From cookie crusade to conservative politics, Charlie Kirk inspired and enraged millions

• Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University.
• Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a multimillion-dollar organization focused on mobilizing young conservative voters.
• He was a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump and known for his hardline views and often incendiary language.
• The FBI and Utah police are still searching for the gunman, and a motive has not been determined.

WHEELING, IL − Charlie Kirk wanted cheaper cookies.

The cafeteria at Wheeling High School in the Chicago suburb of Wheeling, Illinois, had doubled the price of cookies from a quarter to 50 cents, citing the higher cost of ingredients. But Kirk, a senior, wasn’t having it. He created a Facebook page to call attention to cookie inflation and urged other students to join him in a cookie boycott.

“Cookies are the highlight of most school days, only to be DOUBLED in price without our consultation? NO!” he wrote on Aug. 23, 2011. “Enough of the manipulation, we must stand together in this fight. Fight the Power!”

The pressure campaign worked. The cafeteria caved, and students were once again able to gorge on cookies at the bargain price of 25 cents apiece.

The teenage Kirk’s cookie crusade foreshadowed the career path that he would follow into adulthood.

Over the next decade and a half, Kirk would become one of the nation’s most influential conservative activists, building a multimillion-dollar empire that he used to rally young voters across the country and help to reelect President Donald Trump, whom he would count among his friends.

Kirk inspired millions of people and infuriated millions of others with his hard-line conservative views and often incendiary language on everything from abortion, race and gender to gay marriage and gun rights. It was a career that would make him an influential ally to the White House but would end with gunfire on a college campus, the very place he first found success mobilizing a legion of young conservatives.

Kirk, 31, was cut down by a single bullet on Sept. 10 while speaking to students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, as part of his "American Comeback Tour." Trump announced his death on social media, calling him “Great and even Legendary” and saying no one understood the “Heart of Youth in the United States” better than him.

Trump said Friday, Sept. 12, that a suspect in Kirk's shooting is in custody. "We have him," he said in an interview on Fox and Friends.

In a sign of Kirk’s influence in Republican circles, Vice President JD Vance accompanied Kirk’s family and coffin aboard Air Force Two on the trip back to their home in Arizona.

Kirk's willingness to champion a conservative version of family values and attack what he saw as dangerous liberal ideas that impinged on personal freedom won him widespread support across the country. His death sparked calls for monuments and memorials. Trump announced that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed upon those who have exemplary contributions to the nation.

Although authorities have not yet offered a motive nor detained a suspect, many of Kirk's supporters saw his assassination through an ideological lens.

“I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is," Nick Freitas, a conservative influencer and Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, posted on social media. "It's not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It's a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose."

"My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me," he added. "It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism ... quite the opposite."

'Energy, confidence and passion'

At the high school where Kirk waged his cookie crusade, flags hung at half-staff on Sept. 11. The school is in the Village of Wheeling, a leafy suburb here northwest of Chicago, not far from Arlington Heights and Prospect Heights, where Kirk was born and grew up.

Kirk, who graduated in 2012, was an Eagle Scout and captain of the basketball team. Tall and slender, he also played varsity football and was in the marching band and wind symphony. His mother was a mental health counselor and his father an architect.

Kirk will be remembered "as a student who brought energy, confidence, and passion to the classroom and beyond," school officials said in a statement.

"Even as a teenager, Charlie was known for his drive, his willingness to speak up, and his ability to inspire spirited conversation among his peers," the statement said. "His time at Wheeling was marked by the qualities of curiosity, conviction, and determination – traits that would continue to shape his path long after graduation."

A suburban Chicago newspaper, the Daily Herald, noted his prowess on the basketball court. After a game against the Rolling Meadows Mustangs in 2012, Wheeling coach John Clancy told the paper that Kirk had had “a special night” and “made big plays.” The Wheeling Wildcats lost, but Kirk put up 20 points, leading a late game comeback.

That same year, Kirk landed on the radar of Breitbart News when he sent the right-wing publication an email complaining about “liberal brainwashing” in classrooms. Kirk said his economics textbook, written by Paul Krugman, a liberal economist and columnist for The New York Times, was “littered with biased and subjective analysis.” Kirk said he had cofounded a group to correct misinformation and offer “an alternative viewpoint.”

He would later write essays for conservative publications like Breitbart and The Daily Caller.

'Big Government Sucks'

Kirk got his big political break in 2012. Just 18, he delivered a speech at a youth government day at Benedictine University in a suburb of Chicago. His address caught the attention of Bill Montgomery, a retired entrepreneur who was wowed by Kirk's raw talent.

“You can’t go to college!” Montgomery recalled telling Kirk, according to the National Journal. "You need to start an organization to reach out to young people with your message." 

Kirk took courses at Harper College near Chicago after high school but dropped out without earning a college degree.

A month after his meeting with Montgomery, the two teamed up to start Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that would propel his rise from college dropout to head of a new wave of conservative activists.

The aim of Turning Point was to engage young Republicans and serve as a counterweight to liberal groups. At the time, the right wing of the Republican Party was captured in the tea party movement, with activists arguing for limited government. Kirk echoed that feeling in Turning Point’s original, cheeky slogan: “Big Government Sucks.”

Within a few years, the Phoenix-based Turning Point became a political force all its own. The organization posted grants and contributions worth roughly $2 million in 2014, according to Internal Revenue Service filings. By 2021, the latest year for which data is available, it boasted more than $79 million in contributions.

