Up Next
Charlie Kirk Shifts Position on Israel After Grassroots Conservative Youth Movement Challenges TPUSA's America First Credentials
11:45
Charlie Kirk Declares Culture War at CPAC: America's Next Generation Faces Choice Between Freedom and Socialism
11:33
Tim Miller and Jane Coaston Dissect Charlie Kirk's Thought Crime Podcast and the Pipeline Radicalizing Young Conservatives
50:44
Related Books
Browse Conservative Books
The Bulwark Sits Down to Reckon With Charlie Kirk's Legacy the Day After His Assassination
Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, sits down with Will Sommer, author of the outlet's False Flag newsletter, recorded the day after Charlie Kirk's assassination. Neither host is treating the moment as an opportunity, they are processing a death that caught them off guard, and Sommer, who had covered Kirk for years, wrote a piece that same day attempting to honestly account for what Kirk built and why it mattered even to those who strongly disagreed with him. Their conversation covers Kirk's early rise as a young Republican activist, the large donors who provided initial momentum, and the formula he pioneered, spectacle conferences, college campus confrontations, and social media fluency, that made him a model for right-wing media figures who followed, including Benny Johnson and Candace Owens, both of whom came up through Turning Point USA. They discuss his dual role as media figure and unofficial White House adviser, a reported phone call from Trump asking Kirk to back off.
Processing the Assassination: Why They Felt It Mattered to Say Something
Sam Stein opens the conversation by acknowledging the difficulty of the moment — recording within hours of Charlie Kirk's death, without yet knowing who committed it or why. He frames the conversation not as a political autopsy but as an honest attempt to account for what Kirk actually represented in conservative politics, including for people who had deep disagreements with him. Will Sommer, who had covered Kirk extensively and published a piece that same day, picks up from there.
The Rise: From Unknown Activist to Turning Point USA
Sommer traces Kirk's trajectory across roughly a decade — from a young Republican activist no one outside conservative circles had heard of to the head of Turning Point USA, a close confidant of the Trump family, and one of the most recognizable faces in right-wing media. He identifies two engines behind that rise: early connections with major donors who provided substantial organizational fuel, and a genuine instinct for making conservative politics feel less stale. Unlike CPAC and the older conference circuit, Turning Point events were built around spectacle — pyrotechnics, big stages, a sense of occasion. Sommer notes that the memorial image Turning Point posted after Kirk's death was a photograph of him standing in front of one of those pyrotechnic displays, which he calls telling.
Crossing Over: Reaching Beyond Conservative Media
What separated Kirk from contemporaries like Ben Shapiro, Sommer argues, was his willingness and ability to operate outside the conservative media bubble entirely. He appeared on apolitical podcasts, built a presence on TikTok and YouTube, and understood that reach outside the base was more valuable than depth within it. Sam Stein frames this as a mastery of the attention economy — recognizing that being present in the conversation at all was what mattered most, and that confrontation was a reliable mechanism for staying there.
The College Campus Model: Content as Strategy
Kirk and Steven Crowder, Sommer says, were among the first to treat college campuses not primarily as persuasion opportunities but as content production sites — showing up, engaging with progressive students, and packaging the resulting footage as the now-ubiquitous "conservative obliterates liberal" format. Stein describes this as a real innovation: confrontation-as-content was not possible at scale until the modern media environment existed to amplify it. Kirk identified that dynamic early and built it into the operational model of Turning Point USA.
The TPUSA Pipeline: Who Came Through and What It Created
Sommer identifies Turning Point USA as a genuine talent incubator for the broader right-wing media ecosystem. Benny Johnson and Candace Owens both worked there and are now among the most prominent figures in conservative media. Beyond them, he describes a large tier of TPUSA ambassador contributors — people Sommer often had not heard of until looking them up, each with six-figure social media followings — who modeled themselves on Kirk's approach. Kirk had real power over what was considered acceptable discourse inside the MAGA movement: being granted or denied a Turning Point platform was a signal about who Trump's orbit viewed as legitimate.
