MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on the political movement Charlie Kirk helped launch - right out of high school, I'll add again - we've called Kyle Spencer. She's a journalist and the author of "Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power." Good morning, Kyle. Thanks for joining us.
KYLE SPENCER: Oh, thanks for having me.
MARTIN: I just want to ask you to build on what we've just heard about Charlie Kirk and the role he played in building the movement. Did he have a big idea? Or was it more of his persona, you know, being young and charismatic himself?
SPENCER: I think that Charlie Kirk's big idea was that the GOP needed to better brand itself and brand itself for a new generation. And he brought that idea to the forefront, starting early on, in 2012, when he began Turning Point USA. But he continued to evolve and continue to rethink and remake ways to talk to audiences and encourage them to support the Republican Party.
MARTIN: So he was killed during an event on a college campus. You attended a lot of events like that when you were covering him. Can you just tell us a little bit more about what they were like?
SPENCER: Absolutely. Charlie Kirk did something that is very common in Christian evangelical churches - being seeker-sensitive. Charlie met people where they were, which is why the debates that he did on college campuses, like the one where he unfortunately was shot, were the kinds of things that he did in order to talk to young people who may or may not agree with him and the other policies that the current Republican Party holds - brought people in to talk and to engage them. And it was really his charisma and the energy, passion and excitement that he had that often sold them on his ideas.
MARTIN: So what were the ideas that he talked about?
SPENCER: So Charlie Kirk started out, when he began Turning Point USA and early on in his career, which started right after high school, as somebody focused on economics. He cared about the budget deficit, bloated government. He was very concerned about what he saw as of overpowering China influence in the world markets. As he evolved, he became more of a cultural warrior. He became increasingly religious, spoke often about Christian nationalism, the need for Christianity to lead the country, the Christian values to lead the country. He was a firm opposer of reproductive rights. He did not believe in gay marriage. He was very, very vocal about traditional marriage, quote-unquote traditional values, and believed that there was racism in this country and it was very intense, and it was racism against white men.
MARTIN: Do you have any idea of what was so formative to him? Like, was - you know, for some people, they have, like, an origin story. Did he have one? Like, what was it that was so formative in these beliefs? You know, for some people, it's, like, countercultural experiences that turn them off. Like, they feel that - you know, they encounter people who they feel reject them or who just - did he have a story like that?
SPENCER: So interestingly enough, Charlie Kirk went to a high school in the suburbs of Chicago that had moved from being a majority white school to a majority Black and brown school. And while he has never really said that that particular demographic change impacted his politics, it's hard to imagine that it didn't because Charlie really positioned himself as somebody who was supporting whiteness, white people, white culture and the white culture of this country against what he saw as efforts that were efforts to create equity in the country and to support the disenfranchised. He saw those efforts as disingenuous, ill-timed, bad for America. So to me, what I see as his origin story was his understanding early on what it felt like to feel oppressed by progressive agenda.
MARTIN: So you - the subtitle of your book is "The Untold Story About America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power." Just say a little bit more about that. Did he have a vision for himself about where he wanted to end up? Like, what was his goal?
SPENCER: Charlie started out just wanting to organize young people locally. Very quickly, he wanted to organize young people nationally. He wanted to talk politics, but very quickly, he wanted to talk about culture. And eventually, Charlie Kirk wanted to absolutely transform American culture and bring it back to an earlier time that he saw as more ideal. Charlie Kirk was one of the absolute most ambitious - arguably the most ambitious - person I have ever interviewed.
MARTIN: So it's sad. And married young, a father of kids. And it's - any sense of where this movement goes next without him, as briefly as you can?
SPENCER: Yeah. He - Charlie Kirk created Turning Point USA as a very, very strong organization. He was the spokesperson, and there are many, many people behind the scenes who do the work every day.
MARTIN: That's Kyle Spencer. She's a journalist and the author of "Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power." Kyle, thanks so much for joining us.
SPENCER: Thank you.
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