The Michael Knowles Show - "Charlie Kirk Helped Me Find Jesus" Students Give Their Testimony | Cross The Line

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

What happens when faith meets bold truth? In this episode of Cross The Line, Michael Knowles sits down with students whose lives were radically transformed after listening to Charlie Kirk. These young men and women share powerful testimonies of how Charlie’s unapologetic defense of faith, freedom, and truth led them to encounter Jesus Christ in a personal way. From the classroom to campus events, their stories reveal how one voice can spark revival in the hearts of the next generation. This is more than politics—it’s about faith, courage, and the eternal truth that changes lives. - - - Today’s Sponsor: Hillsdale - Start learning today. Go to https://hillsdale.edu/knowles to sign up for over 40 free online courses - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your beds and come on through. Texas. Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort in, it's calling your name. Save on the stay.

Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at storeshills.com. Charlie's impact, you know, he also made me a better Christian. I saw him Charlie on YouTube, and I was like, all right, let's get back into this thing. He wasn't just like some kind of talking head, but actually lived and approached people with love.

Like, he genuinely wanted people to be better. On the 22nd, we will be in University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. I'll see you in Mogadishu. Somalia awaits. I don't know how to respond in their native language, but how? See you up there. Ucuddy Bakka-de-Bak-a-Bak. See it later.

God bless you guys. My friend Charlie Kirk and I were scheduled to host an event together at the University of Minnesota on September 22nd as part of his American comeback tour. Twelve days before that event could take place, an assassin's bullet took Charlie's life. Charlie Kirk has been shot. Political assassination. triggering a national trauma,

the likes of which we had not seen in decades. That someone's life was taken because they have a different opinion. It's just unbelievable. He was the voice of a generation and gave voice to a generation. He was killed because his words made. difference. He is irreplaceable. He was a true, authentic American genius. This guy is reaching out to his mortal enemy saying we need to be gentlemen sit down together and disagree agreeably. He was for dialogue, open debate and dialogue, even

with me. I feel the gravity of the moment you're talking about but what if the other side doesn't? What do we do? Charlie Kirk just got shot. Girl, someone had to do it. Put down like a You know what kind of Nazi, the Betz Nazi? A dead one. This is a guy that was willing to engage in debate to resolve disagreements. And the fact that I am seeing celebration, this is disgusting. He is not martyr material, so his death will need nothing. As we all mourned Charlie's death, a question had to be answered.

Would his tour go on? Charlie's organization, TPSA, insisted that it must. Our campus tour this fall will continue. There will be even more tours in the years to come. In a world filled with chaos, doubt, and uncertainty, my husband's voice will ring out louder and more clearly than ever. And I agreed wholeheartedly. Evil forces thought that they could stop Charlie's movement.

His many friends and his millions of admirers, would not allow that to happen. Just a couple of hours, the University of Minnesota will be hosting the first Turning Point USA event since its founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed on a campus in Utah. What was intended to be a conversation between two friends with Q&A from the audience

became a tribute to a man who gave his life to encourage healthy debate. Throughout the country and especially on campus, for the freshman pledge, the junior sociology major, and all those kids scrolling through clips online being exposed to new ideas and having their minds changed. TPPUSA's decision to continue the tour raised a serious question. Would students feel comfortable showing up amid the widespread celebration

of political violence against people like them? You need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events so that they look to their leadership to turn down the temperature. The answer was a resounding yes. Campus security estimated 4,000 people showed up to an auditorium that could fit fewer than 2,700 to show that they would not be threatened and intimidating into silence.

What we must now do is reassert order and reestablish a healthy politics. You all who have come out here tonight despite the threats, despite the hardship, have shown that you all believe that it can be done. The man that we honor tonight gave his life in the confident hope

that it can be done. We must never despair, we must never surrender, to the forces that seek our destruction, and we must work tirelessly to ensure that this moment truly becomes a turning point for America. Thank you very much. It was an honor to pay tribute to the man they came to see,

the man who set the standard for campus outreach at healthy debate. And it was a special pleasure to sit down there with some of the students whose lives Charlie had changed. When did you first encounter Charlie Kirk? Well, I first encountered Charlie when I was in high school. I saw all this videos on. I saw all this videos on, you know, Instagram and TikTok. About two years ago, it's the same year that I came back to my faith as well.

