By the time he set off on his final campus speaking tour, Charlie Kirk had built an organization of some 250,000 members.
Since founding Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012, Kirk has taken part in conservative political organizing, helped engineer get-out-the-vote efforts, drawn tens of millions of dollars in funding, and grown a media influence machine.
A driving force behind Kirk’s organization has been its focus on engaging the youth in political debate and setting an example for new generations of political influencers like himself.
Through this mission, Kirk often found himself on a college campus, delivering a speech or sitting down with a table and a microphone and defying his critics with the prompt “prove me wrong,” even in the face of insults and threats.
He continued that mission until the very end.
“Charlie Kirk … always stayed in the trenches. And I think that’s one of the most admirable things about him,” said Gunnar Thorderson, a former TPUSA organizer who helped establish the organization’s presence at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10.
Thorderson rose from TPUSA chapter president to state-level director for the organization in Utah, and now sits on the Utah Republican State Central Committee. He attributes his trajectory, in large part, to Kirk’s personal mentorship.
Thorderson is among many whose political voices Kirk amplified.
“I owe my entire political career to Charlie Kirk,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said in an X post the day after Kirk’s death. “I would quite literally not be in office today if it weren’t for him.”
Luna’s communications director, David Leatherwood, also came into his own, politically, through Turning Point USA and Kirk’s personal support.
Leatherwood, 37, a self-described gay conservative, first met Kirk in 2017.
“I met Charlie at one of his campus tours in Fort Lauderdale, and we actually filmed a video together where he said that he, you know, supports the gay community, and that e pluribus unum, represents all Americans,” Leatherwood told The Epoch Times.
Through his online content, Kirk’s influence spread beyond the numerous college campuses he visited over the years and reached millions online.
During an interview on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast in March, the Democratic governor confessed that his 13-year-old son wanted to skip school for a chance to meet Kirk.
“Literally last night, trying to put my son to bed, he’s like, ‘Dad I just—what time, what time is Charlie gonna be here? What time?’” Newsom said. “And I’m like, ‘dude, you’re in school tomorrow.’”
Leatherwood said he was comforted knowing how many moments of Kirk’s life were captured on camera, preserving his thoughts and views.
“The beautiful thing about today and modern technology and our access, our access to media, is that, you know, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of footage of him speaking. And those will live on, and I think they’ll actually memorialize his legacy in an even greater way than people can anticipate,” he said.
Kirk made debate a core component of his mission. In his visits to college campuses, he often sat beneath a pop-up tent emblazoned with the words “prove me wrong,” and he offered up a microphone to those with differing points of view to confront him directly through dialogue.
“He went from campus to campus, engaging with students that he didn’t really view as the enemy ever. It was just that he felt they needed to be educated and that they needed to have proper discourse,” Thorderson said.
Not all of Kirk’s interlocutors were swayed by his arguments, but they credited him for allowing a discussion.
“I stand by so little of everything that [Kirk] said, but one of the things he stood by was conversation,” Hunter Kozak said in a video post the day after Kirk’s death.
Kozak, 29, is a student at UVU and was the last person to debate with Kirk before he was shot.
Kirk was just minutes into what was meant to be the first stop of his latest campus speaking tour when he was assassinated.
Dean Withers, who had debated Kirk, broke down in tears while filming a livestream on Sept. 10, as he learned Kirk had been shot. Addressing his initial reaction, Withers filmed another video that evening, acknowledging his disagreements with Kirk.
Throughout his stardom as a conservative political influencer, Kirk frequently looked beyond politics and emphasized his Christian faith.
Thorderson recalled a morning when he and Kirk were traveling for an event and went for a workout in the hotel gym. It wasn’t long before their exercise turned philosophical.
“I remember at the time, I was struggling with my own faith and kind of just playing devil’s advocate with him,” Thorderson recalled in comments to The Epoch Times.
“And he was just so steadfast in his faith and impressive with his knowledge. And that was a moment where I didn’t feel like he was necessarily preaching to me, but really just trying to connect on a personal level and trying to see me where I was at.”
At other points, Thorderson described Kirk being able to hold a knowledgeable conversation on matters beyond politics and articulate a connection back to his core values.
“He was a savant,” Thorderson said.
Thorderson also recalled having the chance to know Kirk when the Turning Point USA leader was getting to know his wife, Erika.
“He just always valued family and wanted to start a family. And that was just, even before he had kids, that was a core value for him,” Thorderson said.
Kirk leaves behind his wife, Erika, and two children.
—Ryan Morgan and Joseph Lord
BOOKMARKS
Companies across the United States have issued warnings to employees that they won’t have a job to go back to on Monday if they post comments celebrating or mocking Kirk’s assassination, The Epoch Times’ TJ Muscaro reported. Airline pilots, educators, and retail workers have been fired or suspended, while users continue to flag offending posts on social media.
NASA has barred Chinese nationals holding U.S. visas from its facilities and networks, The Epoch Times’ Bill Pan reported. It’s the latest move by Washington to safeguard the space agency as its space race with Beijing intensifies.
A family in Virginia issued a warning about a little-known substance being sold in corner stores around the U.S. The Epoch Times’ Janice Hisle reported on what to know about the substance, known as kratom.
