Where did you come up with that? Democrats are fighting evil AND fighting for democracy.
I think what he meant was, in the eyes of right-wingers, they (MAGA) are fighting against evil.
They are fighting Democrats, and if the Democrats do it it is described after the fact as “evil”.
- I’d never heard of the guy before, and I’m pretty plugged into the political news (but maybe not the woke/MAGA political news). In a world where the US President called for a mob to hang his own VP to death, and barely anyone cares, I don’t know that this guy is so central to things that it merits a war.
- I wouldn’t be too surprised if they caught the guy that did it and we all find out that it was Kirk’s scorned gay lover and had nothing to do with politics.
I don’t think you are as “plugged into the political news” as you believe you are. Charlie Kirk has been a pretty big draw for the younger ‘conservatives’ that showed up in droves to elect Trump in 2024, and he’s been doing the college talk circuit harder than an up-and-coming stand up comic. He also has a big following on social media and podcast:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/charlie-kirk-death-reaction-1.7630652
Kirk had more than five million followers on his X account and drew an audience of more than 500,000 monthly listeners to podcasts of his radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show . He also authored or contributed to several books, including Time for a Turning Point and The College Scam.
Kirk showed off an apocalyptic style in his popular podcast, radio show and on the campaign trail. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said that Democrats “stand for everything God hates.” He called Trump’s election race against Kamala Harris “a spiritual battle.”
“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way,” Kirk told the 10,000 or so Georgians, who at one point joined Kirk in a deafening chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
Kirk also remained a regular presence on college campuses. Last year, for the social media program Surrounded, he faced off against 20 liberal college students to defend his viewpoints, which included the belief that abortion is murder and should be illegal.
He’s a pretty big deal among young MAGAts and the Christian Nationalist contingent.
Stranger
In all fairness, they all kind of look the same. Especially when they sport that same shaved sides of the skull haircut
They’re all gronks, but Kirk was a particular foul odor who made himself known wherever he went.
Stranger
^Yes, an absolutely vile persona.
In these situations I’m reminded of the chapter in From Here to Eternity where the sergeant learns that the sadistic stockade keeper has been murdered and his reaction is “why bother? They’ll have another one just as bad taking his place the next day.”
If you have not heard of TPUSA you are in no way “plugged into the political news”.
So are Joe Rogan and Taylor Swift and Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and Kid Rock and Milo Yiannopoulos and…
To be sure, influencers, pop stars, and podcasters have influence. That don’t make them political news until they’re the Pope.
Everyone has lacunae in their knowledge of politics, or of any field, for that matter. But if one desires to know and understand the main players in MAGA, our political enemies, then one would definitely need to know Kirk. He was major. There’s just no getting around it.
Also, Milo’s been out of the picture for a long time. Unless he’s made some sort of recent comeback I don’t know about. I don’t claim to know everything!
Maybe two of those names are actually popular among “young MAGAts.”
^Not Tucker, lol.
Y’all are more into MAGA than the average MAGA.
OK, that was funny.
Moderating:
The “y’all” notwithstanding, this is getting awfully close to a personal attack. Dial it back, please.
None of those people brought Trump the youth vote the way Kirk did.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/07/g-s1-33331/unpacking-the-2024-youth-vote-heres-what-we-know-so-far
For Trump, his youth outreach stayed mainly online.
Over the summer, he was the only major Republican who joined TikTok – where he grew a follower count that now stands at 14 million, higher than Harris, who has 5 million followers. Trump also did a number of extended interviews on some of the top podcasts in the country, many popular among young men.
It was all part of a youth strategy that Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk told NPR was handily achieved.
“The goal was, of course, to lose by less,” said Kirk, whose organization focuses on getting young people engaged in conservative politics. “But in the last couple of weeks, we were whispering to each other that there might be something bigger.”
Turning Point’s advocacy organization, which doesn’t have a youth-only focus, was one of several outside groups that were tapped by the Trump campaign to run its on-the-ground organizing work.
Kirk added that Trump’s connection with young voters goes past traditional appeals on political topics.
“They just want to live in the same country as their parents. I don’t know if that’s a social issue or an economic issue,” he said. “They want a nice life, and they feel it slipping away.”
“It’s more, dare I say, a vibe than anything else,” he added, alluding to the Harris campaign. “For an entire campaign that was built on vibes, they certainly didn’t read the room.”
Apparently he made a kind of comeback in 2024, branding himself as “ex-gay” and trying to operate as a spin doctor for “scandal-prone celebrities like Yeezy and Marjorie Taylor Greene” but honestly I never heard anything about it. He was always a clownish sideshow, attracting attention but I don’t know how much actual influence he has, and mostly seemed to spend his time whining about how students wouldn’t let him do his alt-right performance art at Cal, as if Berkeley is a ripe campus to recruit disgruntled conservatives. He was never really even in the same league rating as Charlie Kirk who at least knows how to win an argument by being disingenuous.
Honestly, I get most of my information about MAGA from The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper, who cuts through the pundit analysis circle-jerk and just asks them what they believe:
Stranger
Which is entertainment, not news.
I hadn’t heard of him, either, though I don’t claim the be plugged in to politics. More like getting the absolute minimum amount necessary to be a reasonably informed voter.