Have you actually watched any of his content? Like many I'd literally never even heard of him until today, and now I'm watching his videos. [1]
He was going into generally extremely liberal areas and willing to openly debate and discuss his generally conservative and Christian values in 'real time', while encouraging his opponents to use the internet, chat bots, and whatever else they might like to try to get a zinger off on him. And it was real debate - not the media/talk show nonsense where two people just scream at and interrupt each other, with no real debate happening. He happily let people go off on their monologues before responding, and without resorting to typical fallacies you see online like ad hominem, straw-manning, etc.
I don't really agree with a lot of his values, but I think he is an absolute icon in terms of how political discussions should happen. This is how democracy, debate, and more broadly - an Open Society should work, and he was killed for pursuing this. If this isn't the path forward for debate in society, then what is?
If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024
If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022
Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023
'Prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people' – video
On debate
Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025
The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024
We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
Charlie Kirk in his own words: 'A Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic' – video
On gun violence
I think it’s worth it 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025
The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024
The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025
We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.
– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025
There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
I think it's telling that for a guy who spent years debating and publicly speaking on highly charged topics that those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context. For this to be the sort of comments that somebody wants to murder over, they seriously need to take a breath outside their echo chambers every once in a while.
For instance, due to said echo chambers you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical. In reality, it's referencing a real situation. The Biden administration turned the world upside down to try to get Britney Griner, a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" released from Russia after she was arrested for bringing marijuana into the country. We ended up trading Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer who has since become a member of Russia's parliament, for her. At the same time we left Paul Whelan, a US Marine who was arrested in Russia for allegedly spying many years ago, just rotting away. He was eventually released in a multi-prisoner exchange after Trump took office.
People spoke of 'rage' regularly in this thread. Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
>Can you imagine how actions like this make people feel? Yet somehow there is far more self control from the segment of society negatively affected by these sort of things.
I don't need to imagine. 80% of domestic terrorism is perpetrated by the right, They certainly aren't quiet about their grievances, even when the grievances are imaginary.
There were numbers published about this until Trump ordered them taken down.
Regarding the Griner thing, it's telling that when the right decided to compare two humans value the first thing the went to were her gender, race, and sexual orientation wasn't it? Personally I'd have stuck with her job, which was the bit that actually mattered. Instead, they made it about identity politics in order to spread rage.
To be clear, I'm saying that Biden fought for Griner because she was famous, not because she enjoyed cannabis and liked the ladies or whatever it is Kirk seems to think. Spies aren't famous by definition.
It's reasonable to disagree with Bidens choice, but it's rage bait to make it about her skin color and toilet-part preferences.
Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable, but I want to take a more fundamental approach to this. I really like Kirk's style of simply asking questions that make people accept their own views. There are two reasons to this - the first is because you may not even realize what you believe, and the second part is because my assumptions about what you believe may simply be wrong.
Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her? Would you approve if the same was done for William Elliott Whitmore, in the case where he was busted bringing drugs into Russia? For context he's a random celebrity (excellent musician), mostly the equal but opposite of Griner, but certainly at least as famous.
> Do you approve of Biden doing everything he could, including ultimately trading one of the most well known arm's dealers alive (and the person who Lord of War was based on), for her?
Mostly I dont care at all. It's one of a thousand tiny decisions every world leader makes every day that would have been on page 15 of the newspaper 25 years ago. However, I can see why you would disapprove. It's reasonable to disagree with politicians, unless you're doing it because you're some kind of bigot.
Now explain why Griners genital preference is relevant if the point wasn't to enrage people and imply that a black lesbians life is worth less than a hetero mans. Again, he was comparing people and these were the attributes he chose as important qualifiers.
> Calling a WNBA player famous is very arguable
Is it your stance that actual spies are more widely known than WNBA players? I mean, that's a hilarious burn towards the WNBA, but it's literally not true. It's only anecdata, but i knew more about Griner than the other person. Still do.
It's also weird that you focus on this one person as if they were the only possible alternative to Griner. They weren't. That's just the one the right trotted out because it was the only one anybody had ever heard of at all.
Both sides were playing politics with lives, and it was gross. It was worse that Kirk made it about how black and gay Griner was. He did it to get views and it worked, but it had a cost.
>William Elliott Whitmore
Frankly, I also wouldn't care about whoever he is unless someone framed it to be a comparison between a black, gay, pot smoker and a 'normal' person just to piss me off. Identity politics are evil.
