What to know? Don't leave this out: Wikipedia page on Charlie Kirk
Promotion of falsehoods and conspiracy theories
According to Forbes, Kirk was known for "his repudiation of liberal college education and embrace of pro-Trump conspiracy theories".[49] Kirk promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory and described universities as "islands of totalitarianism".[6][50][51]
In a 2015 speech at the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley, Kirk stated that he had applied to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and was not accepted.[11] He said that "the slot he considered his went to 'a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion'" whose test scores he claimed he knew.[6] He told The New Yorker in 2017 that he was being sarcastic when he said it.[6] He told the Chicago Tribune in 2018 that "he was just repeating something he'd been told",[5][52] while at a New Hampshire Turning Point event featuring Rand Paul in October 2019 he claimed that he never said it.[52]
In July 2018, Kirk falsely claimed on social media that Justice Department statistics showed an increase in human trafficking arrests from 1,952 in the year 2016 to 6,087 in the first half of 2018. He deleted the tweet without an explanation the next day, after a fact-checker had pointed out that the false 2018 number had originated on the conspiracy site 8chan.[53][54] In December 2018, Kirk falsely claimed that protesters in the French yellow vests movement chanted "We want Trump". These false claims were later repeated by President Trump himself.[55]
Kirk spread falsehoods about voter fraud,[56][57] as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.[49] In defending the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kirk falsely stated that, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, it "took President Barack Obama 'millions infected and over 1,000 deaths'" to declare a public health emergency.[58][59] In fact, when the Obama administration acknowledged the WHO's declaration of a public health emergency on April 26, 2009,[60] there were less than 280 cases of H1N1 infection reported in the U.S.,[61] and the first confirmed death (of a Mexican toddler on vacation) occurred the next day, April 27.[62] The WHO projected 1,000,000+ U.S. cases on June 25, after declaring a pandemic on June 11.[63]
COVID-19 misinformation
Kirk spread false information about COVID-19 on social media platforms, such as Twitter, in 2020. Kirk sharply criticized Democrats' criticism of Donald Trump's withdrawal of WHO funding and referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus", which was retweeted by Trump.[42] Kirk alleged that the WHO covered up information about the COVID-19 pandemic. He was briefly banned from Twitter after falsely claiming that hydroxychloroquine had proved to be "100% effective in treating the virus";[42] he alleged that Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, threatened doctors who tried to use the medication.[42] These falsehoods were retweeted by Rudy Giuliani, whose account was then suspended by Twitter as well.[42][64]
Kirk described the public health measure of social distancing prohibitions in churches as a "Democratic plot against Christianity" and made the unfounded assertion that authorities in Wuhan, China, were burning patients.[42] In 2020, Kirk said that he refused to abide by mask requirements, stating that "the science around masks is very questionable."[49][65] In July 2021, Kirk promoted misleading claims about the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.[17] On Fox News' Tucker Carlson show, Kirk called mandatory requirements for students to take the COVID-19 vaccine "medical apartheid".[66]
Election fraud claims and 2021 United States Capitol attack
Immediately after Donald Trump lost the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Kirk promoted false and disproven claims of fraud in the election.[67][68] On November 5, 2020, Kirk was the leader of a Stop the Steal protest at the Maricopa Tabulation Center in Phoenix.[69] Kirk was considered a "big name" social influencer in Rudy Giuliani's communications plan to overturn the 2020 election.[70]
On January 5, 2021, the day before the Washington, D.C., protest that led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Kirk wrote on Twitter that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending more than 80 "buses of patriots to D.C. to fight for this president".[71][72][73] A spokesman for Turning Point said that the groups ended up sending seven buses, not 80, with 350 students.[71][74] In the lead-up to the storming, Kirk said he was "getting 500 emails a minute calling for a civil war."[75] Publix heiress Julie Fancelli gave Kirk's organizations $1.25 million to fund the buses to the January 6 event. Kirk also paid $60,000 for Kimberly Guilfoyle to speak at the Trump rally.[76]
Afterward, Kirk said the violent acts at the Capitol were not an insurrection and did not represent mainstream Trump supporters.[77][78] Appearing before the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in December 2022, Kirk pleaded the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. His team provided the committee "with 8,000 pages of records in response to its requests".[79] In another closed-door meeting of the House January 6 Committee, Ali Alexander blamed Kirk and Turning Point USA for financing the travel of demonstrators to the Stop the Steal rally.[80]
In the 2020s, Kirk was a Christian nationalist who advocated for the end of the separation of Church and state in the United States.[81][82][83] In 2024, Kirk stated, "One of the reasons we're living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they're incompatible. You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population".[84][85] Appearing at a Trump campaign rally in the same year, he declared "This is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way".[86] Kirk promoted the Seven Mountain Mandate, a dominion theology concept which calls for Christians to control seven spheres of society (government, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, family, and religion).[83] Before the 2020s, Kirk had been more secular. He told Dave Rubin in 2018: "We do have a separation of church and state, and we should support that".
