The Complicated Legacy of Charlie Kirk

A personal reflection on his influence, my family, and a divided country.

Charlie Kirk and his wife Erika at the Turning Points Inauguration Ball that I covered in 2025.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

It was the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign, June 24, when I got a text from one of Charlie Kirk’s closest friends:

“You wanna make news?”

Of course, as a journalist, my answer was: “Yass.” (Yes, I know—my glee was a little much. But what journalist doesn’t want to break news?)

This friend of Kirk’s was hustling for attention on his latest book, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West.

I thought maybe I was about to get exclusive excerpts about Kirk’s relationship with President Trump. After all, Kirk had become an advisor to the candidate and a powerful leader of the MAGA movement—even if Washington’s political class often turned their noses up at Turning Point USA, dismissing it as amateur hour. Kirk was also instrumental in the push to oust Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel. There had to be something juicy in there.

Instead, his friend texted me this passage from the book:

“Why date seriously early? It’s pure economics. The most valuable goods don’t linger on the shelf—they get snatched off the market. Your pool of potential spouses starts off large and dwindles with each passing day. This is all particularly the case for women. This is a book for honest truths, not comfortable lies, so I’ll say it: One of the chief assets a woman has for winning a quality spouse is physical attractiveness. A woman peaks in attractiveness in her early 20s, and after that time gradually takes its toll. A woman who only starts serious husband-hunting when she is 30 will find that she is already past her peak appeal. Meanwhile, a man’s economic incline, combined with only a slight erosion of his physical attractiveness, usually puts his marriage market peak at his mid-30s. For the men reading this, here’s a football analogy: If women are like running backs, peaking earlier but declining quickly, men can be like quarterbacks, peaking in their 30s and potentially having a much longer career on the market. Tom Brady was still playing in the NFL at 45, and a single man can still play the dating field at 45 far better than a woman can.”

Clearly designed to provoke, and possibly offend me, then a 37-year-old unmarried woman.

I was also sent this line about “woke” women:

“She is miserable because someone microaggressed her on the way to class, and that she’s fat because of ‘genetics’ or ‘PTSD’ or something stupid. She places the factors of her well-being outside her control.”

My response back: “I’m trying not to barf.”

What Kirk was advocating for was a direct attack on me, my lifestyle, and what I represent: an unmarried woman without children who doesn’t believe her only legacy is marriage and motherhood. Still, I interviewed him. And I’d defend that decision if challenged.

Because to understand what Kirk believed is to understand the fuel of the MAGA movement. And now we’re seeing the flip side: women who don’t buy into Kirk’s worldview have, in many ways, left men feeling useless and depressed. His message wasn’t just for women; it was armor for men—nostalgia for a time when they held the power and women were supposed to wait to be chosen.

And while I may not share their views, I’ve seen up close how much Kirk’s message resonated with younger conservative men in my own family. For them, he was a north star—a defender of traditions they feared were slipping away. I’ve heard the preference for sons over daughters, the insistence that a woman’s highest calling is motherhood. It cuts me every time. I’ve even heard echoes of it in my father’s half-joke that the wife was the “chief cook and bottle washer.” We laughed it off, but was he really joking? I love them all, but I’ll never fully accept that vision. Still, I would defend their right to believe it without fear of harm.

Not to spiral into a feminist manifesto here, but Kirk also preached a worldview that excluded whole swaths of people—on DEI, on transgender and LGBTQ rights, on gun violence calling it “the price we pay” to preserve the Second Amendment. He even dismissed empathy itself as a “made-up New Age word.” Kirk made little room for anyone who didn’t fit into his mold. And yet, he still had the right to express it. That’s democracy.

If you’ve followed his career, you know Kirk started out as an awkward college kid obsessed with political organizing. It was his life. Over time he grew into the persona he sold: winning the trophy wife, fathering two kids, living the American dream as he defined it. Who’s to say that wasn’t enough for him?

What angers me now is the reaction to his death—the chorus on the left sneering “he had it coming” and the voices on the right, some close to Trump, calling it rocket fuel for destroying their enemies. Both sides pouring gasoline on an already raging fire.

I fear for our country. For people who dare to speak their minds. For the safety of those who express unpopular opinions. Political extremism has reached a tipping point, and this moment should force us to re-examine what makes America great, how we got here, and how we release the pressure valve—before it all explodes.