Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and sometimes racist and sexist comments to large audiences.
If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries – and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students – Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement.
Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.
Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.
RM Block
On race
“If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, January 23rd, 2024
“If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, December 8th, 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, May 19th, 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 affirmative action?”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, January 3rd, 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, July 13th, 2023
On debate
“We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.”
– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.
“Prove me wrong.”
– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.
On gender, feminism and reproductive rights
“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, August 26th, 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 September 8th, 2024
“We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, April 1st, 2024
On gun violence
“I think it’s worth 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 organised by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on April 5th, 2023
On immigration
“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, August 22nd, 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, March 20th, 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, March 1st, 2024
On Islam
“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, April 30th, 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 civilisation.”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, June 24th, 2025
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
– Charlie Kirk social media post, September 8th, 2025
On religion
“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.”
– The Charlie Kirk Show, July 6th, 2022
