Shot in the neck.

Not the head or the heart, but the neck — the throat, really, and that seems deliberate: Shut Charlie Kirk up, forever.

A self-made autodidact with no college education, a husband and father of two, 31-year-old Kirk embodied the American dream.

Through grit, hard work and ingenuity, he bypassed traditional media to become a podcasting powerhouse and an unofficial adviser to President Trump.

As the founder, face, and CEO of Turning Point USA, he regularly visited college campuses — and it was at Utah Valley University where Kirk was shot in the neck while addressing an audience.

Approximately four hours later, President Trump announced, on Truth Social, that Kirk had died.

‘The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was beloved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!’

Before Kirk’s death was confirmed, commentators at MSNBC were blaming the victim — a man shot while engaging in free speech, which one might expect media pundits to appreciate.

Respect, even. But no.

 As the founder, face, and CEO of Turning Point USA, Kirk consistently visited college campuses — and it was at Utah Valley University where Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking.

A self-made learner with no formal college education, a husband and father of two, 31-year-old Kirk embodied the American dream (Pictured: Kirk with wife Erica Frantzve Kirk, 36, and children).

Host Katy Tur walked right up to saying that Kirk had it coming, calling him ‘divisive’ and ‘polarizing.’

Her guest, political analyst Matthew Dowd, went further — theorizing that rednecks on the right might have shot Kirk by accident.

‘We don’t know if this is a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,’ Dowd said.

Let that sink in.

Dowd is a liberal elite, a fixture among establishment Democrats and media, with the audacity to label Kirk’s supporters reckless and foolish enough to shoot their own hero out of misunderstood excitement.

Of course something this awful, this preventable and tragic, was bound to happen.

One only needs to hear the cynical, sub-human rhetoric in left-leaning media — and a culture that valorizes a stone-cold killer like Luigi Mangione — to realize that we now most resemble America circa 1963-1968.

JFK, assassinated in November 1963. Martin Luther King, assassinated in April 1968. Bobby Kennedy, assassinated two months later in June.

New generations now know the fear, the panic, the despair of mortal political grievance.

Have we really learned nothing?

President Trump, himself shot in Butler, PA just months before the 2024 presidential election. A second would-be assassin arrested just two months later, in September, at Trump’s golf course.

June 2025: In the early morning hours of June 14, Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were shot upon opening their door to a man dressed as law enforcement. The shooter then went to the residence of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and murdered them in their home in a targeted political assassination. (The Hoffmans survived.)

President Trump, himself shot in Butler, PA (pictured) just months before the 2024 presidential election. A second would-be assassin was arrested just two months later, in September, at Trump’s golf course

One only needs to hear the cynical, sub-human rhetoric in left-leaning media — and a culture that valorizes a stone-cold killer like Luigi Mangione (pictured) — to realize that we now most resemble America circa 1963-1968

Her guest, political analyst Matthew Dowd (pictured), went further — theorizing that rednecks on the right might have shot Kirk by accident

April 13, 2025: An arsonist firebombed the home of PA governor Josh Shapiro, who was inside with his wife and children, by a would-be assassin who said he was motivated by what Shapiro ‘wants to do to Palestine’.

October 28, 2022: Paul Pelosi, the elderly husband of then-House Speaker Nancy, is assaulted in their San Francisco home by a man wielding a clawhammer. Pelosi survived but required skull surgery.

June 14, 2017: House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is shot and critically injured in a mass shooting at the annual Congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia.

January 8, 2011: U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords is shot in the head by a would-be assassin while holding a ‘Congress on Your Corner’ meet-and-greet outside a Safeway in Casas Adobes, Arizona.

And that’s just a sampling for this millennium.

Kirk’s assassination is different, of course, because he wasn’t an elected official. He was a thinker, an author, a podcast host and a commentator who believed in the free expression of ideas.

Who reveled in the parry, the provocative idea, the engagement with the opposing political party.

But orthodoxy of thought no longer allows for that.

Orthodoxy of thought requires that the mainstream media falls in line when Trump is compared to Adolf Hitler or is called an authoritarian madman intent on destroying democracy.

It requires that friends and family members of good faith, in otherwise good standing, be excised and excommunicated for having different beliefs — the long hangover of COVID, lockdowns, vaccine-and-mask mandates.

We can’t even come together to mourn the loss of life. It depends how you voted, just like everything else circa now: What side are you on?

When Rep. Lauren Boebert asked for a moment of silence for Kirk on the House floor, she was met with a chorus of ‘NO!’ from Democrats.

Will it be enough, for those who seek to excuse or explain away Kirk’s assassination, that Barack Obama has outright condemned such medieval savagery?

‘This kind of political violence has no place in our democracy,’ he wrote on X. ‘Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children’.

President Trump lowered the American flag that flies atop the White House to half-mast and has ordered all flags to be lowered until Sunday night.

Rest in peace Charlie Kirk. You were an increasingly rare breed: A true believer who sought to converse — and connect — with your opponents.