Charlie Kirk's killing stirs conspiracy theory firestorm across party lines
The fatal shooting of the right-wing activist has sparked a wave of emotional reactions, from speculation and sympathy to indignation.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk died after he was shot on Wednesday afternoon while speaking on a U.S. university campus in Utah.
Kirk, 31, had just launched a college tour during which he was due to debate with students nationwide over the next few weeks. A loyal Trump ally, he was answering a question from an audience member from a pop-up tent in front of thousands of people at Utah Valley University, when shots rang out and he was fatally shot in the neck, video capturing the incident showed.
U.S. law enforcement authorities have launched a manhunt for the shooter, which was ongoing Friday. President Donald Trump released a video message saying he was "filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination", calling it a "dark moment for America" and blaming radical left-wing politics for fuelling the atrocity.
"Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate, and the country that he loved so much, the United States of America," Trump said in the recording. "He fought for liberty, democracy, justice and the American people. He's a model for truth and freedom, and there's never been anyone who was so respected by youth."
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance called the activist "a genuinely good guy" on social media.
Many Democratic figures swiftly condemned the attack, including former U.S. presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and also Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of assassinated president John F. Kennedy.
“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” Obama wrote on X.
The term “political violence” was on everyone’s lips in the aftermath of the shooting.
In a press briefing, Utah Governor Spencer Cox insisted the killing was a "political assassination", issuing a reminder that capital punishment remains legal in the state.
Kirk is survived by his wife and their two young children.
An influential voice of the MAGA movement
Adored and loathed for promoting Christian nationalism, defending gun ownership and opposing equal rights for transgender people, the American activist co-founded the political nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2012 when he was just 18 years old. The group aims to give high school and college students a platform to advocate conservative ideas.
Kirk also notably spread fake information and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, vaccines, transgender people and demographic change. He blamed diversity and inclusion measures for contributing to the high death toll in the 2025 Texas floods, and was a vocal supporter of gun rights and the National Rifle Association. In 2023, he said: “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
A devout Christian, Kirk took a socially conservative stance on LGBTQ+ rights and women’s issues, including firmly rejecting abortion rights and championing women as wives and mothers. On race issues, he called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. an “awful” person and described the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a “mistake” that had become an “anti-white weapon”. He had also been accused of both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Kirk was credited with having played a decisive role in the November 2024 presidential race by rallying many Trump voters through his advocacy wing, Turning Point Action.
"The impact he had on young people — reaching them in masses, giving them courage to stand up, to think for themselves, and to fight for freedom — is immeasurable," said Donald Trump Jr. in a social media post. "There is no question that Charlie's work and his voice helped my father win the presidency. He changed the direction of this nation."
A rising star on the U.S. political scene for over a decade, Kirk also espoused strong views about international affairs, and in 2025 he went international with university debates in the UK and a speaking tour in South Korea and Japan. He also waded into the India-Pakistan conflict earlier this year, as he advocated against U.S. military intervention abroad.
On Tuesday’s ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’, Kirk published an interview he conducted with conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, discussing Israel's strike on Qatar. "We're on team civilisation here," Kirk said, kicking off the online programme. "We want to see the maniacs of Hamas be defeated."
Kirk, who had 5.3 million followers on X, has been a staunch supporter of Israel since the beginning of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
"When you declare war on Israel, expect a firestorm in reaction," he said in a heated debate with a University of Cambridge student in May. He continued: “A tragic truth of war is that civilians die … I don't like it. And you don't like it. And they brought it upon themselves. The only operation and entity to blame is the leadership of Hamas, not the Israeli government, for fighting this defensive war after they were invaded.”
Conspiracy theories and misinformation abound after killing
After Kirk’s death, social media platforms brimmed with mixed reactions — ranging from sympathy and speculation about the shooter’s identity to blame and indignation. Misinformation also surrounded the killing.
Graphic footage of the shooting circulated widely on platforms like X, TikTok and Reddit, sparking vehement online debate in a highly divided U.S. society. At first, some speculated that the shooting footage itself was AI-generated, but it was quickly verified with footage from different angles and official statements confirming the attack.
The identity and motive of the killer also came under intense scrutiny. With no information made publicly available and the assassin still at large, there were theories that it was the handiwork of a radical left transgender person, the Israeli intelligence service or their “proxies”, and even suggestions that it was an “inside job”. There is no evidence to support any of these theories.
An early investigation bulletin that had been circulated among law enforcement officials said ammunition had been found engraved with expressions of “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” inside the rifle thought to have been used in the shooting, a report by the Wall Street Journal said. However, officials later cautioned that the report on the casings had not been verified by analysts and did not match other summaries of the evidence recovered so far, “and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted”.
The FBI released images and footage of the suspect, but even these were subject to misinformation as people attempted to draw conclusions from the pictures.
Several social media users asked AI software to clean up the images to get a better view of the suspect, which resulted in the generation of new faces that were not representative of the original suspect, and even changed the details of his shirt and hat in the process.
Incidents like this are sure to generate an avalanche of speculation and conspiracy theories in an age of such political division. In truth, there is no way to verify the identity or motive of the suspect until more investigation details are revealed. Even then, these details may not be believed by all, due to the climate of heightened suspicion about cover-ups and crackdowns by the Trump administration.
Free speech vs. crackdown on those ‘making light’
Conservative political commentator Link Lauren, who hosts a podcast called "Spot On with Link Lauren", asked users to refrain from sharing the video of Kirk being shot and called the incident "an act of extreme political violence".
The assault also revived the conversation on gun control, with some users quoting Kirk's views on gun laws comparing gun ownership to road deaths. "Having an armed citizenry comes with a price," he previously said. "That is part of liberty."
An MSNBC analyst was laid off late on Wednesday, after making on-air comments suggesting that Kirk was to blame for his own death. "You can't stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place," Senior Political Analyst Matthew Dowd said on air. He later apologised in a post on Bluesky.
On some university campuses, students held vigils for the slain leader, while on others young people appeared to show a more apathetic stance, rejoicing or disregarding the shooting as inevitable, videos showed. Similarly, users in social media videos celebrated his death, with some saying he "manifested" his death by disseminating what they called hate speech.
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As reactions continued to pour in across the internet, the administration of Donald Trump vowed to punish those who he said had contributed to an environment of “radical left political violence”—despite the identity or motive of the assassin remaining as yet unknown.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote on X: “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the administration might take action against foreigners who make light of the killing.
“I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” he said on X. “I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention.”
Rising political violence
In an increasingly polarised climate, some of the reaction to this shooting included concerns that misinformation may be giving unstable people the license to undertake violence against someone they disagree with.
For some public figures on both sides of the political spectrum, the shooting represented an assault on democracy. British presenter Piers Morgan decried "an appalling assault on free speech and democracy".
The Utah Valley University shooting comes amid an increasing wave of political violence. More than 300 cases of politically-motivated violence against both right-wing and left-wing figures have taken place since Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021, according to Reuters.
In July 2024, Trump was grazed by a gunman's bullet during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. Two months later, federal agents foiled a second assassination attempt.
Earlier this year, Democratic Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed at their home in what was described by Governor Tim Walz as a “politically motivated assassination”. Another lawmaker, John Hoffman, and his wife survived a shooting earlier that night by the same man.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, was also targeted earlier this year when his home was set on fire as he and his family slept inside. Trump did not mention the incidents targeting Democrats in his address.
Sources
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X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. [Accessed 12 Sep. 2025].
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X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: Seems like Charlie Kirk was slowly turning away from Israel [Accessed 12 Sep. 2025].
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