He did bad things.  It was wrong for someone to kill him.

Charlie Kirk was a despicable person.  It comes through just about everything he does. Yet despite this, the elite opinionistas have found reasons to honor him.  Their reasons are pretty weak–‘he did politics right,’ ‘he talked to people,’ ‘he took brave risks,’ ‘he challenged college students.’  Not only do those eulogies ring false, I have found nothing good in him thusfar.  This isn’t about finding terrible things he’s said that others have already found, though I’ve read some.  I have, instead, gone to the Turning Point USA website, which, as his mouthpiece, likely reflects who he was and how he wanted others to see him.

His game was ugly; that was the point

I find it ugly.  His “prove me wrong” videos show a smug bully who uses lots of tools to reduce those he interacts with props that he can beat up on, “own,” “destroy.”  Titles of the videos give a pretty strong indication of what Kirk wants people to see:  “Kirk DESTROYS…,” “Kirk SHUTS DOWN…,”  “Kirk SLAMS..,” “Kirk SCHOOLS..,” Not surprisingly, in the “Prove Me Wrong” playlist, which includes 154 videos, there isn’t a single video titled, “Charlie Kirk gets owned/shut down/slammed/schooled,” not even, “Kirk admits error.”   Maybe it happens in the two videos that are hidden from public view.

There is no evidence that he visited college campuses in a good-faith effort to engage with the people he talks with, to change their mind, to come to some sort of consensus.  The whole thing is a three-card monty-worthy setup.  He’s not debating anyone.  He’s not there for discussion.  He’s there to make interlocutors look bad for the sake of carefully-edited videos he hopes will go viral.  First of all, he’s usually sitting down, often under a tent, with space and security around him, while those interacting with him are standing, often surrounded by Kirk fans.  Beyond the setup, there’s the fact that he’s a grown-up and a professional propagandist “arguing” with kids—it’s like watching a bench-warming pro basketball player going one-on-one with a guy who was cut from his high school JV team the first day of tryouts.  It’s not a contest; Kirk’s game is to dunk on the person as mercilessly as possible.  Watching a pro dunk on a hapless amateur isn’t sporting, it’s not discussion; it’s cruelty.

A pro dunking on amateurs

When the kids asked him a question, he often performed the politician’s trick of changing the question to one he wants to answer, then he pivots to hit on his talking points, some of which he’s pulling out of his ass.  Of the many videos I’ve watched, he never makes it past the second minute without saying something that’s false—for example, in at least three occasions, he claims childless women are unhappy, whereas women who are married and have children are happier, and he claims that that’s in all studies.  Thing is, there’s quite a bit of evidence that suggests single women might be the happiest people.  He interrupts regularly, and gets upset when others do it to him, yet he has a video where a woman complains about his interrupting and those moments seem to have been edited out.  More than once, he made derogatory comments about the person to the crowd.  Many times, the videos mock the person interacting with Charlie.

Kirk isn’t trying to convince the people who come to disagree with him that he’s right.  He’s not trying to win over the skeptical.  He’s trying to get his kind of people more firmly on his side by making the other people look bad.

What’s funny is that if he really wanted to debate, to discuss important issues of the day, he’d stop wasting his time by trifling with kids on college campuses, but offer to debate their professors.  And not in a forum that favors him, but in a neutral setting, where he and those he disagrees with are an equal footing.  He has plenty of names to work with.  His group has a site devoted to its “Professor Watchlist,” where they claim they are “Unmasking radicals. Advancing freedom.”  They claim “the mission of Professor Watchlist is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”  And they see their list as legit because it is, a “carefully aggregated list sourced by published news stories detailing instances of radical behavior among college professors.”

A List is for Harassing

So many problems there.

There is nothing wrong with being “radical” and it certainly isn’t against the law, nor a violation of any campus code.  It is left unsaid how such work of exposing radicals advances freedom.  Radicals have done many things to advance freedom, like starting the United States of America, ending slavery, and promoting civil rights.  It is unsaid how conservative students might face discrimination from radicals, and unclear what is wrong with leftist propaganda since they’re not bothering with exposing rightist propaganda.  And the means they use, “published news stories,” is a joke.  They don’t name all their sources and they use plenty of sources that are little more than propaganda sites where aggrieved conservatives vent about professors they dislike.

Picking on their stated mission is fair—this is something they’re hanging their hat on, so the mission should be clear.  If the mission is “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom,” then they need to document not only “leftist propaganda” but also how the people advancing the “leftist propaganda” are “discriminating against conservative students.”  According to the mission statement, they need to prove both before a person gets placed on their list.  Of course they don’t.

Using free speech to say other people’s speech is wrong is part of why we need free speech.  Doesn’t seem like many of the Watchlist’s readers thought those professors speaking freely was permissible.  And Turning Point makes clear they do not like that these professors are using their free speech rights to say things Turning Point disagrees with.

As dishonest as the professor watchlist is, what’s worse is that some professors have experienced harm because of inclusion thereof.  A number of people placed on the watchlist experienced real-world harassment as a result.  NPR reached out to four dozen Illinois-based professors who were listed on the watchlist and found many of them were harassed; one was sufficiently worried by the hate directed her way that, at 36, she prepared her final will and testament.  Similar stories can be found in Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and states not starting with M.

So, no, Kirk was not a fan of debate, nor did he believe in freedom of speech.  His preferred persona was that of an awful person.  I see nothing to lionize or praise, save, perhaps, his ability to monetize his schtik.

It was still wrong for someone to kill him.

Some gun deaths are ok (aka not all lives matter)

It was still wrong, even though Kirk once said of gun deaths, “I think it’s worth it. 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

First, “some gun deaths every single year” is in the range of 45,000.  That might not be a lot in a nation of 340 million, but it’s still a mid-sized town worth of people dead, mostly for no good reason.  Second, Kirk is wrong about the Second Amendment.  I’ve already written about it extensively, so I won’t re-iterate.  I’m going to stick to my proverbial guns and say that his interpretation of the Second Amendment is wrong, and it is one of the reasons I am saddened by his death.

At the same time, it is entirely fair to ask Kirk’s fans if they agree with him on guns.  They might blame mental illness, specifically the allegation that transgender people are more inclined to gun violence and, as such, should be denied guns.  First, there is no evidence that mental illness is a driver of gun violence.  Transgender is not evidence of mental illness.  Further, very few mass shooters in the past twelve years have been trans.  “5,748 mass shootings between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 15, 2025, according to the GVA. “OF THAT NUMBER OF INCIDENTS, there have been FIVE CONFIRMED Transgender shooters,” according to Mark Bryant, the Gun Violence Archive’s executive director.

When it comes to school shooters, Charlie Kirk was of the ‘thoughts and prayers’ crowd, washing his hands of it, saying it was worth the sacrifice.  Which is sort of a communist-seeming ‘greater good’ argument.  Not exactly a ‘Make America Great Again,’ sentiment.

But, to his supporters, we can ask, we should ask, if they agreed with him then, or not.  And, now that he was shot dead, do they agree with him now?

It’s not original to suggest that Kirk’s death can be seen as evidence that the second amendment threatens the First Amendment.  Public officials are being threatened at an increasing rate.  When Donald Trump was running for President in 2016, he talked about “Second Amendment people” doing something to stop his opponent, Hillary Clinton.  Kirk is no stranger to using violent, demeaning rhetoric, either.

It was still wrong for someone to kill him.