RIP, Charlie Kirk.
I cannot even believe I just had to type that.
I was driving home from an event when I saw a text pop up on my phone saying that Charlie Kirk had been shot. I was on the highway and couldn’t pull over or obsessively scroll my news feeds. I don’t even know how to use the radio in my car. I prayed that it was a mistake, and that if it wasn’t, it was just a minor graze and he’d pull through quickly and easily.
The event was hosted by a group I am a proud member of called Austin Patriot Republican Women. I was the featured speaker.
It was a casual, funny chat, mostly about my path from “chick-lit author and beauty magazine guru” to medical freedom advocate and political satirist. I spoke of the many years I lived as a “closet Republican” in bright blue cities in New York and California. I had been raised by staunch conservatives to believe that Republicans valued hard work, family, and faith, and that “taxing the rich” was the fastest way to disincentivize diligence and innovation. You earned it? Congratulations. You get to keep it. Or give it away. Either way, it’s up to you. Made perfect sense to me.
My great grandfather Juan McCarthy was a missionary (and gifted writer) in Cuba, and we still had—and have—family there. Their lives are hard and hungry. It was drilled into me that in Cuba, the price of fairness was freedom. I believed all of these things to be true.
But when I ventured into the actual, real world outside of my home, I learned that I had been lied to. Apparently, Republicans (like me) were selfish, while Democrats were noble and altruistic. We were greedy capitalists; they wanted to feed the hungry. We were dumb rednecks who only cared about our guns; they were going to save the planet. We were the party of war; they were the party of peace. We may have been more ambitious, but they were better. I never changed parties, but I lived in quiet shame.
Admitting that I had—wait, what?—voted for Trump or even didn’t fantasize about his assassination would have been social suicide and to be honest, at that point in my life, I just didn’t want to argue about politics. I was a humorist! I believed what I believed, you believed what you believed, and neither of us was likely to change the other’s mind. Where you stood on universal healthcare wasn’t a friendship dealbreaker, was it?
Apparently, it was.
Back then, I silently congratulated myself for “having lots of liberal friends,” but the truth was—and I learned this in no uncertain terms during the pandemic—we were only able to be friends because I hadn’t come out of the right-wing closet. I barely had to poke a pinkie toe out of that thing before realizing that dog wasn’t gonna hunt with my left-of-center so-called pals. Even though I’d never had political equivalence on my BINGO card, it was quickly clear that I was the exception. It’s too bad for them, too, because I’m an awesome friend (not to mention a pretty decent cook who loves to entertain and a really great gift-giver—ask anyone).
My post-appearance high had evaporated by the time I got home. Anxious, I raced to my PC and pulled up X. Thirty-one year old Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk—patriot, rising Republican star, husband, and the father of two small children—had been shot in the neck while addressing students at Utah Valley University. He was in critical condition. Multiple eyewitness videos confirmed the horror.
I frantically scanned the Internet for updates. Shock and rage were wrestling for the top spot in my prefrontal cortex, but both were quickly edged out by pure, visceral disgust. Kirk had barely been loaded into the ambulance by this point, and already the vile, miserable underbelly of social media was—and it makes me nauseous to write this—celebrating.
I know that I shouldn’t give these soulless monsters even a nanosecond of airtime, but in the event they experience a split-second of moral decency and decide to delete their tweets, I wanted to immortalize their abhorrent remarks.
This behavior, this response, is depravity, plain and simple. It’s so far below reprehensible I’m struggling to find words. We used to recoil at violence—now we meme it? Applaud it? Treat it like political theater? What in the hell happened to humanity?
And to think I actually was ashamed to call myself a Republican.
The people celebrating aren’t brave rebels. They’re not courageously exercising their First Amendment rights. They are vultures. They are parasites. They are traitors and hypocrites and degenerates. They’re from the side of the aisle constantly crying about the death of democracy, when in fact they are the biggest threat we face: citizens who see their own neighbors as enemies whose deaths are punchlines.
To the revelers: I want to find forgiveness and compassion in my heart. I want to turn the other cheek and wish God’s grace on you. I want to be better, but I cannot. All I can think is, shame on every single one of you. You make me physically sick. I pray you get the help you desperately need, and in the meantime, I’ll be over here being furious that you get to breathe the same air that Charlie Kirk’s widow and his fatherless children do.
Honestly, it’s the best I’ve got right now.
When I started writing this post, Kirk was alive but in critical condition. By the time I had outlined my first draft, his passing had been confirmed. I am typing this through tears.
I’m not interested in the details of the shooting or the shooter (was he black? white? illegal? trans? I don’t know and I don’t care). I’m exhausted just imagining the spiteful, vitriolic congrats on your guns essays being penned as I type. I worry about retaliation and backlash and what this might mean for our ever-eroding freedoms. Most of all, I’m picturing a young widow wracked with grief trying to comfort her babies and it’s all just too much.
Yesterday, I stood in front of a room of women (and one man; true story) and told stories about my path, my fears, my family, my friends lost over politics. Charlie Kirk stood in front of a crowd of students and told the truth about his beliefs—and it cost him his life.
Today, I’m furious. I’m heartbroken. I’m disgusted. And I’m praying hard that we find our way back to decency. A man lost his life—and two precious, innocent children lost their father—because he was brave enough to proudly and vocally stand up for what he believed in. Charlie Kirk wasn’t cruel or malicious; he invited thoughtful conversation and open debate. If we’ve sunk so low as a species that half the country is shrugging or chugging champagne, God help us all.
No poll, no tip jar, no plea for subs, no plug for books today. Just prayers.
Jenna, we share your pain. Charlie was a generational talent who fought with words and ideas alone. I’ve not seen one example of him being cruel or belittling anyone. And that’s what they hated most; that his battles took place on a playing field they couldn’t compete on, because their ideas are weak and their methods of articulating them even weaker.
So they took him out with a bullet. Make no mistake, this was a professional hit on a man they saw as a real threat for decades to come. It has ‘inside job’ written all over it. The deep state has accepted that it has to put up with 3.5 more years of Trump, and turned its attention to erasing those to whom he might pass the baton.
This is a much darker and more dangerous moment than I think a lot of people realize.
I am speechless at the cruelty of ppl that are joyful over death. That is grotesque and sadly, a characteristic of the left. Charlie was going to be President one day and the left saw that. We cannot continue to say the left are in their mother's basements...the truth is, is that the left have been training for years and fueled by left wing media. I am grieving for Charlie, his family, the loss of innocence on campuses, and the 9/11 families. It is a very difficult day, week, year. Charlie had a future....