Charlie Kirk’s words are being distorted and weaponized against him — here’s what he really said

Since his assassination on September 10, misinformation about Charlie Kirk has spread like wildfire.

His words have been misquoted in posts spread online, progressives have weaponized selective snippets of his debates and his ideas have been reduced to sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. Here are the most common misperceptions:

Homosexuality

Author Stephen King claimed Kirk had advocated “stoning gays” in a social media post. He later took his post down and apologized after admitting he had got it completely wrong.

In fact, Kirk was simply quoting the Bible in reaction to YouTube personality Ms. Rachel cherry-picking Biblical phrases to celebrate Pride Month.

“By the way, Ms. Rachel, you might want to crack open that Bible of yours. In a lesser reference, part of the same part of scripture, in Leviticus 18, is that ‘thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just saying.”

By contrast, Kirk once admonished a student who said there was no room for gay men in the conservative movement by listing a number of gay Conservatives.

“What does what they do in their private life concern you so much?” he asked.

Kirk was, instead, critical of what he called the “LGBTQ agenda” in politics, telling a gay Wisconsin college student last year: “I don’t think you should introduce yourself just based on your sexuality because that’s not who you are.”

Black women

Kirk has been misquoted as saying “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” — an inflammatory but wildly incorrect statement which led the Financial Times to publish a retraction after printing it.

Kirk’s actual words weren’t aimed at black women as a whole. As part of a discussion about who benefits from DEI, he called out four specific women: Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, political commentator Joy Reid and the late Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

On his show on July 14, 2023, Kirk said: “If we would have said [those women] were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now … They’re coming out and saying ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.’ We know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.”

Gun violence

Kirk was speaking about gun violence when he was killed at Utah Valley University in Orem. After the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder’s death, former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah called him “a white man that espoused violence,” leading to her being fired.

Kirk never advocated violence and saw healthy debate as the best way to tackle it. He also strongly believed in the second amendment and the protections it affords citizens.

At a 2023 event he explained: “Driving comes with a price — 50,000 people die on the road every year. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road.

“So, we need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen … You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. But I am — I think it’s worth it. 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.

“People say, ‘Oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings?’ I don’t know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That’s why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports.”

Civil Rights Act

Democratic New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Kirk in a recent media release.

“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was, a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake,” she said, confusing the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the Voting Rights Act, which was passed a year later.

This topic is where Kirk has most been misunderstood, as he never criticized civil rights, but the way they have been interpreted in recent times.

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at a Turning Point USA event in December 2023. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.

“The courts have been really weak on this,” Kirk said. “Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it’s the actual American Constitution.” He added that the Act led to a “permanent DEI-type bureaucracy,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion dictates that dominated hiring at many institutions in recent years.

In subsequent comments, he praised the act, saying: “Parts of the Civil Rights Act were great,” said Kirk after being confronted on his stance by a student. “The intent was noble, which was to say that no American can be not allowed into a place of business based on the color of their skin, or their ethnic heritage.”

Women’s rights

It has frequently been repeated online that Kirk had claimed women should not vote — but that is a complete fabrication.

Kirk had frequently talking about how he believed women should be at the center of family life and that they should prioritize raising a family over their career.

In an appearance on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” just days before he died, he said: “Having children is more important than having a good career. And I would also tell young ladies, you can always go back to your career later, that there is a window where you should primarily should pursue marriage and having children and that is a beautiful thing.”

Black pilots

Kirk has also been quoted as saying “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like ‘I hope he’s qualified.” While often repeated on social media, it lacks important context.

Kirk made the remark on the “Charlie Kirk Show” in a conversation with three others about DEI initiatives for airline pilots.

One of his guests, Andrew Kolvet, noted that “we’ve all been in the back of a plane when the turbulence hits and you’re like, ‘I’m so glad I saw the guy with the right stuff and the square jaw get into the cockpit before we took off.” 

Kirk replied with the line about black pilots, noting that it was his reaction to DEI.

“That’s not an immediate … that’s not who I am,” Kirk said. “That’s not what I believe… I want to be as blunt as possible because now I’m connecting two dots. Wait a second, this CEO just said that he’s forcing [out] a white qualified guy … So I see this guy, he might be a nice person and I say, ‘Boy, I hope he’s not a Harvard-style affirmative-action student that … [only] landed half of his flight-simulator trials.’”