Pull Up a Chair
Charlie Kirk built a movement by sitting at a folding table and inviting people who disagreed with him to talk. A year after his assassination, the best way to honor that is to keep the conversation going.
By Rachel Dunmore, Washington Correspondent
Published · 6 min read
The Overview
The facts, straight
The setup was always simple: a table on a campus and an invitation to anyone who disagreed to come and argue. Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) built Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) into a national force partly on that idea: walk onto a campus, sit down, and argue in the open.
He was doing exactly that when he was killed. Kirk, 31, was shot on Sept. 10, 2025, while holding one of his campus debates at Utah Valley University, Reuters reported. The accused, Tyler Robinson, 23, was ordered on Sept. 1 to stand trial on seven counts, including aggravated murder, and has pleaded not guilty. A hearing to set trial dates is scheduled for Oct. 23, KSL reported. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.
Turning Point did not fold. His widow, Erika Kirk (@MrsErikaKirk), became CEO. This month she led the group's "America: Love It or Leave It" tour through Grand Canyon University and Judson University, according to TPUSA. In a tour of the Phoenix headquarters, she told Fox News that a presidential library-style memorial to her husband is "on our list, and it's something that we have in the works." The group says it now has 3,500 high school chapters.
Erika Kirk and Charlie Kirk, June 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Table Is Still There
The people who carry on his work keep coming back to that table.
"Free speech and debate are the antidote to this," Erika Kirk wrote on X in September, responding to a report on students who say violence can be acceptable to stop a speaker. "Students should be taught to challenge diverse viewpoints intellectually, not with violence. Charlie said that when people stop talking to each other, really bad things start to happen. We have to get back to a culture where we can disagree on the issues without ever seeing violence as an option."
Earlier this month, explaining why she sat down with Vanity Fair, she described what Turning Point students do: "They set up a table and talk to whoever walks up, including people who disagree with them." Her conclusion: "we need more dialogue, not less," she wrote.
Owen Girard, now a Florida Panhandle field representative for Turning Point USA, made the same case as president of the Florida State University chapter. "The fostering of an open, free speech environment is crucial to mending partisan divides and bridging gaps between Americans," he told the FSU News. "Academic institutions should be leading the charge in allowing for all ideologies and beliefs to freely and openly be discussed and debated in healthy formats."
Gen Z conservative commentator Brilyn Hollyhand (@BrilynHollyhand) marked what would have been Kirk's birthday with a plain request: "Happy heavenly birthday, Charlie ❤️ Give Charlie the best gift: register to vote," he posted. And to churchgoers sitting out the midterms: "You can't pray for God to fix our country on Sunday and then refuse to show up on Tuesday," he wrote.
What the Left Says
The progressive and Democratic case
Kirk's critics say his record on open debate is more complicated. Turning Point's Professor Watchlist names more than 300 professors under labels such as "Terror Supporter" and "Socialism," NBC News reported, and some professors on it describe harassment and death threats. One told NBC he found it hypocritical that Kirk is hailed as a champion of free speech while creating a tool he believes has been used to silence people. Kirk defended the list in 2018 as "an awareness tool," adding, "We're not calling for the termination of these professors."
After his death, AP reported that some conservatives sought to get his critics fired. Free speech advocates on all sides warned against that. "If we create a climate of fear so that everyone is afraid to talk," said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, "then we've actually kind of accomplished the goals of people who wanted to silence Charlie Kirk in the first place," NBC News reported.
Where Reality Likely Sits
Radio Purple's analysis
Here is the common ground, and it is wide. Almost no one in American politics, left or right, defends answering an argument with a bullet. Both sides say they want campuses where ideas can be challenged without fear. Both say they want fewer firings over words and more conversations.
Radio Purple's first column, "United We Stand," drawn from Keith Gross's book Dirt Roads to Runways, makes the same point in plainer terms. "At the heart of most of us, we all want the same things," Gross writes. "We can accomplish so much together, and creating divisions serves no one." His advice is to offer our fellow citizens "the benefit of the doubt."
That is the spirit of the folding table. You do not have to agree with Charlie Kirk to admire the habit of sitting across from someone and talking it out. America has always been at its best when it believed its best days were ahead, a shining city whose doors stay open to argument as well as to newcomers. The founders did not promise a perfect union. They asked us to form "a more perfect" one, and they knew we could only do it together.
So pull up a chair.
What the Right Says
The conservative and Republican case
To his supporters, Kirk modeled something rare: he went where he was not welcome and argued with anyone who would take the microphone. Erika Kirk quoted him on that point: "We need to be unafraid to go into the place where we're not always going to be applauded."
They see his killing as an attack on the very idea of open argument, and Turning Point's growth since as proof that the idea survived. The students still set up tables. They still invite the other side to sit down.
