Bulwark Takes - Brutal MAGA Civil War Over Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer unpack the fight over Charlie Kirk’s legacy: Candace Owens vs. Bill Ackman, Tucker Carlson weighing in, Marjorie Taylor Greene stoking antisemitism, and pastors using AI to project Kirk from beyond the grave.

Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with BudMGM Casino. Check out our hottest exclusive. Friends of one with Multi-Drop. Once even more options. Play our wide variety of table games. Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulwark here with Will Summer, who is the author of False Flag, one of the most critically acclaimed newsletters in the business. I don't know who's acclaiming it, but whatever. We'll run with it. Will's got a good one this, what is it, Thursday?

Yeah, Thursday. And it's been kind of creeping up on my social media feeds a lot, and he summarized it in a way that only he can, which is, there's like a real Civil War breaking out in MAGA Media over how to define Charlie Kirk's legacy, follow. following his assassination. This is all transpired before he's been even buried, and it's getting more and more heated. As usual, it involves Candace Owen, and as usual, it involves accusations that Jewish people are doing bad things. So that's where we're at. But we'll give us the 30,000 foot summary, and then I can pepper you with some questions on it.

Sure. Yeah. So basically, at the core here is kind of a fight over Charlie Kirk's legacy, what he meant, what he would have wanted had he lived. And, you know, the stakes here are big because we're talking about Turning Point USA, his organization, which had countless volunteers and staffers, millions, tens of millions of dollars at stake. And then this sort of media empire along with it. And so basically, Candace Owens is kind of at the center of this. This is the right-wing podcaster superstar who used to work with Charlie. And she came out and said, you know, Charlie was turning

against Israel in his final days and he was getting all these threats from donors. And then, you know, then he was assassinated. So, you know, make of that what you will. Put two and two together, yeah. First of all, I like that you chose the most benign description for Candace Owens. Superstar, yes. Also embroiled in a defamation suit involving the First Lady of France for claiming that Bridget McGrath is transgender.

So there's that element. And part of a centuries-old criminal cabal. We can never forget that part. I forgot. Forget that element of it. And then on top of that, she's been let go of past employments because of deeply anti-Semitic remarks, which may be impacting what she says about Charlie Kirk in this current moment.

It's gone so bad, though, and it's not just her. Let's just start there for a second, because once she did this, other people pile on. Yes. And, you know, what I should say is like, basically there was, it is true that even in, I was actually going to write about it before the assassination, was that there was this growing pressure on Charlie Kirk to clamp down on anti-Israel, potentially anti-Semitic voices on the right. stop inviting them to conferences, but the real pressure was to stop inviting Tucker Carlson to these Turning Point USA conferences. Because Tucker has been very critical of Israel, right?

Well, and he said, you know, Epstein, the Mossad, he had gone after Bill Ackman, the billionaire. Tucker Carlson comes out and he, after Candace makes these remarks, and he says, this is true. Charlie was being pressured to drop me. There was this retreat that was in the hand. We're going to get to the retreat in a second because I think that's important. So Tucker follows up with K&A follows up and says, yeah, for sure, it definitely happened. And then a bunch of people are like, no, don't recall this. And then it's back and forth that gets to the point where Bibi Netanyahu even has to weigh in. Yeah. I mean, so initially he made it in an interview. And then today he released a video saying, you know, a two-minute video saying we did not

murder Charlie Kirk, the Israeli government. And in fact, Charlie loved Israel. We maybe had a couple disagreements between friends. But certainly not to not to an assassination. level. Okay. Just to be clear to everyone, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever at all that Israel's involved related to tied to in any way Tyler Robinson. It's just wackery. Okay. It's just let me call what it is. All right. The key moment here, though, is, and this is what Candice is talking about and what she's kind of basing it on, is this retreat that happens at Bill Ackman's house prior to Kirk's assassination. It is a retreat for T.P. USA? It's there. I should say it's not his house. It's a hotel.

