Charlie Kirk, assassinated at 31, might have been America’s first millennial president

Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old American political activist assassinated in Utah today, led a conservative movement so popular among young voters that some anticipated he might become America’s first millennial president.

“I do think one day, whether he intended for it or not, I think he would have made a great politician or even a president,” said Barclay McGain, a 25-year-old Australian who met Mr Kirk last December at a political conference in Phoenix. “He would have done it by uniting the nation.”

With a fame that extended to Republican-leaning fans around the world, Mr Kirk played a significant role in Donald Trump’s election last year through his leadership of a young conservatives movement that rose to counter the Democratic Party’s shift to the left.

His influence was so great that his death was announced on social media by the President. “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Mr Trump said. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”

Mr Trump ordered flags on US government buildings to be hung at half staff. A minute of silence was held on the floor of Congress.

Campus activism

Mr Kirk was killed by what may have been a sniper at Utah Valley University around 1.20pm local time (4.10am AEST) while taking questions from an exuberant crowd of several thousand people. An early report the shooter had been arrested was wrong.

Mr Kirk was discussing transgender mass shootings with an audience member when several shots rang out. Witnesses said he was struck in the neck. In a recording from the scene a person could be heard saying “go go go” and another said “oh my God” as people scrambled for safety.

The state governor, or premier, Spencer Cox, said the killing was “a political assassination”. “Our nation is broken,” he said.

A forceful communicator, his death on campus was seen as ironic given Mr Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, operates across some 3,500 universities, where it defies progressive influence by refusing to accept limits on free speech that tend to restrict conservative opinions.

Despite lacking a university degree, Mr Kirk enjoyed debating students and encouraged them to challenge his views. He was sitting under a sign that said “Prove me wrong” when shot.

Regularly visiting the White House to see senior officials, he helped choose cabinet ministers and the head of the Republican National Committee, the organisation that runs the administrative side of the party. In January he travelled with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, to Greenland on a trip canvassing whether the territory could become part of the US.

New Right

Through a daily radio show, which was turned into a podcast, and posts on Instagram and X, he attracted a generation of voters to what some call the New Right, a belief that the US should look after itself rather than trying to shape world events. He supported oil and gas production, questioned if transgender rights had gone too far, supported Israel and expressed scepticism about US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.

He wrote a book, too, explaining that young people should vote for Mr Trump if they were fed up with “Silicon Valley, the media, liberal higher education, the military-industrial complex, Twitter mobs, swamp monsters, Big Pharma, out-of-control prosecutors and gun-grabbing fascists”.

“He was that guy that non-political friends would send me a message and say: ‘I actually agree with him’” Mr McGain said.

Mr Kirk was the most trusted individual on TikTok among Republican voters under 30, a survey found. In the presidential election, support from young voters for Democrat candidate Kamala Harris was 12 points lower than Joe Biden’s in 2020, the biggest swung among age group, according to The Economist.

In January, Mr McGain attended a Turning Point USA ball in Washington to celebrate Mr Trump’s election. Mr Kirk danced on the stage with Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr while The Village People performed YMCA, Mr McGain said.

A month earlier, at the conference in Phoenix, Mr McGain encouraged him to visit Australia. ”He said: ‘I’ve got to sort out my country first’” Mr McGain said. “I respected it because he was a nationalist first and foremost.”