Watch: Charlie Kirk Was in Tune With His Generation

By Ward Clark | 1:04 PM on September 14, 2025

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There's a strong trend in American politics today, and it's an interesting one. Some of us old Boomers have seen things like this before, from the rise of the hippie left in the '60s (all my siblings are in that grouping) to the Yuppies in the Reagan years; generational and cultural shifts that changed American politics, some for the better, some... not.

So what's happening now? The younger generation, most notably the young men demographic, is abandoning the Democratic Party and the left in general. Charlie Kirk, I would argue, may have abetted this movement, but he didn't start it. He was, though, quick to understand what was happening, perhaps in part because he was a part of that group himself. Not long before his assassination, he explained the phenomenon to Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo.

WATCH: @SundayFutures looks back at the final time Charlie Kirk was featured on the program, when the Turning Point USA founder spoke about President Trump's growing coalition of young Americans defecting from Democrats. pic.twitter.com/LhqqE9sW7r
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 14, 2025

Charlie said:

Democrats are bleeding the core constituency. Young people, for so long, have been the cornerstone of the American left. They've always been able to count on college campuses, as their main source of energy, of activism. Now, it's the main source of energy for the Republican party and for President Trump. From the Yale youth poll, and the Harvard youth poll, and to your astute point, Maria, you're exactly right. 18-22-year-olds, these are the lockdown generation.
They had prom, graduation stolen from them, they had to wear masks unnecessarily, they were forced to get vaccines, many friends hurt themselves or killed themselves because of the lockdowns. They do not trust the experts. They get their information from places like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and they are now the most solid and loyal base of President Trump's ever-growing coaltion.

I'm not so sure about the wisdom of these young people, as Charlie puts it, getting their information from "...places like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube" - there are far better sources of reliable information, like, say, any of the various outlets of the Salem Media Group. But otherwise? He was spot-on.

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Young men in particular have been pulling away from the left for some time now, and who could blame them? These young men have been subjected to a non-stop harangue from the left: That they are sexist, that they are misogynistic, that they are transphobic if they refuse to date another dude who's wearing a dress. They've listened as the girls in their cohorts are lectured that they don't need men, and they've suffered through having too many of those girls believe it.

They're fed up, and who could blame them?

I think Charlie Kirk rode this wave more than creating it. That's fine; he was on the spot, and he had a compelling message, mostly because he talked with people, not to them, and was always happy to engage anyone on any topic. In each generation, people like this tend to emerge; those of us who are old enough to remember when Rush Limbaugh exploded onto the talk-radio scene understand this.

Yes, Charlie was right; the left used to own the youth vote. But as the man once pointed out, the times, they are a' changing.