After the tragic news that Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus,

we decided to postpone the episode that we had prepared for this week.

I was planning to interview Kirk himself for this show next month.

And so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on Kirk, his significance, and what he represented, as well as

on the fraught moment that we find ourselves in right now. We'll be back next week.

Charlie Kirk represented a distinctive kind of young conservatism.

Traditionally, right-wing politics on college campuses has mixed tweety intellectualism,

anti-progressive provocation, and sometimes ruthless training for future GOP campaigns.

All of these forms, and I say this with affection,

have tended to attract nerds, dorks, oddballs, campus outsiders,

the inherently uncool.

But Kirk built a campus conservative movement that was different,

closer to the college mainstream,

masculine, rowdy, and at least a little bit cool. He seemed like a guy who would be popular in

college, who would be invited to the good parties, and who wouldn't just show up in a bow tie

carrying a copy of Leo Strauss or plotting how to take over the

young Republicans. It was almost a perfect touch that Kirk actually dropped out of college

to found Turning Point USA, his wildly successful organization for young conservatives.

You know, we go to these college campuses and they go from 2000 to 3,000 to 4,000

students that want MAGA hats and that are registering to vote and that are conservatives. And it's

because this was never about an election. Kirk was an embodiment of the populist era even before

Donald Trump came along. And he became a spokesman

...