Processing Charlie Kirk’s Assassination in a Divided Nation

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University has ignited national debate—and personal reflection. As someone who never followed Kirk closely, Jean was stunned, not by the violence itself, but by the grief expressed by people she loves. In this post, Jean explores Kirk’s controversial legacy, the polarized reactions to his death, and the uncomfortable conversations it sparked in her life. What does political violence reveal about the state of our country—and about the values we hold dear? AI….

Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week didn’t just shake the political world—it shook me, too, in ways I hadn't anticipated. I had never paid much attention to him until the news broke and then I took a deep dive into his history.

In 2018 Charlie Kirk was included on the Forbes Magazine list 30 Under 30 in Law and Policy. He was 24 years old and several years before that he was the youngest speaker to ever appear at a Republican National Convention. Among his other accomplishments was founding Turning Point USA—a far-right organization that today claims to be the largest MAGA youth group, with a presence on 2,500 campuses. It opposes gun control, vaccines, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and promotes Christian Nationalism and a grab-bag of conspiracy theories. It’s not hyperbolic to say that Charlie Kirk made a name and a fortune for himself. His estate is estimated at twelve million dollars. Politics pays well.

Last Wednesday he was speaking at a large rally and just before he was assassinated he was asked by an audience member: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters in the past ten years?” “Too many,” Kirk said, then added. “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Those were his final words—provocative, divisive, and now immortalized in his short but impactful life.

I never gave Charlie his due for his sphere of influence. I knew he thought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “huge mistake” and that its led to what the far-right thinks is a DEI culture. I knew his misogynistic viewpoint about birth control making women “angry and bitter.” I knew he’s said young women need to “get back to prioritizing marriage and motherhood,” and give up their aspirations of having careers. 

I also knew he publicly made a pitch for a “patriot” to come forward to bail out the person who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer. But I didn’t know that after he was shot I’d see so many of my conservative friends and neighbors express their profound and deepest grief over his passing. I thought he was just a shock jockey pod-castor on the fringe of the Republican Party. 

Learning the wide scope of Kirk's power in the Republican Party started with some Facebook posts. Friends and relatives plastered the site with their admiration and grief. One was posted by one of my favorite people on earth. In the video someone asked Charlie, “If I was dying of a gun shot and had 30 seconds to live what would you tell me?” Charlie answered that "he was about to meet the Eternal Judgment and the only important thing is if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior—not how many good deeds you’d done, not how much money you have or what’s on your moral scorecard. Nothing else is going to cut it except accepting Jesus.” (Quoted verbatim.)

Not long after watching that video I got a phone call from a (MAGA and pseudo religious) relative who quickly worked the conversation around to Charlie. But what was really on her mind is she wanted to know if I’ve accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior yet. I told her I believe in the historical Jesus but not the mystical Jesus meaning I believe he walked the earth and was the founder of a world religion just like Mohammad, Buddha and Abraham were—but I don’t subscribe to the idea he had any mystical powers. I would never say this to her but I think it’s utterly ridiculous to believe that accepting Jesus as your savior is the only way to find a divine consciousness or to tap into a universal, spiritual force.

After spending my morning reading about Charlie Kirk, I went down to lunch. When I sat down the woman next to me was talking about how awful it was that “they” killed him. (Current events are rarely ever discussed at our lunch table so that alone was telling.) Then she looked at me and asked, “Or are you one of those who is cheering his death?” She knows I’m part of the Tuesday Night (Political) Conversation Dinner Group which is probably why she made the jab but still I was shocked at the insult. “Of course not!" I replied. "I don’t want to live in a country where political assassinations are becoming disturbingly routine."

Someone else said we have to find a way to bring people back together. "How did we get so polarized?" another woman asked. Then I made the mistake of saying it started when Trump— That’s as far as I got before someone jumped on me, saying, “Please don’t bring politics into this tragedy!” Not wanting to add more heat to the conversation I didn’t spit back what I was thinking, and I was thinking how on earth can you NOT bring politics into a political assassination? He wasn’t shot for a personal scandal or happenstance. I didn’t say another word through lunch and the conversation around me ended in the same place as the phone call I’d gotten earlier by someone saying, "Charlie is in heaven, now, where he and Jesus are walking hand in hand." Cynical me thought, there must be a meme out there expressing that sentiment.

I neither mourn nor celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death. But I do mourn what it reveals about the country I (used to) love—and how far we’ve drifted apart in what we value about life, liberty and patriotism. The fact that the president wants to posthumously award Mr. Kirk the National Medal of Freedom and allow him to lie in state in the Capitol building is not only inappropriate it puts a giant explanation point on our deep divide. ©

“We can return violence with violence. We can return hate with hate. And that’s the problem with political violence,” Governor Cox of Utah said. “It metastasizes, because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”