Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old activist, embodies the aggressive, populist brand of conservatism that has come to define the Republican Party during President Donald Trump’s era. On Wednesday, he was involved in a shooting incident while making an appearance at a Utah college.
Kirk has consistently aimed to galvanize young conservatives through speaking engagements like the one at Utah Valley University, where the shooting took place. He started Turning Point USA in 2012 with a focus on engaging younger audiences, often venturing into predominantly liberal college environments where many Republican activists were hesitant to go.
As an early supporter of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Kirk transformed Turning Point from just one among many well-financed conservative organizations into a pivotal entity in the right-wing sphere.
The political branch of Turning Point was instrumental in mobilizing voters for Trump’s 2024 campaign, focusing on reinvigorating disenfranchised conservatives who seldom participate in elections. Trump secured Arizona, where Turning Point is headquartered, by a margin of five percentage points after a narrow loss there in 2020. The organization is renowned for its vibrant events replete with strobe lights and pyrotechnics and boasts over 250,000 student members.
Kirk embraces a dramatic tone on his widely-followed podcast, radio show, and during political campaigns. At a rally with Trump in Georgia last fall, he claimed that Democrats “stand for everything God hates,” framing the election as a “spiritual battle” between Trump and Kamala Harris.
Addressing approximately 10,000 attendees, Kirk declared, “This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way.” The crowd joined him in a thunderous chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
Kirk has also remained a regular presence on college campuses. Last year, for the social media program “Surrounded,” he faced off against 20 liberal college students to defend his viewpoints, including that abortion is murder and should be illegal.
Kirk, who is married with two young children, has remained a regular presence on college campuses.
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by a then 18-year-old Kirk and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.
But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.
Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, during the general election campaign.
Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.
