Trump's Guru of Wasted Youth

Okay, the mandate for today: Understand everything possible about Charlie Kirk.

The King's Touch

Charlie Kirk, widely acknowledged now as "a Christian nationalist culture warrior," is the head of Turning Point USA, "the nation’s pre-eminent conservative youth organization," which he started when he was 18. It has chapters at more than 850 colleges. They register students to vote, bring conservative speakers to campus, and in 2016 launched their own "Professor Watchlist." It didn't take much in the way of a "woke" understanding of history to get yourself blackballed on that list. According to Robert Draper's in-depth profile of Kirk in the NYTimes Magazine, "Turning Point’s half dozen or so annual events, featuring the biggest names on the right from Trump on down, are slick productions that draw enormous crowds."

Kirk. 31. is married with two young children and lives most of the time in Scottsdale, Arizona. The arrival on the national political scene of Trump, for Kirk was like going through the juicing-up of puberty all over again, only this time without the acne but with certain skills for talk and persuasion. Rich older women find him very pettable. Plus he has the Spartan mentality of a warrior who looks forward to pain. Robert Draper: "Kirk does not drink, avoids gluten and lactose and carries a bottle of olive oil and his own branded hot sauce with him to impart flavor to otherwise austere meals."

During Trump’s first presidency, Kirk told Draper, he visited the White House “a hundred-plus” times. When Trump lost in 2020, Kirk offered solace, obeisance, loyalty at Mar-a-Lago, showing up in early February 2021, bending the knee and offering himself as footman, councillor, hitman. He had plans to pursue a crusade through colleges and universities, trolling the waters for bright young things who would buy "The MAGA Doctrine," the title to Kirk's 2020 bestseller. 

Kirk grew up in the affluent professional middle-class of a Chicago suburb. He was an Eagle Scout, and he got involved as a high school student in a Republican senatorial campaign. "Kirk was smitten with the astringent libertarian worldview of Ron Paul," and he attained his first taste of stardom speaking at local Tea Party rallies in 2010. Bit by the political bug, and turned on by Rush Limbaugh, he wrote an essay for Breitbart News alleging liberal bias in high school textbooks, which led to an appearance on Fox Business. He was on his way to campaign usefulness and great success as a fund-raiser.

In October 2020, Kirk began hosting a daily 3-hour podcast, "The Charlie Kirk Show." He had J.D. Vance on his podcast, during which Vance suggested that people without children should pay higher taxes than parents. According to Wikipedia, Kirk's podcast is downloaded between a hair-raising 500,000 and 750,000 times each day. It is currently ranked No. 13 on Apple Podcasts. His 2020 best seller “The MAGA Doctrine,” helped him become a millionaire -- and definitely one of Trump's bosom crowd of rich flatterers. Actually, now a member of the inner circle. Kirk had a big hand in persuading Trump that J.D. Vance was his best bet for vice president.

Within days of Trump’s victory last November, Draper says that Kirk was front and center at Mar-a-Lago among "an intimate group of advisers" and that he was actually in on the vetting of prospective Trump 2.0 appointees. Kirk had an instinct for sniffing out candidates who might prove weak in their loyalty. "On more than one occasion, according to two sources with knowledge of the events, Kirk was in the room with the president-elect to discuss potential cabinet nominees."

Immediately after the November election, Kirk uprooted his family and installed them for a two-month stay in a condo in Palm Beach, Fla., so he could be super-handy to Trump. And for 10 days in January, as the Trump administration took power, he uprooted his wife and two young children again and took them for a lengthy stay at the Salamander hotel in Washington. That's how ubiquitous Kirk has been in this new kingdom. 

Kirk traveled to Greenland on Jan. 7 with his new BFF Don Trump Jr., to help publicize Trump’s proclaimed intent to acquire the place for himself. And...

Kirk was among a select group at Trump’s private party two days before the inauguration at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. The night before Trump was sworn in, Turning Point hosted a black-tie gala at which some 1,500 attendees paid from $5,000 to $15,000 (with some V.I.P.s paying more) to be in the company of Trump luminaries including Vance; Trump’s nominee for director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel; and Don Jr., who described Kirk onstage as “one of the true rock stars of this movement.” The following evening, an S.U.V. ferried Kirk from one inaugural ball to the next. Two days later, he was visiting the 47th president in the White House — and again the day after that.

According to Draper, Kirk has assigned himself the project of making life miserable for any Republican who deviates from the path. He played a big part in getting rid of "loser" Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Republican Nat'l Committee. But he's especially hard on "weak" Republican senators. He bullied Senator Joni Ernst into voting for Pete Hegseth. He particularly despises Republicans in safely red states who “have taken advantage of Republican primary voters far too long .... They’re not in line with what those voters want. They’re sending money to Ukraine. They’re not strong on immigration. So this is not a veiled threat. I see no good reason not to go after [Sen. Mike] Crapo [of Idaho] or [Senator Mike] Rounds [of South Dakota].” As Kirk saw it, “The behavioral and voting patterns of Senate Republicans would change with one successful primary.”

So he's a bully in the Trump mold. How does that fit with Eager Scout?

Perhaps Kirk has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. With his magnified confidence in his own opinion, he perhaps came to expect easy pavement and open doors everywhere in his future. But while in high school, his application to attend West Point was turned down, and that negative appraisal of his abilities seems to have made him bitter and a kind of cliche of MAGA resentfulness: He told the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley in a 2015 speech that "his" West Point slot went to "a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion" (meaning, apparently, a lesbian." According to the Wikipedia article, Kirk mocked her test scores, which he claimed he knew. That, apparently, was a lie manufactured to save face.