The Charlie Kirk Criticism Confirmed.

Since Charlie Kirk’s death, two competing narratives have been pushed about his legacy. The first portrays him as a Christian family man who spoke the truth. The other depicts him as a MAGA-thumping bigot who spread disinformation and division.

I didn’t know who Kirk was until after he died. When a Facebook friend reposted an old photo with him, I finally realized, “Oh, that’s the guy everyone is talking about.” Because of social media algorithms and the people I follow, I was mostly fed his most controversial and divisive statements. I’ve written about those before, especially the shocking ones made by his widow at his funeral. I’ve also noticed that no Kirk supporter has posted a clip of the truth that Kirk supposedly spoke of.

 But I decided I should check out The Charlie Kirk Show for myself to form my own judgment.

I started with the episode “Ben Shapiro on George Floyd, Israel, and Gen Z.”

On the show, Kirk did speak some biblical truths, like the idea that human beings have divine rights from God, not from the government. His supporters hear this and claim he “spoke the Truth.” However, speaking some truths is not the same as speaking nothing but the truth.

Jesus isn’t criticized for speaking some truths while spewing hate. He spoke nothing but the truth. Of course, as human beings, we are fallible and will never be perfect. But there is a difference between being a fallible human and deliberately speaking hateful, divisive, and false statements on your own podcast.

For example, Kirk claimed the Left had to go back 70 years to the murder of Emmett Till to find a modern comparison for George Floyd—as if no innocent Black person has been killed by hateful white people since 1955. Anyone who believes that must have been raised under a rock.

He also pushed the tired MAGA narrative that George Floyd died of a drug overdose. While Floyd did have drugs in his system, this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. Multiple medical examinations and expert testimonies during Derek Chauvin’s trial concluded that Floyd’s cause of death was neck compression.

Like if someone drives drunk and dies in a car crash, do we say they died of alcohol poisoning? No, we say they died in the crash. The alcohol was a factor in how they crashed, but the crash itself caused their death. If that person had never gotten in the car, they would most likely be alive. And if Derek Chauvin had never knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, he would still be alive.

Kirk then claimed that the Left made “us” care about race during the summer of 2020, a statement that ignores centuries of American history.

White people made race a factor when they chose to enslave only Africans and then invented pseudo-science to label them an inferior race. White people made race a factor when they created Jim Crow laws to segregate schools, hospitals, and even water fountains. White people made race a factor when government institutions like the FBI relentlessly targeted civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who simply argued that we are all created equal.

The reason Kirk can believe race wasn’t a factor until 2020 is because he grew up in an insulated world—in the suburbs of Chicago, in a staunchly Republican family. This is a worldview shaped in a bubble, disconnected from the reality that millions of Americans face every day.

This was the first and only episode of The Charlie Kirk Show I needed to hear. It’s terrifying to know that so many young people follow his narrative. They are being led down a path of divisive rhetoric that doesn’t prevent political violence but actively encourages it. This isn’t the legacy of a truth-teller or a martyr; it’s the legacy of a divider.

Yet, I feel sorry for what happened to Kirk. I do appreciate his approach of talking to the young people. And I do believe he had better intentions in the beginning of his political activism. I suggest that if we had a more centered President who didn’t pardon domestic terrorists, then Kirk’s viewpoints probably wouldn’t have developed as radically as they did. Even at 31, for someone without a college degree and became a celebrity overnight, I can see how he developed his most radical Right rhetoric in exchange for more Trump/MAGA support and fame. But the fact is, Trump and MAGA are an evil gang, a gang that Kirk had no business being a member of.