The right wing’s five-hour beatification pageant for hate-spreading Nazi and Second Amendment sacrifice Charlie Kirk was profane, appalling, not at all Christian but all about Trump… in other words, just what we expect from Donald Trump:
“He did not hate his opponents,” Trump said of Kirk. “He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry.”
…”I call it the radical left,” Trump said. ” Sometimes I call it the radical left lunatics. But Charlie didn’t say that. He called it the left. He was probably right, but I can’t help it.”
…Remembrances of him as a father and husband, as well as an important figure in politics, struck a tone familiar to such events, because it’s appropriate. Trump bringing up the 2020 election during his remarks (“They cheated like dogs but we got ’em back, didn’t we?”) definitely did not.
But that’s what you get when you invite Trump to speak. It’s going to become all about him at some point. Kirk’s memorial was no different [Bill Goodykoontz, “Trump Steered a Revent Charlie Kirk Memorial Totally Off the Rails,” USA Today, 2025.09.21].
Also as we expect: Trump was lying. Charlie Kirk was filled with hate and spread it on a regular basis, spewing the hate-rooted “replacement theory”
Now, the southern border is, of course, the great replacement. They’re trying to replace us demographically. They’re trying to make the country less white. They’re trying to make the country more like the third world, the dumping ground of the planet is the United States southern border. And the secret is out – the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males, they’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries, and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in. And speaker Johnson does nothing. It is an anti-white agenda [Charlie Kirk, The Charlie Kirk Show, 2023.01.08, transcribed by Media Matters for America].
…and stoking hate through his Turning Point USA to promote his vision of a white Christian patriarchy:
Turning Point USA’s primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists. TPUSA and its spokespeople often warn their audience that their children, wives, religion, way of life and they themselves are under attack by various constructed enemies. TPUSA exploits complicated feelings of insecurity and anxiety to manufacture rage and mobilize support to revive and maintain a white-dominated, male supremacist, Christian social order [Rachael Fugardi, “Turning Point USA: A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024,” Southern Poverty Law Center, 2025.05.22].
Kirk hated Martin Luther King Jr.:
In December 2023, speaking before a group of students and teachers at America Fest, a political convention organized by Turning Point USA, Kirk struck a different tone.
“MLK was awful,” Kirk said. “He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe” [William Turton, “How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act,” Wired, 2024.01.12].
…and Taylor Swift:
But maybe one of the reasons why Taylor Swift has been so, just, kind of annoyingly liberal over the last couple of years is that she’s not yet married and she doesn’t have children. I say this non-sarcastically. I say this as a husband and a father. Having children changes you. Getting married changes you, and I hope that America’s biggest pop star marrying the pharmaceutical spokesperson ends up conservatizing them. Taylor Swift might deradicalize herself. She might come back down to reality. I want them to have lots of children. It teaches something about — teaches you something about yourself.
…One of the reasons why so many people on the right have been just skeptical or at least a little bit negative on Taylor Swift is, up until this point, that’s not a great role model for young women, to wait all the way until you’re 35 and just put your career first.
…All kidding and sarcasm aside, this is something that I hope will make Taylor Swift more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
And most importantly, I can’t wait to go to a Taylor Kelce concert. I can’t say it without laughing. You’ve got to change your name. If not, you don’t really mean it. [Charlie Kirk, The Charlie Kirk Show, 2025.08.26, transcribed by Media Matters for America]
And Charlie Kirk did call his liberal targets “lunatics“:
Comments made about MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan caught the ire of conservative radio host Charlie Kirk Tuesday.
Hasan shared his belief that American students weren’t negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. During The Charlie Kirk Show, however, the host strongly disagreed, and went after Hasan’s immigration status in the process.
“Wow. Who is that neurotic lunatic? Who is that guy? Send him back to the country he came from. Holy cow. Get him off TV. Revoke his visa,” Kirk said [“Charlie Kirk: MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Should Go ‘Back to the Country He Came From’,” Barrett Media, 2023.08.30].
Kirk’s website refers to people protesting his brownshirt organization as “Lunatic Trans Protestors“. Kirk’s people also happily amplified, without critique, the Trump Administration’s branding of their targets as “lunatics” just this year here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and nine days before Kirk’s death here,
Trump failed to console or unite the nation yesterday, but his hateful words, alongside Charlie’s, fittingly memorialize the dead tyrant and the hate he used to gain fame and influence.