Operative, Adviser, and Media Figure: All Three at Once
When Stein asks how to categorize Kirk — media figure, operative, or politician — Sommer says all three. Kirk never ran for office but was consistently discussed as someone who could have. More concretely, he was simultaneously running a media empire and functioning as an informal adviser to the White House, vetting presidential appointees while holding his own megaphone. Sommer draws a comparison to Sean Hannity but argues Kirk may have gone even further in combining those roles.
The Epstein Phone Call
Sommer recounts an episode he considers illustrative of that dual role: after right-wing media backlash over the closure of the Jeffrey Epstein case, Trump called Kirk directly and asked him to ease off the criticism and help shift the narrative. The detail is presented as evidence of how thoroughly Kirk had integrated into the White House's informal communications operation — not just as a voice that could be managed, but as someone whose influence warranted a direct presidential call.
The Nick Fuentes War and the Groyper Invasion
Stein raises the point that Kirk was not simply a figure with enemies on the left — he had sustained conflict on the right as well. Sommer's account: around 2018, Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist podcaster who commanded his own loyal following known as the Groypers, concluded that Kirk was drawing energy away from what Fuentes wanted to be a more explicitly ethnonationalist movement. Fuentes's followers began crashing Turning Point events, disrupting panels and confronting speakers including Representative Dan Crenshaw. Their core grievance was that Kirk's big-tent approach was too welcoming of legal immigration from non-Western countries.
Shifting Rhetoric to Keep the Audience
Sommer's assessment of how Kirk responded: he folded. Over time, Kirk's rhetoric on immigration shifted in the direction of his critics — away from a broader conservative welcome and toward support for ending legal immigration from what Kirk characterized as third-world countries. Stein frames this as a calculated decision: Kirk understood where the movement was heading and adjusted his stated convictions rather than get left behind. It preserved his audience but represented an abandonment of an earlier position.
The Legacy: A Model No One Has Fully Replicated
Sommer closes by arguing that Kirk's combination of assets is genuinely difficult to replicate. There are right-wing media figures with large audiences, political operatives with institutional power, and fundraisers with access to major donors — but no one has yet assembled all of those things simultaneously the way Kirk did, plus a get-out-the-vote operation at scale, plus the kind of direct White House relationship he maintained. Stein's final note is that the conversation is not an endorsement of Kirk's politics or methods but an honest accounting: by the metrics that matter in political media, what he built was real.
Video Transcript
[00:00] Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor
[00:01] at the Bull Work. I am here with Will
[00:04] Summer, who is the author of our false
[00:06] flag newsletter. We are coming to you uh
[00:09] obviously in an incredibly dark moment.
[00:12] Uh sad one, too. Uh Charlie Kirk's
[00:15] murder yesterday uh took us all by
[00:19] surprise and shock. And um we're still
[00:22] sort of processing what happened.
[00:24] Obviously, we don't know as we're
[00:26] recording this who committed it. Um, but
[00:29] we're also sort of processing what it
[00:31] means for our politics. Um, Will, who
[00:34] has reported extensively on Charlie Kirk
[00:37] and his rise in conservative politics,
[00:40] uh, penned a piece today that I thought
[00:42] was really um, well, it was an important
[00:45] read honestly and it gets at what
[00:47] Charlie Cook represented and why he was
[00:50] so important for so many people in that
[00:52] movement. Um, I'm going to shut up
[00:54] because I don't really have much to add
[00:56] beyond this, but I am going to ask Will
[00:58] uh some questions along the way. Uh, but
[01:01] Will, why don't you just start there?
[01:03] Why was he so important in conservative
[01:05] politics?