Ok, so you don't care. I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
The Biden administration was obsessed about race and sexuality. And in this case, they blew our highest value prisoner to get somebody out of prison who unquestionably brought drugs into Russia - exceptionally rapidly, while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned. Yet this person we got out, on the double, just happened to match the exact race and sexuality characteristics that the Biden administration was obsessed with. Do you think this was just a coincidence?
Yes, and there is no reason to believe otherwise that I am aware of.
I provided many quotes showing that Kirk played the race, sexuality, and religion cards frequently. I beleive he did so to provoke rage and engagement, and the evidence seems to support my stance.
Can you provide even a single quote that shows Biden considered her lesbianism, blackness, or other 'controversial' characteristics as the deciding factor here? From where I sit it looks like he just did what his constituency demanded. Kirk on the other hand made unsubstantiated claims about all of the above to drive engagement.
> I'll pretend to believe you. Let me ask you something else then.
I'm only discussing this particular case because you chose it as the most defensible from my long list. Even then, you are struggling to justify the divisive language Kirk chose. Had you chosen the one about black pilots this would be even more open and shut.
Okay, you think it's just a coincidence. I'll again continue to pretend to believe you. Now can you understand why lots of other people believe it is not a coincidence?
And no, this quote is hardly the most defensible. On the contrary it's one of the more outrageous until you realize he's referencing an event that literally happened.
> while ignoring all other prisoners, including those of high merit and arguably unjustly imprisoned.
So this part stuck in my craw, and I looked it up. Almost nothing about the way you have described this situation is accurate.
Biden tried to have Whelan freed as well, but Russia refused due to Whelan being considered a spy while Griner was perceived as only a low level criminal. At the time Biden was quoted saying that Russias reasons were "totally illegitimate" and that the US would "never give up" on trying to have him released.
Further, Griner was only one of several prisoners Biden tried to have released during this first swap. The others were not black lesbians though, so you didn't hear about it.
Biden later lived up to his word, because in 2024 Whelan was released as part of the 2024 Ankarta prisoner exchange, which Biden and Harris negotiated and which was considered to be one of the largest and most complex prisoner exchanges in history. It was NOT Trump, as you claimed earlier.
The entire narrative as you know it was WRONG, and the dichotomy was even more false than you've been led to believe.
Not only do I stand by my earlier statements, I feel even more convinced that Kirk was not just kind of a jerk, he was a full bore jerk. He likely knew Biden was working that deal, and turned it into race baiting hate speech anyhow... and you believed it.
Russia freed Griner because they got Viktor Bout in exchange. He's a polyglot international arms dealers with connections to weapons and smuggling around the world, who was known not only as the "Merchant of Death" but also as "Sanctions Buster". And as mentioned he is now literally serving as a Russian politician. Them giving away some drug addled ball player in exchange, undoubtedly had them laughing their assess off in private. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, it's difficult to imagine a more ridiculous exchange.
Had Biden tried, he could have gotten vastly more for Bout. In terms of thinking about US interests, and not his election campaign, he probably should not have even been releasing Bout anyhow - since that guy is very much the real deal. Thanks for the correction on the timeline! I was probably conflating the story of Whelan with that of Marc Fogel. Though it's funny reading the details of the Ankara exchange exchange as well:
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Freed as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West, the opposition figures, Andrei Pivovarov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, had mixed feelings about the deal.[63] Kara-Murza stated that article 61 of the Constitution of Russia forbids to deport citizens if they do not approve. None of them did so or was even asked to do so. Yashin added that he is Russian, a Russian politician, and sees himself as a patriot, whose place is in Russia.[63]
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Russia gets to deport activists who don't want to be deported, and that they couldn't otherwise constitutionally deport, and gets back, amongst others, a global FSB assassin.
Again, it's reasonable to debate Bidens decision, or anyone else's. Hell, I might even agree with you that he could have done better with the negotiations. In the end his plan worked, but it's possible a better negotiator could have gotten there more quickly or for less.
It's not reasonable to drum up rage about it through bogoted hate speech, which is what Kirk did. Despite Griner being only one of several prisoners Biden advocated for Kirk rambled about her sexual preferences and skin color then made up a fairy tale about how it was being done at these other prisoners expense. It wasn't.
Kirks claim that she received special treatment as a black lesbian cannabis enthusiast was just a straight up lie.
Griner was part of a larger package that included the other prisoners Kirk was concerned with. Kirk knew that fact, and ignored it in favor of devisive rhetoric.
Ultimately Biden got all of them released, and Kirks rhetoric did nothing but give the rightwing bigots and leftwing zealots both more rage fuel along the way.
