It's true that Charlie Kirk often modeled a version of that in his on-campus debates, where he'd argue amicably with a line of college students. But TPUSA wasn't and isn't a debate club: its purpose is to train conservative student activists, who often go on to become full-grown culture warriors. (It also paid or provided platforms to figures in that mold, growing their audiences much more than they could have done alone; those figures include Owens, Riley Gaines, and conservative Christian influencer Allie Beth Stuckey.) Charlie Kirk was also more combative and inflammatory in his speeches and online than his widow has portrayed, calling Islam "Not compatible with Western civilization," posting many tweets insisting that Black people disproportionately commit acts of violence targeting white people, or are unfairly given jobs they don't deserve due to affirmative action.
… It's true that Charlie Kirk didn't incite direct violence with his commentary, nor would he have "deserved" to die, even if he had. But someone who attacked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (calling him, among other things "an alleged rapist" and a "race Marxist"), who platformed white nationalists on his podcast, and who in so many other ways helped deepen already bitter divides in American life cannot be recast as an uncomplicated peacemaker, no matter how ardently his wife or his fans in legacy media would like to make it so…
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/erika-kirk-bari-weiss-aaron-ross-sorkin/
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