What I Learned From Charlie Kirk

Somewhere in the early days of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point, I crossed paths with him. I’m not sure if it was at the 2012 RNC Convention or at the Breakers for the David Horowitz event. I’m sorry to say, I didn’t understand what he was trying to do at the time. My life was on a different path, too. I had just lost a congressional race in a runoff in Georgia. Also, from that time until 2019, I took detour from media and worked as senior staff for Sen. David Perdue’s first campaign and for Gov. Brian Kemp’s first campaign. I then worked senior staff positions inside those offices. Personally, my husband had cancer twice (he’s doing great 10 years out) and we welcomed 6 grand children into our family.

So I was following TPUSA peripherally as I was returning to my media career. It wasn’t until late 2024 that I started following closely. By the spring of 2025, I was saying to myself, I need to see this first hand. My friend, Leah Aldridge, told me if you get a chance to go to a TPUSA women’s event, I should do it. So, I got in touch and arranged to go to the Young Women’s Leadership Conference in Dallas in June. It was amazing and I finally got why Charlie and Erika Kirk were so dynamic and how they did what they did. They were real, common sense and relatable. And they were talking about how happy they were in their lives, not about all the things that were wrong.

I started watching Charlie Kirk and listening to him and not depending on the clips that people would send me. He’s a guy that deserves context because he was doing what we said was the right thing to do—engage with people that we don’t agree with in a positive way. Every day on my program I say this at some time in the show—”You need to vote, parent your children and have a face to face conversation with someone.” That’s what Charlie Kirk did.

On Wednesday, I was appalled at what I saw. A young man, a father and a husband, was assassinated for his beliefs by someone who wouldn’t give him a chance to have a face to face conversation. I can guarantee you that if the assassin would have gone up to the mic and asked Charlie a question, Charlie would have been kind and they would have had a productive back and forth.

I’m not the Turning Point USA demographic, but I can learn from them. I’ve never given to TPUSA until today. I usually don’t give to groups like this because I look at me talking about them and presenting them fairly is my gift to them. I am a Bible believing, 66 year old born again Christian and I’m not too old to learn how to do things differently. I have learned a lot from Charlie Kirk in the last 6 months.

His death is a turning point in this country and the world. Let’s be sure to take up the mantle and make the west better for it. That’s the least that Charlie deserves.