America is in a bad place, and people fabricating lies like Kirk did are one reason for that.
I don't think your post here is in accordance with the facts. Biden released arguably the single highest value captive we had in order to solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had, and he started this process almost immediately after she was detained. That is indisputably extremely special treatment.
At this point we loop back through. Biden was absolutely obsessed with pandering based on race and deviant sexuality, largely as a means of furthering his own political ambitions which relied heavily on these two demographic, which were expected to (and indeed did) prove critical in the 2024 election. And in this case the completely unprecedented and special treatment he offered was granted to somebody to happened to fill out every checkbox he sought to pander to.
And you want to claim it was, instead, because of her alleged "fame" as a WNBA player. Okay, that's fine - and I can't prove you wrong because outside of private conversations it's not like Biden's going to pull an LBJ and openly rant about strategic racebaiting. But what's not fine is you then claiming that anybody who accepts the most probable explanation is suddenly lying or engaged in divisive rhetoric is, itself a lie. And in fact you'd also be pointing to the overwhelming majority of Americans as only 38% of people approved of this action [1], which is obviously going to be disproportionately made up of heavily partisan Democrats who are not exactly being impartial.
I think I've had enough of this conversation, but I did want to add one more thing before I call it quits: Thank you for taking the time to engage with me. I know there were more fun things you could have spent this time on.
One thing Kirk got right, was that we all need to be more open to engaging with each other in a civil way. He didn't always get it right, but nobody does and he didn't deserve to go out the way he did. I hope that the person responsible faces serious consequences, but more importantly I hope that we all find a way to respectfully disagree with each other and can find the grace to bend enough to meet somewhere in the middle.
I think that our conversation here is further proof that it can be done.
Sure thing, and agreed - I think at this point we're probably just going to go around in circles so there's not much more to say. But it's always great to be able to just wrangle ideas back and forth in a civil fashion, particularly when people see things so very differently.
I think if more people did this, we could get back to being a much more united country, not necessarily in agreement - but simply in acceptance of each of us having our own different takes on things that aren't necessarily wrong - even if they might be largely incompatible with what we personally happen to believe to be true!
> solely get one of the lowest value that Russia had
Again, that is NOT what happened. You have the facts wrong, likely because Kirk and everyone else in right wing media lied to you.
The negotiation was for several prisoners, that happened to include Griner among them. In the end Biden didn't get a great deal, but Griner and another named Sarah Krivanek (who hadn't officially been convicted yet and was just listed as "deported") were released in the first round. More importantly the first round opened the door to the later negotiation that allowed for the release of 26 additional prisoners, including Whelan - who you used as an example of someone that would have been worthwhile earlier. Sometimes negotiations take more than a single round.
It's probably worth noting that Whelan was booted from the military for larceny, and wasn't exactly an upstanding fellow himself, but it's irrelevant to this conversation in the same way that Griners sexuality and race are.
> completely unprecedented and special treatment
I have seen no evidence to support this claim. I have seen evidence to the contrary (IE - Biden negotiated for others at the same time). I'm not sure what else there is to discuss if it's become a matter of "faith" rather than one of evidence.
> the most probable explanation
The most probable explanation is the one supported by the facts, not the inference of Biden's motives based on right-wing talking points. There is no evidence to support the theory that Biden allowed Griner's race or sexual preferences to play a factor in his decision and there IS evidence to the contrary.
EDIT - Also, your statistic is misleading at best. If you do the math only 46% disapproved. So it was an 8% difference. The rest, like me, probably just didn't care.
> those are the worst the media has been able to drag up, and all taken completely out of context
In what context is it okay to say this?
> Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
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> you probably think the "If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?" is an edgelord hypothetical
This is a strawman. They think pointing out that someone is a "WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian" is hateful and unnecessary. The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated in a way that a United States Marine should not be denigrated.
No, he's offering a vivid illustration of how efforts to combat racism can end up overtly racist themselves. Take the exact situation and simply reverse it. We have a highly qualified and upstanding black marine (make them a lesbian if you fancy) imprisoned in Russia for years for "spying." And the government just kind of shrugs. Then along comes a this dope headed white guy athlete who gets arrested for unquestionably bringing drugs into the country. And suddenly the entire government apparatus kicks into action to get him out, to the point of offering who is perhaps our single highest value Russian prisoner, an international arms dealer, in exchange for him - all the while continuing to just shrug at the black guy (or gal) left lingering in prison.
