Analysis by Summer Lane | Photo: Alamy
In the wake of Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk’s assassination, many commentators and media figures have attempted to understand the motivations behind the horrific killing.
The alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was charged with multiple counts in the state of Utah with Kirk’s killing, including an aggravated murder charge, which carries the death penalty upon conviction.
Despite Robinson’s arrest and swift charging, some have speculated about potential factors that may have led up to the tragic killing of Kirk.
Online chatter
Prominent among those voices is podcast host Candace Owens, who has suggested that Kirk was facing extreme pressure from large Jewish donors just hours before his death.
Owens was friends with Kirk at one time and spoke at multiple Turning Point events in the past. Recently, Owens’ rhetoric regarding Israel and Palestine seemed to have driven a wedge between her and the organization, although this has not been officially confirmed.
On Monday, Owens released what she claimed were private text messages between Kirk and several members of his team, in which he allegedly discussed the possibility that he was about to lose a $2 million annual Jewish donor.
“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk allegedly wrote in the text messages, which Owens posted during her show. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker[.] I’m thinking of inviting Candace.”
He also allegedly wrote, “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro Israel cause.”
There has been a robust debate online regarding the authenticity of these alleged messages. Are they real? Where did Owens procure them from? What is her motivation behind posting private messages from Kirk, who is now deceased, and can no longer speak for himself?
However, during an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which has continued to air with a rotating set of guest hosts since Kirk’s passing, the show’s executive producer, Andrew Kolvet, addressed the text messages directly.
Kolvet confirms the texts’ authenticity
“That was a text grab that I had shared with people, so it is authentic,” he said.
He said that he had shared that text message thread with government authorities following Kirk’s assassination, but until Owens released the thread publicly, he had kept the messages private, since they were not his to share.
Kolvet noted, “One of my favorite parts about Charlie was how, like, defiant and independent he was…he was not bought and paid for. You could not control him with money.”
Blake Neff, another producer on the show, chimed in and said that Kirk “loved Israel” and “cared about the Holy Land,” but he was also “aware that there was a surge of anti-Semitic” feelings on the right.
Neff referenced a letter that Kirk previously wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he encouraged the Israeli leader to embrace better communication strategies when trying to drum up support among Americans for the Holy Land’s causes.
Kolvet added, “This was a private message between Charlie and some people, some Jews and non-Jews, where he was, you know, frustrated.” Kolvet said that he never went public with these messages himself because “that would have felt like a betrayal to my friend, because he never said anything like that publicly.”
It’s unclear what, if any, clarity this lends to the conversation surrounding Kirk’s death. It appears that Charlie Kirk was growing frustrated with Israel’s communications strategies in reaching Americans and attempted to help them correct that.
It also appears that he was opposed to being blackmailed, so to speak, by a donor.
At the end of the day, these bite-sized pieces of Charlie Kirk’s private conversations have no confirmed link whatsoever to the charging of Tyler Robinson, and so as far as the truth is concerned, it has no bearing on his assassination at all. So far, it has only served to create social media engagement and rumors. It remains to be seen if it will accomplish anything at all, positive or negative.