Yeah, about junior, senior year of high school, saw his Instagram videos. Very moving. Yeah, mine was about the same way with the Instagram videos just about a year ago. It's the best recommendation for kids to be on TikTok and Instagram that I've ever heard. You say that you were out of your faith and then you came back into it. How did that happen? I just felt God's presence and, you know, with Charlie's impact, you know, he also made me a better Christian. I think the way that Charlie spoke about his faith

just impacted me more to be just super close to my faith as much as possible and to learn from him as well. So what is it about him? There are plenty of people who talk. There are plenty of people on TikTok and Instagram, most of whom are disreputable and should not be viewed by teenagers. What was it about him that grabbed you? I think it was mostly, I mean, just the way he lived his life.

He wasn't just like some kind of talking head, but actually lived and approached people with love. like he genuinely wanted people to be better. He was going to these campuses where people disagreed with them, people were struggling, people were miserable, and he was trying to get them to a better place, and I think that resonated with a lot of people.

People say that he's the embodiment of Rush Limbaugh and Billy Graham and the same person. I couldn't agree more to that. Yeah, I know, and that's just really inspiring for not only on a political scale, but also just my faith and just Christianity as a whole. I thought he always had his facts known and set straight when he was debating. So it was really nice to hear someone not just, you know, spitballing things, but he'd bring the facts back with it. And then he'd back up his faith with theology. But then he'll also go back to like statistics and what, you know, some people would call concrete examples.

It seems like the left hated him in particular. And for a while, I thought this was really weird because of all the people in public life who would go around, give speeches, organized campaign, of all of them, he was in many ways the most moderate or the most gracious, generous. He was certainly up there. And so I said, of all the people you're going to try to get, why him? Why do you think he aroused such ire? I think just the way his character, the way he loved God, his family, his country, and how that shone through, there was some clip where they asked Charlie, like, why the universities hate having him on campus and why there's so much pushback from the university.

And obviously there's a lot of reasons. But Charlie said something like, the universities get these kids for four years. And they know that if I talk to them for 30 seconds, I can change their whole lives. I think they saw that. And I think that's why they hated him. You keep coming back to religion and specifically the way he lived his life, that he actually walked the walk. He practiced what he preached.

Charlie is one of my few friends that I've never had a cigar and a drink with. Because he didn't smoke and he didn't drink. I found it very frustrating. But he really lived that. You think that that very, very high standard, and he lived up to it, that that is what really enraged people. Absolutely, yeah. If that's what you're really interested in, why wouldn't you join the Christian group on campus? What would attract you to a political organization like Turning Point USA if you're seeking those religious lessons?

Well, public policy affects everyone. So if we don't have good students in schools, you don't have good people in government, then we won't have that. protection of religion. It's going to be further encroached by, you know, one of the parties. This is something I always loved about Charlie because there are plenty of dime store philosophers who will write some white paper that no one cares about, but they have their brilliant idea and everyone has to go read their book or whatever. And Charlie, weirdly, was interested at the same time in the eternal and the most nitty-gritty political. So he was always preaching the gospel, always trying to get people to religion, but also focused on that house race

in Missouri 5 and all focused on making sure they sign up enough voters in Arizona. And I think some people saw that as a contradiction. But I certainly do not. I agree with Charlie on that, which is, yeah, you've got your eyes on the prize. You've got your eyes on the eternal destiny, the heavenly Jerusalem.

But we're here, aren't we? We have bodies. We have communities. We have nations and families. We've got to do something about that. Those two things really are not supposed to be disconnected. Yeah, I think the left likes to try and tell us that we don't have the number of people.

numbers like that we just need to kind of stay hidden and, you know, do our own little thing in the corner. I know when we have club fairs, it's always, you know, the Catholics and Turning Point USA are in the farthest back corner away from everybody. You got to like realize that we have people. We have a movement. And I think Charlie was really good about, especially with the youth, getting the youth out and knowing that we have the numbers, we can do this. The Democrats still technically won young voters in 2024. barely. And young voters moved 10 points to the right. And who led the young voter efforts? It was Charlie. There was no number two. How did he do it so effectively? You know, plenty of people

would go to campus and talk and even even the format of change my mind, prove me wrong, ask me anything. You know, that's a format that's been around for a long time. Plenty of people have done it. Why was he so good at it? He set his mic down just so that like he would let the other person talk. Like it was a very inspiring way on wow how he was always so approachable. and he just welcomed that other diversity side and, like, kind of was able to push back against that and, like, was a really comforting guy. I feel like he really told the truth through his debate.

