Yet his former colleagues insist it has hardened the right’s resolve, citing thousands of requests for Turning Point chapters as a sign that his legacy will live on.
E van Draim met Charlie Kirk when he was 17 years old. Shortly thereafter, Draim became the youngest delegate elected to the Republican National Convention in 2012, around the same time Kirk was looking to get his fledgling political operation off the ground.
“Charlie was one of the first people to reach out and congratulate me when that happened,” Draim recalled in an interview.
Testimonies like Draim’s are far and wide in the days since the 31-year-old conservative icon’s assassination shocked the right and kickstarted a campaign to carry forward his legacy.
Those who knew Kirk personally say he excelled in all the areas that make someone an influential political operative, from fundraising and public speaking to social media strategy and grassroots advocacy. But he also carved out a unique identity in refusing to isolate himself within solely Republican circles and only engage with people who agreed with him politically. His entire project revolved around engaging people with whom he disagreed for the express purpose of persuading young people to join the conservative cause.
Now, that influential and inimitable force is gone, in an instant, from the conservative movement — making his loss all the more profound for those involved in it.
People who knew Kirk describe him as a sincerely religious and family-oriented father of two with a knack for remembering names and faces, as well as a supremely loyal friend who constantly did favors for others without expecting anything in return.
“He recruited me to get into politics instead of going to medical school,” said Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.), who worked for Turning Point USA as director of Hispanic engagement before becoming the first alumna of the group to be elected to Congress.
The late Kirk stood out from other influential Republican political figures in his tireless dedication to his college-campus-focused mission, says Trump world political operative Andy Surabian, a friend of Kirk who says he spoke with him via phone call or text almost every day for the last five or so years. “He knew he could make a lot more money doing other things, taking all his political connections and relationships to the business world or Silicon Valley,” Surabian said in an interview with National Review. “But what really drove Charlie wasn’t money. It was God, and it was his family, and it was his friends.”
And he always found ways to uplift young conservatives in his orbit, even when Turning Point took off as a successfully political organization and he became a household name, people who knew him from a young age said.
“He had enough influence within the Republican Party to spend his days going to White House parties” and “hanging out among the established conservative set in around the country, in Palm Beach or D.C. or wherever the party elites hang out,” said Draim, now a JAG officer in the U.S. Navy, who said his views do not speak for the military. Instead of confining himself to Washington, D.C., political circles, Kirk made a career traveling to places where his views were in the minority and he could challenge the existing ideological orthodoxy: college campuses. “And he did it largely by having conversations with those people.”
Across the country, young conservatives are mourning the man who inspired them to get involved in politics and helped them find their voice. “I first met him at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit this summer,” high school senior Gregory Lyakhov wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “When we spoke, he recognized me from my published articles — a surreal moment for someone who had only recently begun reading and writing. Kirk gave me validation that my work and voice had value.”
“For me, it is the loss of the man who gave me purpose,” Lyakhov wrote.
Kirk’s murder marks a dark chapter in American politics. And yet his former colleagues insist that his assassination has hardened the right’s resolve, citing tens of thousands of requests to start Turning Point high school and college campus chapters as a sign that his legacy will live on.
Beyond his family, Kirk’s murder was particularly devastating for Turning Point USA colleagues, as well as his friends in the administration who say he played a major role in helping Trump win battleground states and staff the second Trump White House. Canvassers for TPUSA’s political arm, Turning Point Action, worked tirelessly last year to register Republican voters and knock on hundreds of thousands of doors in support of the GOP ticket.
“I don’t know that Charlie gets enough credit for that,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said on The Charlie Kirk Show, hosted on Monday by Vice President JD Vance. “That was a tactical assist to the campaign. We didn’t have to pay for it. We didn’t have to think about it. We didn’t have to follow up after him. It was an immeasurable help, and most of those canvassers were some of the same young people that voted for the president and convinced their families.”
Earlier this week, Kirk’s friends in the administration pledged to do everything in their power to avenge his death. For White House policy adviser Stephen Miller and other White House officials, that means cracking down on the web of left-wing groups and nonprofits that, as they tell it, inspire terrorism and incite violence.
“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said on Monday’s edition of The Charlie Kirk Show. “And with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have to the DOJ, DHS, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Kirk’s assassination has also sparked a campaign on the right to draw attention to anyone who expresses glee in reaction to his death or mocks his family’s grief.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” Vance, who credits his political rise to Kirk, told viewers at the end of Monday’s show.