UPDATE: FBI director says Charlie Kirk shooting ‘subject’ in custody
FBI Director Kash Patel says the “subject” wanted in the shooting death of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is in custody.
UPDATE: FBI Director Kash Patel says the “subject” wanted in the shooting death of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is in custody.
“The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody. Thank you to the local and state authorities in Utah for your partnership with @fbi. We will provide updates when able.”
AP – Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster, culture warrior and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31.
Kirk died doing what made him a potent political force — rallying the right on a college campus, this time Utah Valley University. The event was kicking off a planned series of Kirk college appearances from Colorado to Virginia dubbed “The American Comeback Tour.”
His shooting was one of an escalating number of attacks on political figures, from the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota to last summer’s shooting of Trump, that have roiled the nation.
Trump announced Kirk’s death on his social media site, Truth Social.
Kirk personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party in the age of Trump. He launched his organization, Turning Point USA, in 2012, targeting younger people and venturing onto liberal-leaning college campuses where many GOP activists were nervous to tread.
At the center of the right-of-center universe
A backer of Trump during the president’s initial 2016 run, Kirk took Turning Point from one of a constellation of well-funded conservative groups to the center of the right-of-center universe.
Turning Point’s political wing helped run get-out-the-vote for Trump’s 2024 campaign, trying to energize disaffected conservatives who rarely vote. Trump won Arizona, Turning Point’s home state, by five percentage points after narrowly losing it in 2020. The group is known for its events that often feature strobe lighting and pyrotechnics. It claims more than 250,000 student members.
Trump on Wednesday praised Kirk, who started as an unofficial adviser during Trump’s 2016 campaign and more recently became a confidant. “He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person,” Trump told the New York Post.
Kirk showed off an apocalyptic style in his popular podcast, radio show and on the campaign trail. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said that Democrats “stand for everything God hates.” Kirk called the Trump vs. Kamala Harris choice “a spiritual battle.”
“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way,” Kirk told the 10,000 or so Georgians, who at one point joined Kirk in a deafening chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
Influencing a new generation of conservatives
Kirk also remained a regular presence on college campuses. Last year, for the social media program “Surrounded,” he faced off against 20 liberal college students to defend his viewpoints, including that abortion is murder and should be illegal.
Admirers stressed that, for all of Kirk’s confrontational rhetoric, he relished debate and the free exchange of ideas. “His entire project was built on reaching across the divide and using speech, not violence, to address and resolve the issues!” William Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, posted on X.
His style has been hugely influential for a new generation of conservatives. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida spoke on the Capitol steps after the shooting Wednesday, reflecting on Kirk’s influence on her political journey.
“I was supposed to go to medical school. Charlie Kirk called me the day before I was supposed to leave, and recruited me to go be the national Hispanic outreach director for the organization,” said Luna. “I was with him at many of them, debating those kids, and that conversation needs to happen. You can’t squelch that.”
Kirk was married to podcaster Erika Frantzve. They have two young children.
Zeal for challenging liberals
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by a then 18-year-old Kirk and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.
But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.
Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, during the general election campaign.
Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.
Kirk announced he was organizing buses to travel to Washington to back Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and later invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answering questions from the Jan. 6 subcommittee. Also in 2021, as he stepped up criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement on college campuses, Kirk called George Floyd, the Black man whose 2020 murder at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests that roiled Trump’s last full year in office, a “scumbag.”
“Just don’t totally mess up this state,” Kirk said at the event in Mankato, Minnesota. “It was built by wonderful Scandinavians, and it seems as if it’s being destroyed now, rather intentionally.”
As money poured in, Kirk bought a $4.75 million Spanish-style estate on a gated Arizona country club. Turning Point steered millions of dollars to contractors owned by Kirk and his associates, and some Republicans were skeptical when it announced it would spearhead an attempt to turn out infrequent voters during Trump’s 2024 campaign.
But as younger voters shifted right in 2024 and Trump ran up a five-point margin of victory in Arizona, Kirk and his allies claimed vindication of his view of a sharp-elbowed, culture-war-oriented conservatism.
Advocate of a new Christian conservatism
Kirk’s evangelical Christian beliefs were intertwined with his political perspective, and he argued that there was no true separation of church and state.
He also referenced the Seven Mountain Mandate, which specifies seven areas where Christians are to lead — politics, religion, media, business, family, education and the arts, and entertainment.
Kirk argued for a new conservatism that advocated for freedom of speech, challenging Big Tech and the media, and centering working-class Americans beyond the nation’s capital.
“We have to ask ourselves a question as a conservative movement: Are we going to revert back to the party of the status quo ruling class?” he said in his speech opening the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2020.
“Or are we going to learn from what I call the MAGA doctrine? The MAGA doctrine, which is a doctrine of American renewal, revival, one that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.”
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Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Joey Cappelletti, Brian Slodysko and Matt Brown in Washington contributed to this report.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
OREM, Utah (AP) – Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday at a Utah college event in an act that drew renewed attention to the threat of political violence across the United States.
The death was announced on social media by Trump, who praised the 31-year-old Kirk, the co-founder and CEO of the youth organization Turning Point USA, as “Great, and even Legendary.”
“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account.
The suspected shooter has not been arrested, Orem, Utah, Mayor David Young said. A person who was taken into custody by law enforcement at the university where Kirk was speaking was not the suspect, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A single shot rings out and Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as a large volume of blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators are heard gasping and screaming before people start to run away. The AP was able to confirm the videos were taken at Sorensen Center courtyard on the Utah Valley University campus.
“We are confirming that he was shot and we are praying for Charlie,” said Aubrey Laitsch, public relations manager for Turning Point USA.
Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by his nonprofit political organization. Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions for an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience members asked. Kirk responded: “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.
Then a single shot rang out.
The event had been met with divided opinions on campus. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”
Last week, Kirk posted on X images of news clips showing his visit to Utah colleges was sparking controversy. He wrote, “What’s going on in Utah?”
Trump and a host of Republican and Democratic elected officials decried the shooting and offered prayers for Kirk on social media.
“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The shooting comes amid a spike in political violence in the United States across all parts of the ideological spectrum. The attacks include the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband at their house in June, the firebombing of a Colorado parade to demand Hamas release hostages, and a fire set at the house of Pennsylvania’s governor, who is Jewish, in April. The most notorious of these events is the shooting of Trump during a campaign rally last year.
Former Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican who was at the event, said in an interview on Fox News Channel that he heard one shot and saw Kirk go back.
“It seemed like it was a close shot,” Chaffetz said, who seemed shaken as he spoke.
He said there was a light police presence at the event and Kirk had some security but not enough.
“Utah is one of the safest places on the planet,” he said. “And so we just don’t have these types of things.”
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by Kirk, then 18, and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.
But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.
Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, during the general election campaign.
Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.
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Richer and Sherman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Michael Biesecker and Brian Slodysko in Washington contributed to this report.
