Charlie Kirk
Charles J. Kirk (born October 14, 1993)[1][2] is an American right-wing political activist, radio talk show host, and internet personality who often espouses views rooted in conservatism. He founded Turning Point USA with Bill Montgomery in 2012, and has served as its executive director since. He is the CEO of Turning Point Action, Students for Trump, and Turning Point Academy, Turning Point Faith, president of Turning Point Endowment, and a member of the Council for National Policy. Kirk has written four books.
This article is about the American activist. For other people named Charles Kirk, see Charles Kirk (disambiguation).
Charlie Kirk
October 14, 1993
Wheeling High School
Harper College (no degree)
Political activist
2012–present
1
Honorary Degree Doctorate (Liberty University)
Early life and education
Kirk was born in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois, and raised in nearby Prospect Heights, Illinois. His mother is a mental health counselor and his father is an architect.[3] Kirk was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout.[4] In his junior year at Wheeling High School in 2010, he volunteered for the successful U.S. Senate campaign of Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, to whom he is not related.[5] In senior year he created a campaign to revert a price increase for cookies at his school.[3] He also wrote an essay for Breitbart News alleging liberal bias in high school textbooks, which led to an appearance on Fox Business.[6]
At a subsequent speaking engagement at Benedictine University's "Youth Empowerment Day", Kirk met Bill Montgomery, a retiree more than 50 years his senior, who was then a Tea Party-backed legislative candidate.[7][8] Montgomery encouraged Kirk to get engaged in political activism full-time.[9] He subsequently founded Turning Point USA, a "grass-roots organization to rival liberal groups such as MoveOn.org." At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Kirk met Foster Friess, a prominent Republican donor, and persuaded him to finance the organization.[10][7]
Kirk briefly attended Harper College, a junior community college near Chicago, but dropped out without having completed any degree or certificate.[11]
Leadership of Turning Point organizations
Turning Point USA
Kirk has been CEO, chief fundraiser, and the public face of Turning Point since its founding.[12][13] He co-founded the organization in 2012 at 18 years of age.[11] According to The New York Times, he has turned the organization into a "well-funded media operation, backed by conservative megadonors like the Wyoming businessman Foster Friess."[14] TPUSA's activities include publication of the Professor Watchlist and the School Board Watchlist.[15]
In 2020, ProPublica investigated the finances of Turning Point USA and claimed in their report that the organization made "misleading financial claims", that the audits were not done by an independent auditor, and that the leaders had enriched themselves while advocating for Trump. ProPublica also reported that Kirk's salary from TPUSA had increased from $27,000 to nearly $300,000 and that he had bought an $855,000 condo in Longboat Key, Florida.[16] In 2020, Turning Point USA had $39.2 million in revenues.[17] Kirk earned a salary of more than $325,000 from TPUSA and related organizations.[18]
In 2021, Turning Point USA announced an online academy targeted towards students in schools "poisoning our youth with anti-American ideas." Turning Point Academy was intended to cater to families seeking an "America-first education". Arizona education firm StrongMind initially partnered with Turning Point USA with plans to open the academy by the fall of 2022 and assessed its "potential to generate over $40 million in gross revenue at full capacity (10,000 students)." The partnership ended after StrongMind received backlash from its own employees and key subcontractor Freedom Learning Group, who prepared course content for the academy, also backed out of the academy after learning that it would be run by Turning Point USA.[19]
Turning Point Action
In May 2019, it was reported that Kirk was preparing to launch Turning Point Action, a 501(c)(4) entity designed to target Democrats.[20]
In July 2019, Kirk announced that Turning Point Action had acquired Students for Trump along with "all associated media assets".[21] He became chairman and launched a campaign to recruit one million students for the 2020 Trump reelection campaign.[22] The unsuccessful effort led to TPUSA and the Trump campaign blaming each other for an overall decline in youth support for Trump.[23]
Turning Point Endowment
Turning Point Endowment Inc., formed in 2017, is a self-described "supporting organization" whose "mission is to support and benefit Turning Point USA's charitable purposes and long-term vitality."[24]
Turning Point Faith
