A new collection of writings honors Charlie Kirk’s – Latest News
This previous Thursday marked one 12 months since my good friend Charlie Kirk was killed. I’ve spent most of that 12 months studying him.
I met Charlie in the summertime of 2016. Donald Trump Jr. launched us in Jackson, Wyo. I had by no means heard his identify. I’m not simply impressed. Then the child began naming donors. My donors, those I had spent a decade cultivating one dinner at a time, as a result of entering into that world is an artwork kind virtually no person manages. He was 22 and he had all of them. My mouth hit the ground. Turns out he favored my work too, and the mutual respect made us companions.
The Charlie I knew then was not the one the web thinks it is aware of. The clips of him efficiently debating college students on faculty campuses got here later. Back then, he was filling rooms with wide-eyed younger adults who had lastly discovered someplace it was acceptable to be conservative.
He beloved this nation first, and he beloved Donald Trump because the standard-bearer for it. He beloved watching conservatives and Christians discover one another, and he confirmed up at their weddings. Though he was then single, he knew the significance of marriage. Then lightning struck him. Two dates in, he referred to as me. Christy, he mentioned, I met the girl I’m going to marry. He despatched me two images of a gorgeous younger girl named Erika. He by no means appeared back, not for a single day. He was honorable and devoted.
After he met Erika, his religion went someplace deeper. I watched a boy who referred to as himself a patriot and a Christian turn out to be a man of God on fire, main a nation with a calm that got here from understanding who he belonged to. He reconciled with outdated rivals, healed outdated wounds. He had peace, and introduced it with him wherever he went.
He informed younger people what their lives have been for: get married, have youngsters, reward God. Plenty mocked him for one thing so easy. He stored saying it. He died at 31, and his kids will grow up understanding precisely who their father was. How many of us, given 80 years, might say the identical?
Charlie Kirk within the Oval Office Getty Images
When he was killed, I did what you do when your own phrases fail you. I went back to his. He left more than a decade of writings. He was a lot more than a debater. He wrote about religion. Marriage. Fatherhood. Courage. Gratitude. He mentioned issues off-camera which are simply as important as his campus videos. So I made a e-book of these writings: “Charlie Kirk, in His Own Words” (Post Hill Press).
Every greenback created from this e-book will go to Carry the Torch, the nonprofit I based in Charlie’s reminiscence to fund the younger people coming up behind him.
People ask what I miss. I miss racing by means of airports beside a prodigy. I miss having his show on for 3 hours a day whereas I labored, the way in which I as soon as listened to Rush Limbaugh. But what I miss most is my future. I’ll by no means know what Charlie would have mentioned concerning the midterms, or 2028, or the invoice a governor signed final week. I can’t textual content him an article and ask. In a lawsuit they call it future wages misplaced. Charlie’s quantity was incalculable, and I consider in my soul that’s the reason he was killed.
Erika Kirk speaks during the memorial service for her husband, political activist Charlie Kirk, on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Getty Images
My occasion used to keep a rule, the eleventh Commandment, written by California Republican chairman Gaylord Parkinson in 1965 and made well-known by Ronald Reagan: thou shalt not communicate unwell of any fellow Republican. It was by no means meant to close down sincere debate, solely to stop us from tearing one another aside in public. Charlie lived by it. He had decorum. Heading into the midterms, I’d ask some of the loudest voices calling themselves conservative to ask themselves whether or not they nonetheless consider within the Republican Party’s ideas. If they don’t, there may be a occasion higher suited to them.
Charlie’s legacy asks more of us than a candle and a hashtag each September. Read him. Have the actual conversations. Show up. Speak plainly when it prices one thing. Build households with intention. Carry the torch, and stay like Charlie.
Christy Edwards is a former Turning Point USA board member and the writer of “Charlie Kirk: In His Own Words.”