Hotel. Sorry, in Bridge Hampton, out in Long Island. Yeah, yeah. It's funded by Bill Ackman. Okay, it's funded by Bill Ackman. It's there to benefit TPSA. And Candice Owens or other people basically say that there was an argument between Ackman and Kirk at this event, right? That's right. Basically, like, this is described by various parties as Charlie Kirk offering to talk about Israel with Bill Ackman and then create a sort of mini army of little Charlie Kirk's of the kind of like C-tier influencers who could defend Israel. Conversely, we're going to have maybe a debate about what the approach to Israel should be.

And Candice Owens claims that, yeah, Bill Ackman and some other activists basically ambushed Charlie at this event and really, you know, pressured him and then demanded basically that he go to Israel for what was seen as sort of like a re-education tour. Ackman denies this. Yeah, Akman, who's very litigious himself, has denied this. He says, you know, we had a lovely time. You know, I made a couple remarks, but there was really nothing like a confrontation. And there's been no evidence whatsoever produced anything at all to suggest that Charlie Kirk was, in fact, pressure by Jewish donors or even, you know, well, I guess there is a little bit of evidence that he was turning in Israel.

You could talk about the Megan Kelly show that he did, right? Yeah, I mean, there are a couple videos that have come out of like kind of appearances he made that have resurfaced where he's growing critical of Israel. And then the day after this retreat, he goes on Megan Kelly's show. And Megan Kelly has, by the way, since then backed up that he was under this pressure from donors. And he goes on the show. Megan Kelly is more aligned with Candace Owens than Bill Ackman. Yes, that's right. She's saying that behind the scenes, both she and Charlie as sort of like people who were 99% of the way there on Israel.

But we're saying, okay, kind of time to wrap up. the war. This is getting a little awkward to defend. But so Charlie Kirk goes on Megan Kelly's show the day after the retreat. And he basically explodes. He says, these Israel supporters have been treating me in a repulsive way. You know, all I do is like say very mild things saying, pointing out because of my love of Israel that you guys are alienating, even conservatives. And then you flip out, you call me anti-Semitic, all this stuff. And so he was clearly really fired up. You know, in response, people have said there's been this real thing where people are releasing their text messages with Charlie Kirk to prove their points.

Often, these end up being text messages that are very noncommittal and are Charlie Kirk saying, like, you're the man, you're my buddy. And then they say, see? And it's sort of like, see how much Charlie loved me. So, I mean, there's also this very kind of like personal ambition aspect to it. Well, let's get that. That's sort of the real crux of it, though. How much of this is actual, you know, I want to defend Charlie Kirk or I want to like explain what happened to him?

And how much is just pure personal ambition to position yourself or not even yourself just to, like, get your preferred ideological and worldview at the forefront of the debate here? I think there's a lot of sort of raw ambition here. And, and I mean, monetarily, I think it's very lucrative. I mean, each of these Candace Owens videos has like 7 million views on YouTube. So you think you think she's doing this for the clicks? I think that's probably factoring into it. But I think also, I mean, she puts on a pretty good face. about being this, like, a grieved friend who's going to get to the bottom of this.

She probably, I don't know, but yeah, she believes a lot of things, I guess, you know, and so she may believe this as well. Sure. You know, but, I mean, the fact is that there are, Charlie Kirk's legacy is a very valuable thing. And in particular, the political capital that became gained from it and the money and the donors. And so I think she is making a claim and Tucker Carlson to at least a slice of that legacy

and saying, you know, as Ben Shapiro starts appearing and talking about Charlie's love of Israel. She's saying, well, you know, maybe things were changing. And then religion gets into this, like in a really profound way, because Marjorie Taylor Green from the top ropes just jumps in and like basically slanders Jews more or less. Yeah. I mean, religion here, I think is something that is that is really volatile. And I think for some people in MAGA, what Candice Owen says about Charlie's religion is actually even more important than what she said about him in Israel. because she says, so Charlie was an evangelical Christian, and we've seen in the aftermath of his murder, that there's this sense of like, there's people are saying there's going to be a religious revival, the pews are going to be packed. Everyone's going to be Christian now. But Candace says, well, actually, Charlie was converting to Catholic or excuse me, was on the verge of converting to Catholic. Any evidence of that that she produces at all? Well, you know, I believe his wife was originally Catholic, although she said a year ago that she no longer was. We saw her with the rosary after.

immediately after his assassination. But basically, no, there's no evidence that Candace has provided. I mean, she said he was going to Mass. He had kind of a, he's doing a lot. I mean, he was writing a book about keeping the Jewish Shabbat. You know, there's a Greek Orthodox priest who said, oh, he was actually really interested in being, you know, Greek Orthodoxy.

