shutterstock
Let’s start with who Charlie Kirk was, why he was disliked by some Americans, and why others honor him as a martyr and thought-leader on the right.
Some of Kirk’s admirers are portraying him as a sacred figure. Christian nationalist influencer Jack Posobiec wrote on September 11 that Kirk “died as he lived, bold, steadfast and unashamed of the Gospel and the truth.”
Yet, among other aspects of his MAGA agenda, it is the fact that Kirk put faith to work for extremist policies that also made him a lightning rod: here is a sketch of a few of the culture war issues Kirk promoted. Here are some of the other things Kirk believed, in his own words. At the same time as we deplore Kirk’s violent death, it is also necessary to take full account of his life, and his repeated utterances that denigrated Black people, immigrants, women, and LGBT people.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Here are some topics we discuss in the show:
* Kirk was 31; he founded TPUSA in 2012 as an 18-year-old college dropout before turning to campus organizing as a career. He appears to have been well-liked in MAGA Republican circles, and Kirk played a role in mobilizing the youth vote for Donald Trump in 2024. One source pegged his net worth at $12 million.
* Kirk has been credited by some with remaking modern conservative media for the digital era, something that bought him enemies on the left and on the right. One of his major contributions to the new conservatism may have been making MAGA Republicanism tangible and coherent for a Gen Z audience longing for coherence and meaning.
* Was Kirk destroyed by a world he helped to make? Or was he, as Ezra Klein argued, “doing it right” by emphasizing the importance of ideas and debate?
* In a discussion about generating empathy for political opponents, Claire mentioned Geraldine Brooks’s book about mourning her husband, Memorial Days: A Memoir (Viking, 2025), and how it helped her connect to the Kirk family’s grief.
* Here is Erika Kirk’s eulogy for her husband, broadcast live on Fox News on Friday, September 12, 2025.
* Kirk’s podcast was very popular. It often featured him debating students, although the debates were often one-sided, Kirk set the rules, and his chosen opponents seemed chosen for self-presentations that seemed to almost parody leftist students. Such encounters also created edited viral internet content for Kirk’s social media platforms, headlined with phrases like “Charlie Kirk Crushes Woke Lies Once and For All” a technique pioneered by right wing activist Ben Shapiro. But sometimes Kirk debated popular podcasters from the Left as well.
* Touted as someone who believed in the free exchange of ideas, Kirk also maintained a website that targeted college professors for harassment by his followers. Jamelle Bouie writes about how Kirk’s brand of intolerance became a framework for right-wing attacks on education.
* At the time of the shooting, Kirk was doing one of his “Prove Me Wrong” events, where he invited students to challenge him about his political ideas. Some students at UVU had organized to prevent Kirk from coming to campus. Claire found this striking, since the university has been ranked as the 21st most conservative campus in the United States.
* Here is an account of the events leading up to, and after, the shooting: the assassin was spotted jumping from the roof of a campus building.
* Immediately after Kirk was murdered, right wing social media exploded with accusations that he had been killed by someone on the Left, or by the Democrats, or by Israel, long before a suspect was captured or evidence released. President Donald J. Trump, who seems to have been genuinely fond of Kirk, echoed these conspiratorial accusations from the Oval Office.
* In the aftermath of the shooting, some of his admirers compared him to scared figures like Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. (a contradiction when we take into account that Kirk reviled Dr. King.) Others referred to him as a martyr and a messiah. On Facebook, Christian singer Pat Boone called him an Apostle.
* Kirk’s death crowded other acts of violence out of the news: the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks went almost unnoticed by news organizations, as did yet another mass shooting at a Colorado school.
* During our conversation about faith, Claire mentioned Peggy Noonan’s September 11 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal discussing prayer as a form of action.
* What’s going on at the FBI? In the aftermath of purging experienced investigators, and putting two podcasters in charge of the agency, the legendary federal agency appeared to be in disarray.
* This summer, the Utah legislature updated its constitutional carry laws to permit students 18 or older to bear arms on a college campus, concealed or openly. Under Utah law, a gun owner does not need a permit for open carry.
* What other political assassinations seem like parallels? September 8, 2025, marked the 90th anniversary of Louisiana Democratic Governor Huey P. Long’s assassination: he was also a young and rising populist figure. A second figure that he calls to mind is right wing media conspiracist Andrew Breitbart, who died in March 2012 at 43.
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What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read Elaine Godfrey’s profile of Texas Democrat James Tallerico, “Texas’s Pete” (The Atlantic, September 9, 2025). Tallarico has joined the Democratic primary for a United States Senate Seat in that race, and “has cemented himself as his party’s newest, shiniest 2026 contender.” Neil raises some doubts about that, and whether Tallarico’s combination of moral seriousness and internet savvy can budge a race in which Colin Allred seems to hold all the cards.
* Claire has returned to a classic text about social cohesion, sociologist Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community(Simon and Schuster, 2000). A pre-internet account of how community eroded in the United States, she wonders whether Putnam’s thoughtful study helps us imagine a road back from vilifying and dehumanizing those who disagree with us.
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