Even Republicans are growing weary of 'toxic' Charlie Kirk’s extreme tactics

25 June 2024

Radio host Charlie Kirk, the far-right founder of Turning Point Action and Turning Point USA, has been an aggressive cheerleader for the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. Like "War Room" host Steve Bannon, Kirk isn't shy about attacking other Republicans as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) if he believes they aren't MAGA enough.

But in an article published on June 25, The Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports that a growing number of Republicans are worried about Kirk's in-your-face tactics and inflammatory comments and fear that he could be a liability for their party this election year.

"Kirk can talk all he likes about channeling God through (Donald) Trump, but can he cut it where it counts: at the ballot box?" Pilkington writes. "His toughest inquisitors are not the mainstream media, which Kirk routinely disparages, but people from within his own ranks."

Pilkington cites Michigan-based Republican Tudor Dixon as an example.

On her podcast, Dixon — who lost to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by double digits in 2022 — complained, "As a candidate who didn't win, and who was promised that Turning Point would have a big influence in Michigan, it makes you crazy. I gave up a salary for 18 months, sold my car, did everything I could to run for office. And people like (Kirk) are the reason we are not winning."

Pilkington notes that Kirk has "been getting heat too for his stream of unabashed racist comments."

"Kirk has called George Floyd, whose murder by a Minnesota police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning, a 'scumbag'; criticized Martin Luther King as 'awful' and 'not a good person'; and said that whenever he boards a plane with a Black pilot, he worries whether they are qualified," the reporter observes.

The Rev. Darrell Scott, a far-right MAGA Republican and evangelical fundamentalist in Cleveland, has been urging Blacks to vote for Trump. But he fears that Kirk's inflammatory rhetoric is hurting that cause.

Scott told The Guardian, "Kirk talked all this negative s*** about Black people, and his proximity to President Trump caused people to wonder: Is that what Trump is thinking too? I have publicly refuted Kirk because every vote counts."

Another Kirk critic on the right is Arizona-based GOP strategist Tyler Montague.

Montague told The Guardian, "Turning Point has become toxic in Arizona. They've helped to cement an extreme worldview, creating anger that in turn generates political energy that they harness. That's their game."

According to Montague, the conspiracy theories and election denialism that Kirk favors have been turning Arizona residents away from the GOP.

"They doubled down on angry messages that were not winning messages," Montague told The Guardian. "Winning messages are based in truth; Kirk is dragging us away from that."

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

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