[01:06] >> Yeah, I mean, I think Charlie Kirk was
[01:07] important um for because he was sort of
[01:09] this um he had so many things going on,
[01:12] I guess. I mean, he he sort of over over
[01:14] the course of a decade rose from, you
[01:16] know, kind of a young Republican
[01:17] activist no one had heard of to having
[01:19] this gigantic organization, Turning
[01:21] Point USA, uh, to being sort of
[01:23] confidant of the Trump family, an
[01:24] enormous fundraiser, uh, you know, and
[01:26] and importantly, I think, uh, also being
[01:28] just like a very omnipresent right-wing
[01:30] media figure, but not really just in
[01:32] right-wing media, right? I mean, he's
[01:33] not just on talk radio or podcasts. I
[01:36] mean, he I think a lot of people from
[01:38] outside of the conservative media bubble
[01:40] knew him from Tik Tok, from YouTube. um
[01:42] you know he was he'd go on all these
[01:43] apolitical podcasts. Uh so so I think he
[01:46] was he sort of forged the path for the
[01:48] future of sort of like right-wing media
[01:50] influencing and and being beyond just
[01:53] like someone who's posting takes or
[01:54] something like that but to being sort of
[01:56] a just a just really an enormous figure
[01:59] politically as well.
[02:00] >> Yeah. I guess the question is how do you
[02:02] manage to do that? A lot of people have
[02:05] wanted to have that trajectory. they of
[02:07] course want to have an incredible amount
[02:09] of um uh well an incredible following
[02:12] frankly and then of course obviously
[02:14] some influence on the direction of the
[02:15] political party but Kirk unlike anyone
[02:18] else and at such a young age too he's
[02:19] only 31 uh when he was shot and killed
[02:23] um he was able to do that was there
[02:25] something that he understood that others
[02:27] didn't
[02:28] >> well you know it's a couple things I
[02:30] think um number one I mean he he linked
[02:32] up with some donors really early on some
[02:34] big donors who I think uh you know were
[02:36] sort of rocket fuel to the
[02:37] organization's growth. Um, but also, I
[02:39] mean, I think he made, you know, and and
[02:42] and I don't mean to say that like
[02:43] politics is really cool ever, but he
[02:45] made, you know, being a young Republican
[02:47] cooler than it was. Uh, you know, he
[02:49] threw these big kind of spectacle like
[02:52] conferences that unlike CPAC, uh, people
[02:55] seem to have fun going to a lot of the
[02:57] time. Um, and you know, they had like,
[03:00] you know, smoke and and big, you know,
[03:02] pyrochnics. Um, you know, and I think
[03:04] it's it's notable that the picture that
[03:05] Turning Point put out on his ex account
[03:08] today sort of memorializing him is him
[03:10] in front of one of these big pyrochnic
[03:12] displays. And so he, you know, kind of
[03:13] created this this model for the kind of
[03:17] dynamic right-wing influencer that that
[03:20] was, I think, a lot fresher than, you
[03:22] know, what we might compare to like Ben
[03:23] Shapiro or something like that. I And I
[03:25] think that drew a lot of young people
[03:26] into the party.
[03:27] >> Yeah. There's like a modern there's like
[03:28] a modernity to him like uh something
[03:30] that was if you ever been to like a
[03:32] seatback conference at least you know 5
[03:34] 10 years ago lot of you know guys on
[03:37] stage talking about the direction of the
[03:39] party and old debates that they've had
[03:41] probably a million times over and you'd
[03:43] have keynote speakers you kind of go
[03:45] through the motions. Um this was much
[03:47] more glitzy and uh I think it got to
[03:50] something that he was really good at.
[03:51] Look I I I'm not going to like try to
[03:54] sugar it. A lot of people uh including
[03:56] at our site had strong disagreements
[04:00] with both what he offered uh
[04:02] ideologically and his methods. Um and I
[04:05] think it's fine to admit that. Um but
[04:08] it's also worthwhile to acknowledge that
[04:11] he had uh his method was pretty
[04:16] impressive by the standard of the
[04:18] metrics, right? Like he was able to b
[04:20] build this organization. He was able to
[04:22] build a huge media following. um all in
[04:24] a very short period of time. And one of
[04:26] the things that I thought stood out from
[04:28] your article and I think I in real time
[04:30] I appreciated it was that he understood
[04:33] the attention economy and that you could
[04:35] just that getting people to follow you
[04:38] and watch what you're doing and to be in
[04:40] the conversation at all times really was
[04:43] at a premium. And he was really good at
[04:44] that. I mean he perfected the art of
[04:46] confrontation and he did it in like
[04:48] pretty simple ways like he just showed
[04:50] up at college campuses.