Turning Point would gain fire with Trump’s political ascendency. During Trump’s first term, Kirk made regular visits to the White House and forged friendships with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and another Trump enthusiast, the rapper Kanye West.

Through Turning Point – and particularly his repeated campus tours and visits – Kirk helped mobilize millions of young voters to support Trump and other conservative candidates nationally. Trump repeatedly spoke at Turning Point events, and candidates sought the exposure and endorsement Kirk could bring them through his podcasts and powerful social media platforms.

At a Turning Point rally in December 2024, a month after winning the presidency for the second time, Trump credited Kirk with his win. Kirk's organization grew alongside Trump's MAGA movement.

"I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk,” Trump said. “He's really an amazing guy, amazing guy and his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic victory. It's not my victory; it's your victory. It's a great honor."

'Submit to your husband'

Kirk expanded his own political messaging, with direct challenges to progressive causes and an embrace of Christian conservatism. He even founded an outreach group − TPUSA Faith − focused on pastors and mobilizing those in the pews. Its motto: "TPUSA Faith exists to unite the Church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the the American pulpit."

His following grew to include millions of people. He hosted a nationally syndicated, three-hour daily radio show and podcast that reportedly drew a combined audience of millions. Podtrac, which runs podcast analytics, ranked his show No. 19 in June by unique monthly audience among podcasts nationwide, up from No. 31 previously.

Conservative radio talk show host Joe Walsh, who split with Kirk politically over Trump in 2016, called him "like a son to me."

"We fought politically, we disagreed publicly, almost always respectfully, but thru it all, he was still like a son to me," Walsh said in a social media post.

On his radio show and podcast, Kirk offered a platform for Trump's surrogates to share their ideas. His conversations with top Trump aides and supporters often went to extremes that mainstream media platforms wouldn't. That included on hot-button topics like immigration, gun rights and the anti-abortion movement.

In February 2024, amid the hotly contested presidential election, for example, immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller joined Kirk to talk about how Trump would deport entire families, including U.S. citizen children.

“Any advanced, developed nation in the world that has a policy of not deporting adults with minors is a nation that will never be able to be sovereign,” Miller said during the segment. “It will never be able to have a border.”

Kirk himself often resorted to tough talk against those who did not share his conservative views.

He accused Democrats of hating the country, argued against the separation of church and state, claimed that in urban America “prowling Blacks” target white people “for fun” and called transgender people “a throbbing middle finger to God.”

He argued that former President Barack Obama should be put on trial for treason, labeled then-Vice President Kamala Harris “a DEI pick” and said that when he sees a Black pilot, he thinks, “boy, I hope he’s qualified.”

When Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, Kirk urged the pop superstar to “reject feminism” and “submit to your husband.” He also encouraged Swift to have “lots of children.”

Josh Kredit, like Kirk an Arizona father and a Christian, said he admired Kirk's fearless willingness to stake a position and defend it.

"Somehow he could distill things down and resonate, cut through the noise. He would just so bluntly attack an issue," Kredit, 39, and a father of five, told USA TODAY. "He had such a talent for speaking and resonating with kids. I can't do it – if I try to talk to them about it, their eyes glaze over. But he could."

Kredit said he particularly appreciated Kirk's stances on marriage, the traditional roles of men and women, and his opposition to transgender althletes in women's sports.

Kredit and Kirk moved in similar circles, and had many mutual colleagues, and Kredit said he'd recently attended an event where Kirk spoke. Kredit said he was particularly impressed by Kirk's ability to use the Bible to help explain basic truths – truths that some politicians have shied away from saying out loud.

"He encouraged people to get married and have kids. ... Those are the types of things that not enough people are saying right now. Men are men, women and women, and we should love that," Kredit said. "He just set a great example, frankly, for my kids."

'Criminals love gun control'

Kirk was known as an outspoken advocate for gun rights. He frequently showed up on social media as a Second Amendment warrior in the wake of mass shootings.

“There is no First Amendment without the Second Amendment,” he posted in 2021.

 “Criminals love gun control because it ensures only criminals control the guns,” he wrote in 2022.

But Kirk’s comments at a 2023 event in Salt Lake City suggesting that “some gun deaths” were the price for gun-owning freedoms quickly began reverberating across social media in the wake of his fatal shooting.

“Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty,” Kirk said at the event at Awaken Church, hosted by his Turning Point USA.

“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and (where) you won't have a single gun death,” he said.

“That is nonsense,” he said. “It's drivel. But I am – I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Though his reach expanded beyond college students, Kirk still made college campuses a focus of Turning Point’s efforts. He would go toe-to-toe with liberal students on campuses, challenging anyone to beat him in a debate. He even debated college students at the University of Oxford and Cambridge University in England.

“I visit college campuses so you don’t have to,” he jokingly told delegates at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

On Sept. 10, Kirk arrived at Utah Valley on the first of what was to be 15 stops on "The American Comeback Tour." Sitting beneath a white tent, he took questions from the crowd of about 3,000 people as part of his “Prove Me Wrong” segment.

About 20 minutes into the event, an audience member asked if Kirk knew how many transgender Americans have been the shooter in mass shootings over the past decade.

“Too many,” Kirk replied.

The audience member said there had been just five and then asked Kirk how many mass shootings there had been during that period.

"Counting or not counting gang violence?" Kirk replied.

A single shot then rang out. Kirk slumped in his chair, blood gushing from his neck. Panicked audience members ran for cover.

Two hours later, Trump announced Kirk was dead.

Contributing: The Arizona Republic