Best Of 2025: Ben Shapiro On The Assassination Of Charlie Kirk And The Fight For America’s Soul

Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. In this piece, originally published in September, Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro remembers Charlie Kirk. *** “Hi, Mr. Shapiro, I’m Charlie Kirk.” Charlie was 18 years old when I met him at an event at The Breakers, the rather ritzy Palm Beach hotel that served as the gathering spot for the annual David Horowitz Freedom Center donor weekend. Charlie had just started an organization, and he was pitching me on it, an organization called Turning Point USA. I’d never heard of it, of course: He had just graduated high school, and the group had its seed donors but was still in its infancy. Charlie was eager, and he was aggressive, and he was whip-smart. His energy was almost exhausting. When he walked away, I turned to my friend Jeremy Boreing and said, “That kid is going to be the head of the Republican National Committee one day.” I was wrong. Charlie became far more important than that. Charlie’s Turning Point USA became the single most important conservative political organization in the country. And it grew because Charlie grew. He turned himself into an excellent public speaker and a talented debater. He could fundraise better than anyone in the game. He was friendly and gregarious to everyone. His drive was unmatched, because he cared about his fundamental values. The clips of Charlie on campus - the firebrand Charlie - make for great watching, but they don’t do him full justice. Behind the scenes, Charlie was deeply thoughtful, constantly seeking ways to build and grow coalitions. That’s a messy business, and it comes with aches and pains. No one did it better. That’s how a guy who never went to college ended up as a confidant of the President of the United States, the vice president, and pretty much everyone else on the right side of the aisle. Charlie never stopped moving. He never stopped talking and negotiating and debating and working. That infectious energy never left him. Until a killer’s bullet ripped his life from him. And there are no more words. There can be no more words. It’s impossible to process what it means when a 31-year-old man is murdered. A husband. A father of two young children. Assassinated, it would appear, for the crime of passionately speaking the truth, debating politics and discussing ideas, and working to make the country a better place as he saw it. But here’s one thing we do know: This all has to stop. It’s an ugly picture that we’ve seen before. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of tremendous change in American history, and of tremendous violence. Political assassinations became commonplace; bombings and terror attacks were excused by a variety of supposedly great intellectuals. And eventually, America rejected all of it. Now, we’re watching the same ugly picture reappear. A wave of violence is building, from the assassination of Charlie Kirk to the attempted shooting of...

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