What Media Won't Say About Charlie Kirk Assassination

While rightly condemning the political violence that took the powerful right-wing activist's life, most media is ignoring what lies underneath the toxic, mass distraction campaign he and others wage

On Wednesday, influential and powerful right-wing activist, podcaster, and fundraiser Charlie Kirk was assassinated during the kickoff of his nationwide college campus debate series. As I write, the shooter has not been apprehended and their motive is unknown. I strongly condemn this act of evil, heinous political violence—which should have no place in America. Full stop.

As I shared yesterday while covering this live, Kirk didn’t deserve to die for his political views. No one does. At the same time, unlike the corporate media —whose coverage has falsely propped him up as some passionate, high-minded movement leader—I’m not going to sugar-coat or sanitize who he was.

Kirk, born into a wealthy family outside of Chicago and and a Reagan-loving youth, went on to become a millionaire by weaponizing hate, racism, sexism, islamophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant fervor, conspiracy theories, and an “own the libs” crusade. He became a power player in conservative politics by successfully targeting young Americans and college students to join him, and the growing Trump MAGA movement, based on ginned up cultural hysteria—and very little else.

In reality, Kirk excelled at the profitable, but dime-a-dozen, conservative culture warrior hysteria industry. But what the media won’t say in its coverage of who he was—and its coverage of other current powerful right-wing “influencers”—is that their function and entire existence in the right-wing politics and media sphere is to wage a toxic war of mass distraction.

To prey on vulnerable, desolate, fearful, and impressionable Americans who, dating back to Kirk’s-beloved Reagan in the 80s, with a dose of Clinton-infused jet fuel in the 90s, have seen their jobs cut, shipped overseas, and their once bustling neighborhoods morph into rotting economic ghost towns. Want a visual? WATCH BELOW part of the Disappearing Middle Class reporting trip I took nearly a decade ago while still reporting for The Young Turks.

Kirk, whose assassination I once again condemn in the strongest terms, spent most of his career fear mongering about the threat of—and anti-American nature of—immigrants, Black Lives Matter protesters, transgender soldiers and swimmers, drag queens, LGBTQ+ teachers, Black and brown academics and scholars, Muslim politicians, pro-abortion activists, anti-war and genocide protesters, and a never-ending list of folks who seem to threaten a nostalgic longing for fantasy, 1950s American dream.

Yet what’s the true legacy of Kirk, and his fellow travelers like Steve Bannon, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Patrick Bet-David, Matt Walsh, the entire Fox News apparatus, and the growing army of MAGA podcasters is what they rarely mention, much less rant, about…

The communities that have been devastated by corrupt politicians who sold the jobs of the MAGA base to other countries thanks to trade deals that were written by the donors of both MAGA and Democratic politicians.

Kirk, nor his comrades, never talked about the explosion of corporations hiring freelancers to avoid paying full-time wages and benefits; or corporations hiring more seasonal and temporary workers to avoid paying full-time wages and benefits; or massive corporations receiving lavish subsidies and tax cuts from the government only to essentially steal the money to further enrich themselves via record stock buybacks (rather than hiring more workers). Kirk also never shared with his audience and followers that stock buybacks used to be illegal until his beloved Reagan made them legal (along with offshore corporate tax havens).

Kirk never talked about the corporations, who both Trump and Democrats have allowed to prey on American workers for decades, creating the “gig” economy—where companies like Uber and Lyft save billions by getting full-time work from drivers while paying them as independent contractors. Kirk and his fellow MAGA heads never sounded the alarm on the pro-oligarch, anti-worker economic hunger games being waged against Americans via the AI boom (which was recently accelerated by over $500 billion in free Trump administration cash to corporations who will lay off more workers).

And I can promise you, Kirk and other right-wing culture warriors never blinked an eye or warned their audience that:

• The bottom 60% of U.S. households don't make enough money to afford a "minimal quality of life," according to a new analysis in May.

• U.S. homelessness hit a record high last year (and the number is likely an undercount).

• A U.S. household now needs to earn $114,000 annually to afford a median-priced home.

• U.S. foreclosures are rising, up 14 percent in May from the same period the year before.

• Billionaire wealth surged three times faster in 2024; the world is now on pace for at least five trillionaires within a decade.

• AI is replacing entry-level jobs and top AI executives warn of 10-20 percent overall unemployment in the next five years.

• Mortgage applications are down 34% from pre-pandemic levels. And is even worse than 2008.

• Less than half of Americans with jobs say they have a sense of financial well-being.

Kirk never talked about it because his, and those like him, entire purpose and function in modern-day politics is not to talk about those things—to pretend like the real reason the mechanic in Toledo now has to work two jobs is because the Guatemalan immigrant stole their once high-paying full-time job.

Spoiler: that’s not the reason.

Culture warrior podcasters entire existence is to focus their audiences’ ire on transgender athletes in order to distract them from the fact that their property taxes are going up to make up for the revenue their city is losing because their politicians gave another massive tax cut to corporations and wealthy donors.

The “own the libs” hosts’ entire existence is predicated on focusing on “criminal” protesters, or immigrants, or abortion providers—so that you will never focus, much less think about, the criminals on Wall Street whose fraud brought down the entire global system and evicted millions of Americans—including MAGA voters—out of their homes.

To never think about the Republican and Democratic presidents literally enriching themselves by practicing daily insider trading that is illegal for everyday Americans. To never think about the billions the U.S. gives annually to murderous, dictatorial countries and regimes while allowing our communities here to crumble. To never contemplate why we have a mafia-esque middleman—called for-profit health insurance companies—creating complicated and byzantine systems meant to gouge us out of money while providing substandard medical care…

And denying us if we can’t pay.

Bottomline: the entire culture-warrior-industrial complex—for which Kirk was a symbol of—existed to distract the masses from the fact that the rich are eating the working class’ breakfast, lunch, dinner…while stealing their kids’ lunch money.

Until major media outlets, podcasters, and “influencers” start screaming about THIS, rather than cultural bullshit, and pushing politicians to implement pro-worker policies, we will continue to see worsening anger—and unfortunately violence in America.

I firmly believe most people in America—across political lines—are not lacking compassion…most people have no fu*king idea what the hell is going on all around them. Let’s wake up the masses and do real justice journalism.

-Jordan Chariton