But so as a result, this is absolutely infuriated evangelicals. And so, also as part of this, as you said, I mean, there's a sense of, you know, is Turning Point USA can become like really ardently pro-Jewish or pro-Israel? Right. I mean, this is what Marjorie Taylor Green wrote on Twitter. I mean, it's a long trip, but the last line is, I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian patriotic turning point USA. I mean, I don't think she's talking about Islam there. I think she's talking about Jews.

Yeah, it's pretty pretty obvious. I mean, she's saying explicitly, like, the Jews are trying to take over turning point USA, and this is supposed to be a Protestant thing. Right. So all this is happening, and it's like not just, you know, it's going up to the highest levels of politics. You have Netanyahu put out the video. I think J.D. Vance was like, hey, everyone, just chill. Like, let's do this later. J.D. Vance said basically, like, I know we're all disgusted with Candace right now. Not quite in these terms, but can we?

He said, he said, I agree with you, but let's wait until the funeral is done. Yeah, but he's right about that at least. And then it's actually happening in actual places of worship. So this kind of creepy thing is happening, at least as someone said, at least three churches have now been displaying AI footage of Kirk posthumously talking to their congregants. Again, it's just entirely AI-generated fabrications. Even in this case, the pastor, Jack Graham, and acknowledges it's, AI. But they're playing this in a way to like kind of summon Kirk from the dead so that they

could preach to the flock and it's it's uncomfortable. But the entire congregation at the end just stands up and cheers it. Let's play the video here. I put me a clip. I think it was created. I know it was created on AI, artificial intelligence from the words of Charlie Kirk. I was so moved just to hear it between services. You're hearing something the first service didn't. But I want you to watch this clip. And here, what Charlie is saying regarding what happened to him this past week. First, I want you to know I'm fine, not because my body is fine, but because my soul is secure in Christ. Death is not the end. It's a promotion. So yeah, I think this fits into the idea of,

like, can we actually use Charlie Kirk's legacy and refashion it in a way that fits our objectives? And in this case, it's literally, you know, making an AI-generated version of Charlie Kirk. It's deeply creepy. Yeah, I mean, it's bizarre. And, you know, he's sort of speaking from the beyond. He says, you know, I'm in heaven now, essentially. Yeah. He's not speaking.

Well, I just want to be clear. Yeah, yes. Well, you know, just two more things I want to underline in terms of potential, you know, next step tier. Number one, Laura Lumer, who's obviously very pro-Israel, very antagonistic to Candace. has claimed that if Candace shows up at the memorial, there's discussion about banning her on Sunday at the Phoenix Stadium, so we'll see if that happens. And then as basically right before we started recording this,

Turning Point USA announced that Erica Kirk, Charlie's widow, who gave obviously this very well-received sort of eulogy immediately after the assassination, she's now going to run Turning Point USA. And so Candace has said the only way she'll stop, you know, digging up the truth about the assassination or, you know, kind of making these claims about Charlie's wishes is if Erica Kirk steps in, And so we'll have to see if that happens.

Yeah, I don't know. I think there's just an inclination to get conspiratorial in these circles. And we see that immediately, again, God's not even buried, and it's resorting to this. So, Will, thanks for doing this. I always say this, but, like, you do this stuff so others don't have to swim in these ponds. I appreciate that. Well, you know, I find it very interesting to track. I mean, there's a lot of fascinating twists in this story here.

I'm sure there will be more. Will Summer, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. And please subscribe to the feed so you can get stuff like this. Talk to you later.