How Charlie Kirk Changed America
Transcript:
On September 10, 2025, an assassin took the life of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old Founder and President of Turning Point USA. The outpouring of grief and anguish that followed had not been seen since the assassination of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty-seven years earlier.
On Sunday, September 21, over one hundred thousand people attended a memorial service in State Farm Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona. The President and Vice President, almost the entire cabinet, major media figures, and leading members of Congress attended. Tens of millions more watched the service on television or online.
The world mourned.
What was it about Charlie that brought so many together in shared sorrow? There are many answers, of course, but if I had to offer one, it would be this:
Charlie personified America’s best possible future. Where he was going, the country was going.
Tall, athletic, whip-smart, Charlie embodied the nation he so articulately defended. People might not have consciously thought about this while he was alive, but they felt it after he was gone.
You never know the height of a tree until it falls.
More than that, as a devoted husband and father to two small children and a man of unwavering Christian faith, he offered a model for young people, especially young men. “Follow me, boys. My life can be your life, too.” That sunlit future was instantly plunged into darkness when he was brutally murdered.
Charles James Kirk was born on October 14, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. His father owned a small architectural firm, and his mother worked in mental health. Both parents were conservative, but neither, as Charlie remembered, was especially vocal about it. Where Charlie’s fascination with politics came from he could never fully explain. But it was there, certainly from high school on. More than a few times he clashed with his left-leaning teachers, a sign of things to come. For college, he had his heart set on West Point. But his application was not accepted. If not West Point, he decided, no college at all. Ironically, no one would visit more college campuses than Charlie in the years ahead.
His fascination with academia was not with the credentials it pretended to confer, but what it was teaching — that America was a fundamentally bad place: racist, imperialist, heartless. He didn’t believe it. Where was there more opportunity than in America? Hard work, personal responsibility, perseverance — that’s how you got ahead.
His convictions were strengthened by two voices on the radio — Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Prager, both of whom would become his close friends. But how many 18-year-olds listened to AM talk radio? Almost none. Except Charlie.
Which got him thinking: How to get the message out to his peers, who didn’t listen to talk radio and certainly weren’t getting it from their high school or college?
Thus, in June 2012, with some seed money from a local businessman, Bill Montgomery, Turning Point USA was born. The wild idea was that Charlie Kirk, a West Point reject, would evangelize free market capitalism and Judeo-Christian values to high school and college students.
And that’s, in fact, what happened. Charlie became an apostle of Americanism. “I love America and my passion is working with students who want to hear about liberty and freedom,” he wrote in his book, Campus Battlefield.
It didn’t hurt that he had an instinctive feel for how to generate attention. Creating viral slogans like “Big Government Sucks,” and staging come one, come all debates on college campuses, he made conservatism — maybe for the first time ever — cool. The conservative kids were the new rebels, and Charlie was leading them to the ramparts.
Wherever he went— and he went everywhere — he made an impression. In his wake, a fresh high school or college chapter of TPUSA would — invariably — follow. By 2016, there were over 1000 of them.
Later that year, Charlie placed a big bet on a fellow outsider — a celebrity businessman old enough to be his grandfather — Donald Trump. In Trump, Charlie saw the antidote to the bloodless presidential candidates he had grown up with. Trump was an entirely different beast: unapologetic, unafraid, with an unconditional love of America. Trump, to his great credit, saw the same qualities in Charlie.
With new confidence and new connections, Charlie grew TPUSA into the largest conservative college organization in the country, probably the world. Charlie was growing, too — in every way. His debate skills sharpened, his knowledge base widened, and most importantly, his faith strengthened.
“Faith and freedom go hand in hand,” he told his young audience. “A nation that loses its faith will inevitably lose its freedom.” This was the American way. Leftism, the default college narrative, led nowhere, except to despair and misery.
In May 2021, Charlie married Erika Frantzve, a former Miss Arizona. Two children soon followed. Everything was falling into place. In 2024, Charlie threw himself into Donald Trump’s re-election. Trump won and this time with the popular vote. College students, always a Republican weakness, were now, largely thanks to Charlie, a new source of GOP strength.
Charlie didn’t see it as a temporary swing; he saw it as a sea change. In fall 2025, he planned a new cross-country college debate tour, the biggest one yet.
The first stop was Utah Valley University, and it was there that Charlie was cut down. Whereas Donald Trump had escaped an assassin’s bullet fourteen months before by turning his head at the perfect moment, Charlie met the bullet by turning into its path. On impact, his fate was sealed.
And now we must face the question as to why Charlie was murdered.
It wasn’t because the assassin hated him. He didn’t know Charlie. He hated what Charlie preached; that the way to a better life came with a commitment to faith, family, and nation — the bedrock values espoused in the Old and New Testaments. That stood as a total rejection of the murderer’s life, a life warped by anger and envy. The murderer didn’t hate Charlie; he hated God. Only you can’t kill God; you can only kill His representative. Charlie was murdered for his faith. In that sense, he is a martyr just as Peter and Paul were martyrs.
Charlie sought a religious revival, a new Great Awakening for America. There have been many indications that his martyrdom may have inspired that revival, especially among young people. Church attendance has increased, Bible sales have surged, new TPUSA chapters are popping up everywhere. Exactly what Charlie’s assassin most feared might well come to pass not only in spite of, but because of, his act of pure evil.
No one can predict the future. But if it turns out to be the bright one Charlie worked so hard to create, we will know who is responsible: a young man from Illinois who only wanted to do good… and did.
I’m Marissa Streit, CEO of Prager University.