Marion McKeone: The void after Charlie Kirk’s death could unleash something even more dangerous
Charlie Kirk hands out hats before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP)
Notwithstanding its increasingly shaky status as the global leader of democracy, America is an inherently violent society. There have been close to 5,000 mass shootings over the past decade alone. Guns account for close to 50,000 deaths each year.
Sitting presidents, emerging political leaders, activists, judges, governors and representatives in Congress and in state legislatures have all been targeted by gunmen.
Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative youth leader, Trump adviser and one of the most powerful figures in Republican politics, was debating gun violence in the seconds before a bullet from a high-powered rifle ended his life.
As virulently opposed to transgender rights as he was supportive of unrestricted gun ownership, he had just deflected a question about the negligible level of gun violence perpetrated by the trans community.
His final exchange bore little relation to the sort of Socratic engagement he once favoured. When I first met Kirk a decade ago, his stated mission was to promote conservative ideas, and encourage right-leaning college students to organise platforms within their colleges to challenge the prevailing liberal orthodoxy.
Back then his six-foot five frame made him as visible as he was ubiquitous at conservative events, from the NRA Conventions to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), building his own profile in tandem with a young conservative network. He was articulate and passionate, engaging rather than confrontational. He seemed to genuinely relish debating those with different views rather than seeking to score points with scorn and ridicule.
But in America’s viciously polarised media and political climate, it’s difficult to monetise tolerance and moderation. Having hitched his wagon to the Trump train that flattened Ted Cruz, Kirk’s preferred choice of candidate in 2016, he quickly realised that extremism is a more expedient route to political power and personal wealth.
His views on Trans people, women, Islam, minorities and immigrants and anything that conflicted with white Christian nationalist ideology veered into extremist territory. Instead of debating, he cherry picked and distorted facts. Instead of answering questions, he deflected with red herrings or scorn.
His “Prove Me Wrong” exchanges became exercises in obfuscation.
Over the past decade, Kirk amassed a level of power, influence and financial clout that was all the more extraordinary, given his age. His Turning Point USA movement, initially set up challenge the dominance of liberal ideals on US university campuses, had morphed into something far bigger.
He had his own network of uberwealthy donors - Palm Beach heiresses, Silicon Valley billionaires, Texas evangelicals – who had poured upwards of $100bn into his coffers.
He had no formal role within the Trump administration, but he enjoyed an outsize influence in the selection of his cabinet and the keeping of potentially recalcitrant Republican senators in line.
That he was a future presidential candidate was regarded as a foregone conclusion, not least by Kirk himself. He didn’t share JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr’s appetite for boastful swagger, but his political ambitions were never in doubt.
His oratorical and organizational skills far exceeded those of his peers within Trump’s inner circle. Barred by age limitations from entering the fray in 2028, there was little doubt he would have done so within a decade.
Not for the first time, it feels as though America is teetering on the brink of something cataclysmic. When political assassinations threatened to rend America asunder in the past, leaders sought to tamp down rage and grief with calls for unity and tolerance.
So far US president Donald Trump, who survived an assassination attempt during a July 2024 campaign rally in Pennsylvania, has appeared more inclined to further polarise an already fractured nation, with ominous warnings of retribution and a narrative that insists that political violence is entirely perpetrated by the left.
The false narrative was co-opted by his son Eric, who later claimed during a Fox News interview about Kirk’s assassination that he was "sick and tired of seeing the bullets -- they are only going one way."
Speaking on the 24th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Trump used language that was chillingly reminiscent of that used by George W Bush in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 Al Quaeda attack on the World Trade Center. He warned his administration would "find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund and support it."
Amid the rising tensions, questions are already being asked about who will inherit the $100m movement that Kirk built from scratch? Turning Point USA’s reach expands far beyond the 850 college campuses with organised chapters or the 3,200 with informal networks.
There is no obvious successor; no second in command with his organisational or oratorical skills.
Elon Musk was largely credited with delivering the ‘Bro’ vote for Trump with his antics and his $1m-dollar cheques. But it was Kirk’s decade long cultivation and registration of the youth vote on college campuses across America and in the community halls of swing states that delivered a 21-point swing in the under-30s vote to Trump in 2024.
Musk, who spent close to $300m getting Trump elected, seems to have abandoned the idea of starting a third political party. Even if he were still within the Maga tent, he lacks the skills required to maintain and expand a political movement.
Donald Trump Jr and his brother Eric have both variously indicated their interest in entering presidential politics, but neither has progressed beyond their roles of Maga mouthpieces for Trump. Meanwhile the Young Republican movement has fractured, largely because Kirk’s Turning Point USA consumed large swathes of its funding and membership.
Last month a bitter battle erupted between Peter Giunta, chair of the New York State Young Republicans and Hayden Padgett, Chair of the Young Republican National Federation over the group’s direction. Padgett, who is 33, succeeded in keeping control of YRNF. Some within the party see Padgett as a lesser successor to Kirk but his critics within the Young Republicans tent say he’s consumed by petty turf wars.
Nineteen-year-old Brilyn Holyhand, chair of the Republican Party Youth Advisory Council is regarded as something of a wunderkind by conservative media but as of now at least, Kirk’s death has created a void in rightwing politics that could presage an even darker new chapter.
