Charlie Kirk’s views stirred up anger and angst on the left before a sniper’s bullet assassinated him on Wednesday.
While he was a powerhouse fundraiser who helped elect President Trump, Mr. Kirk was better known for the many viral videos of him going toe-to-toe with students on college campuses. They challenged the conservative influencer’s viewpoint on abortion, transgender rights, immigration and other hot-button topics. The 31-year-old Republican star never backed down.
He was engaged again with students in a heated discussion on his “American Comeback” tour the moment he was killed.
Some on the left blamed Mr. Kirk, pointing to comments they say stirred up violent behavior against vulnerable groups.
“Let’s make one thing clear from the start: Charlie Kirk was the victim of a shooting in a country where he, along with other right-wing extremist influencers, have been inciting violence for years — Kirk is neither a martyr nor a hero, he is a cause,” artist Andrea Junker posted to her 227,000 followers on the social media site Bluesky shortly after Mr. Kirk was killed.
The blame rained down on Mr. Kirk from left-wing critics in the hours after the shooting. They dredged up speeches, videos and social media posts that, to them, somehow justified or explained why a person would want to murder the married father of two.
His hard-line opposition to illegal immigration, criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion and trashing of transgender policies made him a conservative villain.
In June, he blamed illegal immigration in California for congestion on the Los Angeles freeway. “My whole life, I’ve heard people complain about traffic on the 405. Mass deportations will help solve that,” he said. Mr. Kirk caused an uproar when he said that if he saw a Black pilot, he’d question the pilot’s qualifications. He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “a huge mistake.” Mr. Kirk was equally critical of the Black Lives Matter movement. On gun rights, he provoked fury when he said some gun deaths every year were “worth it” to preserve the Second Amendment.
Those who publicly vilified Mr. Kirk on social media following his death were hounded Thursday by Kirk supporters and other conservatives, who contacted employers seeking to get those who wrote the offending posts fired from their jobs.
Conservative influencer Laura Loomer dug up and publicized ugly anti-Kirk posts, among them one from a Homeland Security Department data analyst protesting President Trump’s decision to lower flags to half-staff in honor of Mr. Kirk. “Half mast for the literal racist homophobe misogynist?” he posted on Instagram. Federal workers, schoolteachers, a member of the Carolina Panthers football organization, local government employees and a lawyer for the owner of the Chicago Cubs were flagged for posts declaring Mr. Kirk’s death somehow justified or even beneficial.
“Charlie Kirk got famous as one of America’s leading spreaders of hatred, misinformation, and intolerance,” Bradley Dlatt, an insurance litigator at the law firm Perkins Coie, posted on social media. “The current political moment — where an extremist Supreme Court and feckless Republican Congress are enabling a Republican President to become a tyrant and building him a modern-day Gestapo for assaulting black and brown folks — is a result of Charlie Kirk’s ’contributions’ to American media and politics.”
Middle Tennessee University fired an assistant dean of students for posting on Facebook, “Looks like ol’ Charlie spoke his fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy,”
Mr. Kirk had been a vocal critic of the transgender movement, arguing directly with LGBTQ college students that it was impossible for a person to change genders.
In a 2023 speech, Mr. Kirk called transgender people “a throbbing middle finger to God.” Quoting the Bible on the subject, he called the rise in transgender people “an abomination.” Last year, he called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
At the time, he was taking his “Live Free” tour to college campuses and left-wing critics posted the dates and locations to give protesters a heads-up.
On Wednesday, the topic of transgender people came up again at Utah Valley University, where about 3,000 students crowded around the canopied seating area where Mr. Kirk was fielding questions from students.
One of them asked Mr. Kirk, “How many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” Mr. Kirk responded, “Too many.”
“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” the person asked.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responded.
Those were the last words he spoke before he was shot.
According to leaked emails from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, cartridges found in a bolt-action rifle that authorities recovered near the shooting scene were engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” An ATF spokesperson, in a statement to The Washington Times, did not verify the report and said the bureau would not comment on an active investigation.
On Bluesky, posters pushed back against the news.
“They are already coming for transgender people over the Charlie Kirk shooting,” Sahara Stevens posted. “We can’t let them push this false narrative. MAGA is pure hate.”
