By Michael J. Talmo November 3, 2025
On September 10, 2025, conservative pundit Charley Kirk was shot and killed while addressing an audience at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. The outdoor rally was sponsored by Turning Point USA, an organization co-founded by Kirk in 2012. Its purpose is to spread right-wing propaganda at high schools and on college campuses in order to make converts out of as many young people as possible. To the misfortune of all of us, it has been highly successful.
The aftermath
As reported in Politico, the global reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death has been unprecedented. “Within minutes of the announcement that the American conservative activist Charlie Kirk had died from an assassin’s bullet, statements of grief came pouring in from leaders across Europe.” Many of these leaders are on the far-right, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. But as reported in Yahoo News, “Before his fatal shooting, few if any of the leaders of Europe’s resurgent far right had so much as mentioned the name Charlie Kirk. Since last week, the propaganda potential of the conservative US activist’s killing has escaped none of them,” which, as AP News reported, also reflects the global reach of social media.
As for my country, nine days after Charlie Kirk’s death, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring his life and legacy. The Hill reported that “the vote was 310-58, with 95 Democrats supporting the resolution.” I also encountered some liberal pundits overly mourning Kirk’s death. To be crystal clear, I don’t in any way, shape, or form condone Charlie Kirk’s murder. But I have no sympathy for him either, and I’m not going to pretend that I do. But the Democrats who decided to sing Kumbaya with the Republicans by voting for this dumb resolution have once again demonstrated that they are their own worst enemy.
As reported here and here, Trump and his MAGA minions are declaring war on the Democratic Party and on the political left, calling them terrorists and blaming them for Kirk’s death. They are also demanding that anyone who criticizes Charlie Kirk be fired from their jobs, arrested, and put in jail. USA Today reported that as of September 19, 2025, over 100 people have been victimized for criticizing Charlie Kirk or for not expressing enough remorse over his passing.
Several days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was arrested and charged with the crime. As reported by CNN, the political left is claiming that Robinson is a right-wing conservative affiliated with extremist groups, while MAGA politicians and pundits are claiming that he’s a political leftist who was angry at Kirk because he has a transgender girlfriend. But so far the evidence shows, and Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox agrees with it, that Robinson acted alone and wasn’t politically active.
President Donald Trump has gone all out to make Charlie Kirk into some kind of patriotic national hero. Trump called Kirk “a fearless warrior for liberty” whom he wants to honor by taking away the liberty of everyone else. Despite the fact that Charlie Kirk never held any kind of political office, never served in the military, never did anything heroic or brave, and never really did anything except shoot off his big mouth, Trump ordered American flags to be flown at half-mast in honor of his death. Trump also awarded Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What’s next? The Nobel Peace Prize? And if Norway doesn’t comply, Trump can always threaten invasion.
But none of the aforementioned accolades matter because no matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a pig. Charlie Kirk was a zero, not a hero; a mere pawn on the chessboard of life; a tiny bead of sweat loitering on the Devil’s nutsack; a man who, though tall in stature at 6’5, was microscopic in character. Charlie Kirk was a racist bigot who spread hate and lies. Bad people liked him because he conned them into thinking they were good Christians. In the MAGA world that Charlie Kirk represents, lies are valued over truth, and stupidity has become a virtue.
The real Charlie Kirk
Here are some examples of the terrible things Charlie Kirk (CK) said and stood for:
CK: “By the way, this is my other problem with the death penalty. It takes too long, too many appeals; it should be public, it should be quick, it should be televised…You could have like brought to you by Coca-Cola.” He then asked at what age kids should be allowed to see public executions, and one of the idiots with him said kids as young as age 12.
CK: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” (Little did Kirk know that he would become a statistic.)
CK: “The one issue that I think is so against our senses, so against the natural law, and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God is the transgender thing happening in America right now…You hear that, William Thomas? You’re an abomination to God…We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately. We must react politically. We must ban trans-affirming care, the entire country.”
NOTE: Kirk was referring to transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, whose name before transitioning was William. Deadnaming a trans person, calling them by their former name, is considered offensive and an attempt to invalidate who they are. It is an act of hate. Kirk was also ignoring the numerous places where the Bible warns Christians not to judge and condemn others.
CK: “I think monogamous heterosexual marriage should be a prerequisite to adoption.”
TRANSLATION: Gay couples aren’t fit parents and shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children, so decreed Charlie Kirk without an ounce of proof. But the facts, as shown here, prove him wrong.
CK: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists. Of course we should have church and state mixed together.”
CORRECTION: In his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) emphatically stated that the purpose of the First Amendment was to build “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
CK: “There’s no such thing as white privilege or racism.”
CK: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
CK: “If I’m dealing with someone in customer service who’s a moronic Black women, is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action…the war on white people continues.”
Charlie Kirk’s comments on Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK)
CK: “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person… I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it. We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.”
CK: “I can’t stand the word empathy. Actually, I think empathy is a made-up New Age term that does a lot of damage.”
NOTE: The word “empathy” was created in 1908. The term “New Age” was created in the 1970s and 1980s.
CK: “The Democrat Party believes everything that God hates.”
CORRECTION: It’s called the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party.
CK: “You have a traitor as president. Buy weapons. I keep on saying that.”
CK: “Abortion is never medically necessary.” When asked at a Jubilee debate if he had a ten-year-old daughter who got raped and got pregnant, would he want her to give birth to her attacker’s baby, Kirk replied, “The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.”
At the beginning of this video, CK was asked if, given a choice between saving three live babies or ten fertilized embryos from a burning building, which would he choose. Kirk replied that he would choose the ten embryos if they’re fully fertilized and will definitely be used. Later in the video (6.5 minute mark), when told that late-term abortions to save the life of the mother are below one percent, CK stated (6.5 minute mark), “If it’s less than one percent, then we should be able to abolish it.”
What a guy, folks. Embryos are more important than live babies who can feel pain, and women should be forced to give birth even if they die.
What it’s really about
All right-wing parties and their pundits, like Charlie Kirk, believe in destroying what’s left of our meager social safety net and in making the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us, as shown here and here. They support the corrupt for-profit health insurance industry instead of a Medicare for All, free at the point of service, non-profit healthcare system that covers everyone because they don’t recognize healthcare as a human right. And they don’t have to because they’re rich. Charlie Kirk had a net worth of 12 million dollars, so his wife and children will be well taken care of without him. Of course, not all rich people think this way—just the ones who are stupid and greedy.
People like Charlie Kirk are con artists who dupe their young followers into thinking they are fighting the system when the current system is bankrolling their movement.
Closing thoughts
Many right-wing pundits and religious groups are so lost in their wilderness of lies that they are calling Charlie Kirk a martyr who died for his faith. Rubbish! As explained here, “martyr” comes from the Greek word meaning witness. A martyr is someone who, when threatened with death, chooses to die rather than compromise their beliefs. Assassination isn’t martyrdom. People killing themselves for a cause, like Muslim Jihadists strapping explosives to themselves or Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire to protest injustice, aren’t martyrs.
Charlie Kirk didn’t plan to die on that September 10th day, so he isn’t a martyr. But he certainly is a menace. He was a menace in life for the hatred and bigotry he promoted and for helping the Trump regime get into power. And he’s an even bigger menace in death because Republicans want to use his demise to justify more oppression and suppress dissent. This is something we cannot and must not allow.
As previously stated, I don’t condone Charlie Kirk’s murder. But there is no doubt in my mind that the world will be a much better place without him.