After Liberty University did not renew Kirk's contract with the Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty in 2021, Kirk founded Turning Point Faith, an organization dedicated to "recruit pastors and other church leaders to be active in local and national political issues."[25] Its activities include faith-based voter drives "and educating members on TPUSA's core values."[26] According to TPUSA's 2021 Investor Prospectus, the program—with a budget of $6.4 million—"will 'address America's crumbling religious foundation by engaging thousands of pastors nationwide' in order to 'breathe renewed civic engagement into our churches'."[27]
Council for National Policy and CNP Action
Kirk is the William F. Buckley Jr. Council Member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a group "that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them,"[28] according to the CNP's September 2020 membership directory leaked in February 2021.[29][30][31] He is a spokesperson for CNP Action, the political arm of the CNP.[30][32]
Mount Vernon Project
According to Kirk, the Mount Vernon Project is a movement to "recruit leaders to serve on the (Republican National Committee) RNC and at the state level who wish to better represent the grassroots voice."[33]
Talk radio host
In October 2020, Kirk began hosting a daily three-hour radio talk show, called The Charlie Kirk Show, on Salem Media's "The Answer" radio channel.[34][35]
In 2024, NBC News reported that it was presented with internal data showing that Kirk's podcast is being downloaded between 500,000 and 750,000 times each day. It’s ranked No. 13 on Apple Podcasts for news.[36][37]
Conflict with the Republican National Committee
In December 2022, Kirk warned the Republican National Committee that they needed to listen to their grassroots voters or face the consequences of ignoring them. Kirk stated that "If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven't seen in generations."[33]
Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty
In November 2019, Kirk and Jerry Falwell Jr. co-founded the "Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty", a right-wing think-tank funded, owned and housed by Liberty University.[99][100][25] Fellows included Antonio Okafor, director of outreach for Gun Owners of America; Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Trump; and Jenna Ellis, a senior legal counselor for Trump.[101][100] In 2020, the Falkirk Center spent at least $50,000 on political Facebook advertisements promoting Trump and Republican candidates.[102]
Students and alumni raised objections about the organization's aggressive political tone, which they considered to be inconsistent with the university's mission.[100][25] Falwell resigned as president of Liberty University in August 2020, and the university did not renew Kirk's one-year contract in late 2020. In 2021, the university renamed the organization "Standing for Freedom Center".[25]
Awards, achievements and honors
Kirk was listed on the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Law & Policy.[103][104]
In May 2019, Kirk was awarded an honorary doctorate from Liberty University.[105]
Kirk was appointed by President Donald Trump to a commission promoting "patriotic education".[106]
Books
Kirk co-wrote, with Brent Hamachek, the 2016 book Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations (Simon & Schuster).[107]
Kirk wrote the 2018 book Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters. Donald Trump Jr. wrote the foreword for the book.[108] In a review for The Weekly Standard, Adam Rubenstein described the book as a "hot mess", "nothing more than a marketing pitch for TPUSA" and said the "thin" book was "stuffed with reprintings of his tweets and quotes from others."[109]
In 2020, Kirk's book The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future was published.[110][111]
In 2022, Kirk's fourth book, The College Scam: How America's Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America's Youth was published.[112]
Media
As of December 7, 2021, The Charlie Kirk Show podcast was ranked as the 21st most popular podcast on Apple podcasts.[113] Kirk's "Turning Point Live" is a three-hour streaming talk show aimed at Generation Z. Turning Point USA's monthly online average has grown to 111,000 unique visitors in 2021.[114] A February 2023 Brookings Institution study found Kirk's podcast contained the second-highest proportion of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among 36,603 episodes produced by 79 prominent political podcasters.[115]
In 2022, journalist Bari Weiss released a report of internal Twitter documents dubbed "The Twitter Files", which alleged that Twitter was censoring conservative personalities on the social media platform. Weiss posted screenshots of Twitter tools that moderators could use to limit the reach of posts and accounts. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Kirk's Twitter account was flagged under "do not amplify", which meant algorithms would not highlight tweets coming from those accounts.[116][117]