You would obviously find this sort of behavior repulsive, wouldn't you? I mean I certainly would - I think anybody would. Yet when you flip the script and change the races suddenly there's this segment of society that's like 'Yeah, this is okay.' No, it's not okay. His reason for opposing this action is not because of her race, but mostly the only reason some people found it acceptable was because of her race - so it became a relevant component of the story.
Just as a data point, as a Canadian I had never heard this name before, and I couldn't possibly name a single other WNBA athlete, whereas I could name international female athletes from many other sports. Here in Toronto, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_League_(women%27s_football) (which infamously included a former mayor's niece) is probably better known than the WNBA.
By contrast, the mere words "United States Marine" paint a clear picture of a very particular sort of individual that is instantly legible, internationally.
That may just be a regional thing. I certainly couldn't name a single X league player.
Regardless, she was certainly more famous than some spy whose job required that he not be famous or even memorable. Right choice or not, Biden likely just made the choice that got him the most positive attention, as one does when they're a politician.
No, someone who says "you probably think" is not thereby strawmanning. This is an attempt to guess what someone else's position is (granted, guesses like this are often not very charitable, but that in turn often results from a genuine inability to understand the other side). A strawman is when someone goes on to argue against that position without waiting for confirmation. GP's argument goes on to justify the quote. The justification does not depend on whether the guess about GGP's position was correct.
> The statement is otherwise implying that a pot smoker should be denigrated, and a WNBA player should be denigrated, and a black person should be denigrated, and a lesbian should be denigrated
No, it is not.
It is lamenting that a WNBA player may be (in Kirk's view) praised more than a USM despite (in his view) a lesser achievement, and in spite of smoking pot, because of a system that (in his view) treats black people and lesbians preferentially.
I give thanks here to GP for the context, which makes it entirely clear why Kirk would hold this view and give this specific object example. It also makes it obvious why my view of the statement is correct, but I already knew it would be something like this anyway before seeing the context. In fact, I wrote the above before reading GP. (In fact, I also realized this going in; qv https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45233308 .)
It's very easy to understand things like this by understanding the fundamentals of the arguments being made and policies being proposed (here, something like an objection to "DEI") and considering the speaker's statement within the speaker's own evidenced framework of morals and values, rather than your own. You appear to think, fundamentally, in terms of whether groups are being "hated" or described as superior or inferior. Someone like Kirk thought, from what I could tell, fundamentally, in terms of whether rules are being applied consistently and fairly to groups, and about whether the rules are acceptable in the abstract.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
My evidence is that my interpretation is consistent with many other things I have learned about viewpoints like Kirk's, from observing him and others over a period of many years. It is not a matter of "plausible deniability"; my interpretation is plainly and straightforwardly the one that makes the most sense to me, by far.
As noted upthread, the example also clearly maps to a specific object example.
Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
> Your reading, meanwhile, requires transforming a rhetorical question about whether someone should be "treated better" than someone whom Kirk clearly sees as highly virtuous, into a claim that every single aspect described of that person is a basis for denigration. That is supremely uncharitable and frankly implausible.
That's kinda wild. You've not seen much of the anti- black, female, gay, and/or drug-using rhetoric that people use. It is an obvious dog whistle.
By "it", I mean the things that you are referring to, which people including yourself claim to be such rhetoric.
I have been shown countless examples, and done my own evaluation, and concluded that the people showing them were frankly incorrect in a large majority of cases. The words, commonly, simply do not mean what they are represented as meaning. They are only understood as having that meaning because they are processed by ideological opponents with unwarranted priors, in some cases seemingly resulting from psychological projection. (The pithy statement of this notion is "if you hear dog whistles all the time, maybe you're the dog".)
This is mediated by attempts to listen to the other side in their own words, and ask them pointed questions. I have used these to build a coherent model of several "right-wing" or "conservative" belief systems which I have found in the past to be consistent; new observations rarely give any rational reason to doubt my previous conclusions.
He was going into generally extremely liberal areas and willing to openly debate and discuss his generally conservative and Christian values in 'real time', while encouraging his opponents to use the internet, chat bots, and whatever else they might like to try to get a zinger off on him. And it was real debate - not the media/talk show nonsense where two people just scream at and interrupt each other, with no real debate happening. He happily let people go off on their monologues before responding, and without resorting to typical fallacies you see online like ad hominem, straw-manning, etc.
I don't really agree with a lot of his values, but I think he is an absolute icon in terms of how political discussions should happen. This is how democracy, debate, and more broadly - an Open Society should work, and he was killed for pursuing this. If this isn't the path forward for debate in society, then what is?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@RealCharlieKirk