[04:52] >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, he he he
[04:54] saw these college campuses as an
[04:56] opportunity, I think, both to to spread
[04:57] his message and to sort of embolden
[04:59] conservatives or kind of right-leaning
[05:01] students. Um, and also, frankly, you
[05:02] know, just to get content. I mean, this
[05:04] he he and and Steven Crowder were really
[05:07] like on the front lines of the what we
[05:09] now know as sort of the trope of like,
[05:10] you know, liberal blue-haired
[05:12] progressive uh totally obliterated by
[05:15] by, you know, epic conservative. And so,
[05:16] I mean, you know, and that's that's more
[05:18] content, you know, for the for the for
[05:20] his internet presence. Um, and so, you
[05:22] know, in that way, I think he was he's
[05:25] he sort of was the model for what we saw
[05:26] in 2024 with the Trump campaign. Um,
[05:29] being willing to go to so many more
[05:31] places outside of just political
[05:32] channels,
[05:33] >> right? And to make spectacles of it,
[05:35] right? To like go there and try to
[05:37] humiliate people and also own them
[05:39] politically and things like that, which
[05:42] wasn't really something you could do
[05:43] until the modern media age. I mean, he
[05:45] had a real mastery of modern media
[05:48] techniques, too.
[05:49] >> Yeah. I mean, I I think he he knew what
[05:52] would really like sort of sizzle online
[05:54] and and you know, and how to package
[05:55] that. Um, and and I think that's what
[05:57] what drew so many people into his his
[05:59] orbit.
[06:00] >> Who so who was in his orbit? I mean,
[06:01] obviously he had connections with the
[06:03] Trump world and Republican politicians,
[06:05] but like who did he mentor? Uh, who are
[06:09] the next people to come in?
[06:11] >> Yeah. Um, so you know, I mean, I don't
[06:13] think it's it's accidental that, you
[06:15] know, at one point Benny Johnson worked
[06:16] for him, Candace Owens worked for him,
[06:18] and these are now people who are in sort
[06:20] of the top 10 along with where Charlie
[06:22] Kirk was in sort of the the the biggest
[06:25] figures in the right-wing media. Um, you
[06:27] know, and and beyond that, I mean,
[06:28] Turning Point USA itself is sort of like
[06:30] an incubator for these right-wing
[06:32] talents. They have the ambassador
[06:34] contributors, sort of like a legion of
[06:36] people that even I have often never
[06:38] heard of. and I'll look them up and they
[06:40] have 100,000 followers on Instagram and
[06:41] I'll say where did this person come
[06:43] from? But there's so many of them who
[06:45] are you know Charlie Kirk clones or
[06:47] based on that model. Um and and you know
[06:49] clearly they look at him and
[06:50] understandably as sort of a success
[06:52] story in right-wing media and have tried
[06:54] to follow that. I mean you know we we've
[06:55] talked here before about sort of um you
[06:58] know tumultuous or moments at chaotic at
[07:00] turning point conferences.
[07:02] >> There's some really chaotic, rowdy,
[07:04] grotesque things that happen there. Yes.
[07:07] >> Yes. and and you know that I think is is
[07:09] part of the appeal for people and um and
[07:11] you know it's also sort of this this
[07:13] world where all these influencers bump
[07:14] into each other.
[07:15] >> How do you define what Kirk was doing?
[07:16] Was he a media figure, an operative? Was
[07:18] he a politician? I don't know.
[07:20] >> I think he was sort of all of the above.
[07:21] I mean, you know, obviously he he didn't
[07:23] run for office, but you know, we we we I
[07:25] mentioned the newsletter today how many
[07:27] people were saying, "Oh, you know, he
[07:28] could have run for president. He could
[07:29] have run for office someday." Um but,
[07:30] you know, he was certainly an operative.
[07:32] I it I think he was, you know, maybe,
[07:35] you know, along with someone like Sean
[07:36] Hannity, but maybe even more so someone
[07:38] who is both an adviser to the White
[07:40] House and, you know, he was he was
[07:42] vetting, you know, presidential
[07:43] appointees, uh, while also having his
[07:45] own sort of media empire and and a
[07:47] megaphone. You know, after the
[07:49] right-wing media backlash to the closing
[07:51] of the Jeffrey Epstein case, you know,
[07:53] Trump called him and sort of said, "Hey,
[07:54] why don't you lay off? Let's try to
[07:56] change the narrative here."
