Charlie Kirk, who forged a conservative youth movement, dead aged 31
- Published
Charlie Kirk was one of the most high-profile conservative activists and media personalities in the US and a trusted ally of President Donald Trump.
Kirk, 31, who died Wednesday in a shooting at a Utah college, was known for holding open-air debates on campuses across the country.
In 2012, at the age of 18, he co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organisation that aims to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges.
His social media and eponymous daily podcast often shared clips of him debating with students about issues such as transgender identity, climate change, faith and family values.
Watch: Charlie Kirk's speech from 2020 and interaction with Vance last year
The son of an architect who grew up in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights, Kirk attended a community college near Chicago before dropping out to devote himself to political activism. He applied unsuccessfully for West Point, the elite US military academy.
Kirk often referred tongue-in-cheek to his lack of a college degree when engaging in debates with students and academics on esoteric topics such as post-modernism.
His role in TPUSA took off after President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012.
The mission of the non-profit organization's mission is to organize students to "promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government". TPUSA now has chapters in more than 850 colleges.
Kirk toured the country speaking at Republican events, many popular with members of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. His daily conservative talk radio show had millions of followers on social media, CBS News reported.
An avid public speaker, Kirk addressed the Oxford Union earlier this year, and wrote a 2020 best-seller The Maga Doctrine, a reference to Trump's Make America Great campaign.
TPUSA played a key role in the get-out-the-vote effort for Trump and other Republican candidates in last year's election. The millennial was credited widely with helping to register tens of thousands of new voters and flipping Arizona for Trump.
Kirk attended Trump's inauguration in January in Washington DC, and has been a regular visitor at the White House during both Trump terms in office.
On Wednesday, Trump announced the death, paying tribute to Kirk: "The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie."
The president and his aides valued Kirk's political antenna for the grassroots of the MAGA movement. He's spoken at Republican conventions and last year Donald Trump repaid the favour by giving a speech at a Turning Point conference in Arizona.
Earlier this year, he travelled with Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, to Greenland, as the then-incoming president was arguing that the US should own the Arctic territory.
Kirk's evangelical Christian religion and family - he married a former Miss Arizona, with whom he had two children - were front and centre in his politics, and he was seen as both the future of conservative activism and a highly polarising figure.
Perhaps the biggest tribute to his contribution to Republican politics came from Trump himself in a clip played at the beginning of Kirk's podcast.
The president says: "I want to thank Charlie, he's an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organisations ever created."
Kirk discussed numerous political and social issues at his events and on his podcasts - gun control was one of them.
A few months ago Kirk said: "It's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment".
Some of his views were considered controversial. He spread anti-transgender views and skepticism over the Covid-19 pandemic, according to CBS, the BBC's news partner. He also publicly promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
He also highlighted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which is based on a plot to replace White people with minorities, according to CBS.