It was very apparent that, like, he meant what he said, and that's what really stood out to, like, people. Hold on one second before we get to any more very, very important stuff. You must go to hillsdale.edu slash knolls. You ever hear the phrase? That's unconstitutional. People toss that phrase around. like confetti at a political rally.

You hear it pretty much anywhere. People gather to debate the issues of the day, but here's a thing. When someone drops that phrase, do you just nod along and take their word for it? Or have you ever actually cracked open the Constitution yourself to see what all the fuss is about? I think you should,

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Completely free. I love it. Hillsdale is one of the absolute top learning institutions. in the entire country and their horses are just magnificent. The federalist I highly recommend. Of course, on CS Lewis, I highly recommend right now. Go to Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles to enroll, no cost, easy to get started. Go to hillsdale.org. So what's the feeling on campus after this happens?

Obviously, Charlie was riling up all these left-wingers who didn't want to have an honest conversation, so much so that one of them murdered him. And then many other normy liberals and mainstream liberals and establishment liberals and people on TV and people in government excused it or tried to justify it or in some cases even celebrated it. What's the feeling among the left on campus today? Well, I can speak for the Twin Cities. So the day after President Trump was elected, we were offered mental health services, those dogs that we can pet, free food, stuff like that. In fairness, I think those students probably could use some mental health services. I think you're right. Yeah, but then, like, you know,

after September 10th, the 11th, I came to campus, I was texting my friends. We were all really sad. We were still grieving. We went to a bunch of vigils. But everyone else on campus seemed pretty fine, pretty okay, which I guess you could say it was disheartening, but I wasn't expecting anything less. I mean, for Duluth, when after the news that Charlie passed away, like, every two voices I heard, you know, going throughout the hallways was like, they were celebrating it. And I was just like, I mean, just how can you even do that? It's crazy.

And it's just, Duluth needs a big change, and I'm obviously trying to get that underway. But, I mean, it's just crazy. People who just try to have civil debate are not supposed to be murdered for it. On the left or on the right or in the middle or anywhere else. That's not supposed to happen. And at a university, which in principle endeavors to exchange ideas and arrive at the truth, that's an existential threat to the mission of the union. university. How could the university not take that seriously? I go to a school at a small private school

and I had politics class 9 a.m. the day after and I was actually supposed to, the professor had asked me to make an announcement to the class about the event that was supposed to happen here and see if any of my class would want to come along. I walked in and my professor was like, well, that's not happening. and he's a liberal professor. He kind of just had it like a, oh well, and he talked about political violence, you know, the next day and kind of just tried to both sides the issue. And I was kind of just sitting there like, it's completely different.

He's not even in the government. He has no like decision-making power, and he's just trying to talk to people in no way. Right. I guess this is why the comparison is so ridiculous. One, because the left can point to one or two examples of political violence right to left. Even that, though, let's say you get one or two where you say it's right to left. Every other example you can name in recent memory, at least going back to BLM, actually going back much further, to the 70s, to the 60s, all of the examples are from the left. And a lot of the

time, they're not even categorized as political violence. There was an attack at the University of Pittsburgh a couple years ago. I was there. It was a debate over transgenderism. Antifa threw an explosive at the building when we were walking on stage. It seriously injured a female cop, not classified as political violence. So I was president at UMD, the word Nathan is now. I was president of the Turning Point USA chapter there last year. We were preparing to host a speaker, and a student on campus threatened to shoot me in the student common area. I didn't go to school for three weeks.

The school didn't do anything. I slept on the floor of my buddy's dorm room. The school's solution was they said they couldn't do anything to the student until police had finished their investigation. Well, that does me no good. he's still walking around campus. He's the president of the socialist chapter. I mean, that's a crime. It's a crime to levy a direct threat.

Yes, absolutely. And he was charged by the police, and he pled down. I don't know if he's still on campus. The school wouldn't tell me if he would be allowed to come back. So I transferred schools. I'm now involved with the Turning Point chapter at my other school. And Nathan here's taken over Duluth very courageously. Those are just the threats you don't even hear about.

