I always enjoyed listening to Charlie Kirk on a local radio station in Roanoke, Virginia, after he replaced Dennis Prager from noon to 2:00 p.m. last March. I found his perspective on the news and politics interesting and informative, including his opposing viewpoints (e.g., George Floyd, the1964 Civil Rights Act, and climate change).
I listened to him because I thought that his radio show was intellectually stimulating, but my knowledge of his past views as a Goldwater Republican and evangelical fundamentalist Christian during the last ten years was somewhat vague and superficial. However, I am an open-minded person.
I never attended one of his Turning Point USA lectures or campus rallies. Fortunately, I was able to listen to him live on the radio Monday through Friday, almost every afternoon.
The last time that I listened to Kirk was a pre-recorded broadcast from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on September 10. This was not unusual since last spring and summer, he was often on the road giving speeches, debates, and lectures at the Cambridge Union (UK) on May 19, Oxford Union (UK) on May 20, universities, colleges, and other places, including his recent trips to Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo, Japan.
Then I heard the tragic breaking news on the Scott Jennings Show at 3:10 p.m. on the same radio station. Jennings initially said that Kirk had been shot in the shoulder at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, approximately forty miles south of Salt Lake City, during his America Comeback Tour. However, the news rapidly changed five minutes later.
When I heard that he had been shot in the neck, I immediately realized that his medical situation was extremely seriousbecause of the location of the vital carotid artery. The news did not sound too optimistic.
When I also heard the news of the initial shooting, I had immediate vivid flashbacks to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. I especially had a flashback to the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald had been hiding when he first shot Kennedy in the neck before delivering a fatal headshot.
I strongly suspected that within the next thirty minutes, the news about Kirk was not going to be good, and expected the worst. Unfortunately, I was sadly correct.
Charlie Kirk was dead.
What amazed me later that evening was when I read on the internet that Turning Point USA had a revenue of $85 million in 2024, with total assets of $26.3 million the same year. According to ProPublica, Kirk’s compensation as President and CEO in 2024 was $285,929 with “Related” compensation at $99,840 and “Other” compensation at $4,724 for a total of $390,493 in annual income.
Surprisingly, according to the Finance Monthly website and Parade Magazine, Kirk had a net worth of $12 million in 2025. According to the Associated Press, he also owned in October 2023 a “$4.75 million Spanish-style estate … in a gated Arizona country club that [charged] nearly a half-million dollars for a golf membership…. along with “a guest casita, a “‘resort-style’” pool and striking views of the Sonoran Desert.”
Charlie Kirk was not a man with a modest income.
So I asked myself why someone with such an income and net worth had private security so p*** poor and inadequate at Utah Valley University in Orem? Former Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz (2009-17) that evening said on Fox News with Laura Ingraham that Kirk’s security was “zero to none” with a few plain clothes police officers and campus security at the rally.
In a later clarification on the Fox News website, Chaffetz stated, “There was some police presence, but there was no security check going in. It didn’t happen. Charlie [had] some security in front of him.” He also stated, “There was a light police presence. I am sure, …there was some undercover people. Charlie has his own bit of security, but not to deal with a couple thousand people.”
To set the record straight on his lack of optimal security, according to the New York Post, “UVU Police Chief Jeff Long said the department had six officers working Kirk’s event alongside the activist’s security team, who estimated that more than 3,000 people were in attendance.” That was about 6.8% of the university’s total student population based on its enrollment for 2023.
In my opinion, indoor civic centers with metal detectors or stadiums with counter snipers and Jumbotrons in a parking lot will be infinitely more secure and necessary in the future. What Kirk did on September 10 was the equivalent of President Kennedy riding through downtown Dallas in a convertible with the bulletproof top down despite the Secret Service having advised against it.
Obviously, Kirk was not entitled to Secret Service protection. But I think if he had better private security with his bodyguards using sophisticated military grade binoculars (e.g., Northrup Grumman’sM22) or counter snipers to observe rooftops and windows, he might still be alive.
Published pictures of the assassin, who was later identified as suspected lone wolf Tyler Robinson, on September 12, clearly showed him dressed in black on the rooftop of the Losee Center Building, which was two hundred yards away from the Fountain Courtyard stage beneath a canvas pop-up tent where Kirk was speaking at the podium.
It is a shame because Robinson could have easily been spotted, even with low-tech, inexpensive binoculars, at least five or ten minutes before the assassination, as he was walking or crawling on the roof and slowly positioning himself in a prone position in preparation to fire his “older-model Mauser” “high-powered, bolt-action rifle” with a scope.
In order to catch an assassin, you have to think like an assassin. This is common sense.
The most advantageous location for any potential assassin is high ground or an elevated position, such as a rooftop or open window with a clear line of sight to the target. This is exactly what Lee Harvey Oswald did in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, and Thomas Matthew Crooks later did in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.
Security guards paid $50 per hour with state-of-the-art binoculars would not have been that expensive considering Kirk’s income and net worth. So, why did he not have better security?
Somebody within Turning Point USA definitely failed Charlie Kirk about the dangers of an assassination attempt unless he had a martyr complex, which, sincerely, I doubt.
What happened to Kirk on September 10 is what happens when brains and money, along with incompetence, override common sense.This was the same mistake made by John F. Kennedy in 1963, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and Ronald Reagan in 1981.
I suspect that if the Reverend Billy Graham were alive today, he probably would be assassinated like Kirk in an open-air venue by a far-left lunatic. That is because such warped far-left fanatics as Robinson do not disagree with their political opponents. They simply want them dead because they psychotically believe that Trump supporters elected a president whom the far left openly regards as another Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin, and routinely use such untrue epithets as fascist, Nazi, evil, despot, and dictator.
Those are the times we currently live in, and the messengers of goodness have to be much smarter than the messengers of evil.
Robert L. Maronic
