How Charlie Kirk shaped a generation of young people into a conservative force

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and BILL BARROW Associated Press Charlie Kirk began plotting a way to mold young minds into conservatism at an age when he was still sorting out his own path Looking to channel his political inclinations into action after a rejection from West Point Kirk was when he launched a grassroots organization from an Illinois garage that would grow alongside the rise of President Donald Trump and fuel the Make America Great Again movement Related Articles Judge temporarily blocks US efforts to remove various immigrant Guatemalan and Honduran children Howie Carr Charlie Kirk RIP Senate Republicans poised to change rules to speed up Trump s nominees A college campus a fiery speaker and then a single gunshot Senate Republicans defeat Democrats effort to force the release of Epstein files Kirk admitted later he had no money no connections and no idea what I was doing when he started Turning Point USA in But his rhetorical gifts for countering progressive ideas by leaning into cultural tensions and making provocative declarations instantly resonated with college audiences during the Obama years As video clips of his early campus appearances spread online it helped him secure a steady stream of donations that transformed Turning Point into one of the country s largest political organizations attracting young people to star-studded gatherings and making it a presence at high schools and colleges around the country No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie Trump mentioned on Wednesday after Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah In the early stages Kirk described his group as a aspirant organization that advocated for free markets and limited governing body He needled peers who bashed capitalism and backed presidential candidate and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders yet shamelessly enjoy the fruits of the free territory like Starbucks Amazon and Netflix Over time Turning Point began holding mass rallies that drew tens of thousands of young voters each year to hear top conservative leaders Trump included speaking on glitzy stages with massive screens pyrotechnics and lighting shows befitting a stadium concert Alongside Turning Point s expansion Kirk s fame skyrocketed and he leveraged his nonprofit celebrity status and a achieving podcast into considerable personal wealth It is not at once clear who will lead Turning Point after Kirk s death You don t replace a Charlie Kirk Trump advised reporters on Thursday He was unique FILE Minnesota State University Mankato students applaud Charlie Kirk as he finished his speech at an event on Oct in Mankato Minn AP Photo Jackson Forderer File Turning Point spreads conservative ideas across college campuses Kirk s bread-and-butter remained anchored on college campuses His final appearance Wednesday at Utah Valley University was the opening event of his latest series titled the American Comeback Tour In his college stops Kirk would often sit beneath a tent as he was when he was shot He was often behind his Prove Me Wrong table where he held forth He mainly drew young conservatives multiple sporting Make America Great Again hats who declared they often felt unwelcome or out of place at school And he had hundreds of Turning Point employees and participants there to recruit students into becoming GOP voters and activists themselves The real draw however was Kirk arguing with students He seemed to relish jeers when he had a less friendly audience Kirk frequently repeated Trump s false insists that former Vice President Kamala Harris was directly responsible for all immigrants who were in the U S illegally He called George Floyd a Black man whose death by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national debate over racial injustice a scumbag He espoused culturally conservative views advocating for gun rights condemning abortion holding up women as wives and mothers and men as heads of households And he mastered the art of the what about retort turning questions back on progressives and liberals who challenged him Kirk was sometimes kept away from schools In Turning Point revealed a Chicago university denied requests for him to speak on their campus citing safety concerns and a Florida high school would not allow him to speak to students two months after a teenager with an assault rifle had killed people there Tommy Richardson a -year-old from Mesa Arizona arrived at the Turning Point headquarters after Kirk s death was communicated He praised Kirk as a charismatic leader who helped shape his generation of conservatives and was a champion of everything we believe That s a huge legacy that will have repercussions for the political landscape for decades to come he declared FILE From left Republican National Committee deputy press secretary Raffi Williams Rep Mia Love R-Utah Charlie Kirk Turning Point USA and Sen Ben Sasse R-Neb participate in a panel discussion in National Harbor Md Feb AP Photo Carolyn Kaster File Kirk helped mobilize youth for Trump In Kirk used his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to praise Trump as an economic master and argue that Gen Z voters could not afford another Democratic administration Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to illegals and foreign nations while Gen Z has to pinch pennies just so that they can never own a home never marry and work until they die childless he announced Speaking directly to his generation the multimillionaire influencer revealed You don t have to stay poor You don t have to accept being worse off than your parents You don t have to backing leaders who lied to you and took advantage of you for your vote According to AP VoteCast a survey of the electorate of voters aged - opted for Trump while went for Harris But that was a much narrower gap than in when Joe Biden outpaced Trump to I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk He s really an amazing guy Amazing guy And his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic triumph Trump reported at a Turning Point gathering in Arizona last December Vice President JD Vance noted Kirk s influence continued past the inauguration So much of the success we ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie s ability to organize and convene Vance declared on X late Wednesday He didn t just help us win in he helped us staff the entire administration FILE Charlie Kirk center conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA speaks to supporters of President Donald Trump at a rally Nov in Phoenix AP Photo Ross D Franklin File Young conservatives call him mentor and inspiration Several young politicians and figures credit Kirk with inspiring or boosting their inhabitants careers White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted he was one of the first to believe in me When she ran for Congress from New Hampshire in Kirk endorsed her in the Republican primary She lost the general vote Kirk deduced in the anticipated and promise of young people she commented He inspired millions of them to get involved in politics and fight for our nation s conservative values Vance explained Kirk first reached out through a private message on Twitter after a Fox News appearance in when he was an author and not a politician They became friends and Kirk was one of the first people Vance called when he thought of running for the U S Senate in early Kirk introduced him to people who eventually ran his campaign and to Donald Trump Jr Don took a call from me because Charlie inquired him too Vance posted on X Anna Paulina Luna a Florida Republican congresswoman noted Kirk recruited her as national Hispanic outreach director when she was planning to attend healthcare school He s part of the reason I m in office right now Rep Anna Paulina Luna announced of Kirk from outside the Capitol Wednesday Kennedy Peterson was among the young people who came to Turning Point headquarters after Kirk s death was released Wednesday From the day that he started with the Campus Triumph Project I think that his intentions were to create a world that he thought was better than what we have now Peterson stated Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Jonathan J Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this account