Of course. Yeah, we were literally tabling when they're, that happened. I was right next to him when that happened. It's like mind-blowing. Now, of course, if it had been in the other direction, if someone had accused you of a hate crime, no matter how absurd, it would be a statewide news story. But a direct threat to kill you passes by. So then what's your take on campus now? Because it's a legitimate question. I was doing an interview with a liberal outlet earlier. And they said, okay, so is the event going to go on? I said, yes, it is. I spoke to turning point. They wanted to go on. I think that's the right decision.

I would be happy to do whatever they want to do, but if they want to do it, I'm going to show up. We can't back down in front of these people. The host of the show asked me, well, are people going to show up? Aren't they scared? You know, isn't it? It's kind of dangerous, isn't it? The insinuation being that we need to stay home, we need to accede to these threats. But it's a real concern.

Are you guys afraid? No. No, why not? I mean, like everyone's been saying, this is the turning point. This is when we come back stronger than ever. that's not going to turn us down. We're going to come back and live through him even more. I literally dropped a class just to be here.

All right, my man. It comes down to faith for me, but also like, when you know you're in the right, you're doing the right thing. So I want a turning point to be here when I graduate. That was my goal coming here. You don't want to have something where you regret not being involved, you know? And you trust in the Lord, you say the truth, whatever happens is God's will. It's going to happen. and we see with Charlie he can take something that is evil and use it to bring the most good,

and we are agents cooperating with God's will. So I totally agree with that. What's your impression of Charlie and his impact? Because I think a lot of people would say, well, he was preaching to the choir. All you kids were already conservative. You've got to preach to the choir. The choir needs preaching. But that's not my impression.

From what I would see, he really turned people. Is that seeing your friends and your classmates? Did that happen? Yeah, so when we started our chapter back in November of 24, I had seven people at my first meeting. Then last week we had about 30, about 45 in our group chat. You can't say it now, but in the future, we're going to see the statistics show that Gen Z is going to become more conservative. They're going to become more Christian, and it's going to be a small revival. And I think Charlie's head is going to have a huge part in that. Yeah, we had going back before Charlie's unfortunate.

killing. We had about 30 members at Duluth. Now we're up to like 70, getting close to 80 now. And we've had a lot of people, you know, from kind of moderate sides also go to the right side, which is awesome to see. So the impact's just everywhere. And we're trying to continue that. I've seen a lot of people, not even just youth, but even I had like obviously, I had a lot of people texting me, you know, because they knew I was involved with Turning Point. I had family members and neighbors texting me. And now they all want to get involved. And so it's not even just the youth. It's people who were kind of like on the sidelines, kind of they believe in the conservative movement, but they don't really want to do anything. And they see Charlie's courage. And it's kind of

being like, well, Charlie did all these things when he was 31. He made such a huge impact. And I'm here sitting on my couch. And Charlie didn't come from money. Charlie didn't. have some fancy college degree, Charlie didn't have connections to all the richest people in the world. He just kind of did it. He outworked him. He did it. He did outworked him. Post Charlie. People have to figure out what to do, how to keep the coalition together, where to move, what that turning point is going to be. What's going to drive it? The hunger for truth, the hunger for just normalcy and reality. What happened to Charlie's not normal? That shock is going to drive them and they're going to say we want normalcy and it exposes like we've kind of been discussing all the all the people

who've been celebrating this it exposes them as complete just like crazy people what should happen to those people the ones who are celebrating and i guess that's throughout all of society there's students who are doing it there are professors who are doing it doctors and nurses and teachers and waiters what is the response to to the people who would celebrate the murder of the most mainstream civil conversationalist. In other words, would celebrate your murder too. Yeah, I think it really puts it on us to speak out towards those people and let them know that this isn't okay.

There's going to be repercussions for this. Yes. It's not fight violence with violence. We've got to do it through our Christian theology and God will handle the rest. Yes, yeah. Do it in a civil way, through the civil authority sometimes, you know, and people step out of bounds. But that's right.

The consequences have to continue until the behavior improves, I think. I think that's what a turning point means. Wonderful to sit down with all of you. Thank you for risking, well, not only your safety, but also your grades and the classes that you're skipping, to come down here. So it's great to see you. The Turning Point tour continues this fall with Charlie's friends from across the country stepping in to keep the movement moving forward. So the people like Elizabeth Klechner, Sam Spainer, Nathan McIntyre, Teva Fight, can hear ideas. that have otherwise been banished from campus.

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