[07:58] >> That's interesting. Uh because I I I
[08:00] think um people don't really recognize
[08:03] that he was divisive obviously uh but
[08:05] that he didn't just have you know foes
[08:08] on the left that he had them on the
[08:09] right too.
[08:11] That's right. I mean I I think the the
[08:13] paragon here is Nick Fuentes who is sort
[08:15] of a the white nationalist podcaster
[08:17] who's sort of almost like a mirror image
[08:18] Charlie Kirk um and has his own sort of
[08:22] legion of fans albeit I think much
[08:23] smaller. Um and you know Fuentes and
[08:26] Charlie Kirk would often bump up into
[08:28] each other. Fuentes, I believe in
[08:30] roughly 2018 felt that uh you know,
[08:32] Charlie Kirk was sort of sapping the
[08:35] energy for what he wanted to be a much
[08:37] more racist Republican party and Trump
[08:39] movement. And so the Giters, which are
[08:42] Fuentes's followers, began crashing
[08:44] Turning Point events, yelling at people
[08:46] like Representative Dan Dan Krenshaw.
[08:48] And I think Charlie Kirk basically
[08:49] folded in this case. I mean, they they
[08:51] felt that Charlie Kirk was too open to
[08:53] non-white immigration. And then you know
[08:55] he did indeed start start changing his
[08:57] rhetoric and start you know ultimately
[08:59] saying you know we need to end even
[09:00] legal immigration from third third world
[09:02] countries.
[09:03] >> It is it's kind of interesting and I
[09:05] know we we sort of touched on in the
[09:07] piece but the the willingness to sort of
[09:10] hang on to your audience to know where
[09:12] the movement was heading and not get
[09:14] caught up. I mean he basically got rid
[09:18] of a conviction and and kept his
[09:19] audience and that was an interesting
[09:20] choice. Um, what's the legacy he leaves?
[09:24] >> I mean, I think, you know, it it he sort
[09:26] of laid out this model for how to be
[09:28] both this kind of a right-wing media
[09:29] figure and a power player and, you know,
[09:32] to have millions of dollars behind you.
[09:34] I mean, it's really hard to think of
[09:36] someone on the right who combined all of
[09:38] that together. Both, you know, obviously
[09:40] there are people with big big audiences
[09:42] of their own, but in terms of, you know,
[09:44] a huge apparatus. I mean, he had this
[09:45] huge voting get get out the vote uh
[09:47] operation as well. And you know, he was
[09:49] basically like the right-hand man of the
[09:51] Trump administration. And the other
[09:52] thing I would say is um he really had a
[09:55] lot of power in determining through
[09:57] setting who got to speak at Turning
[09:58] Point USA conferences, who was allowed
[10:00] in. He had a lot of power over sort of
[10:02] what was considered acceptable discourse
[10:03] in the MAGA movement.
[10:05] >> Exactly. And so, you know, if you lost
[10:07] your job as a TPUSA contributor, if you
[10:10] were banned, um, you know, from
[10:12] speaking, then that would sort of signal
[10:14] signal, I think, what Trump more broadly
[10:16] and sort of what MAGA represented.
[10:18] >> All right. Well, well, thank you for
[10:19] writing this. Uh, incredibly difficult
[10:21] to write about these things in the
[10:22] moment of real despair uh, about what
[10:25] happened, but I thought you did a really
[10:27] um, really eloquent job with doing it.
[10:30] So, thank you for that. And, um, for
[10:31] those who are watching, thank you for
[10:33] watching us uh, talk about this
[10:34] difficult subject. Um, we appreciate uh
[10:37] the engagement for our audience. Um,
[10:39] going to leave the comments open on this
[10:41] one. Uh, and uh, we hope that you are
[10:43] respectful and mindful in them. Uh, let
[10:46] us know what you think and subscribe to
[10:48] our feed. We'll talk to you soon.
Comments
Be the first to comment on this video.