“He was a professional, easy to deal with,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, said in an interview this year. “Nothing ever leaked to the press. He just got stuff done.”
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Kirk’s closeness to Trump grew after the president was defeated in 2020. Kirk became a prominent voice spreading baseless claims that the election had been stolen from Trump, an assertion he never disavowed.
In February 2021, just weeks after the January 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, Kirk visited the former president in exile at Mar-a-Lago.
Afterwards, Kirk showed a photo of them together at a donor presentation, saying, “That was the easiest meeting I ever scheduled with President Trump. Because, you know, all these wiseguys who now act like they’re his best friend didn’t want to be anywhere near him in early 2021.”
As one measure of Trump’s affection for his young outside adviser, Kirk became the rare associate not to incur the president’s ire while profiting from their relationship.
If anything, it was a point of pride to Trump that, as the top draw at Turning Point USA events, he was helping to enrich Kirk, several people familiar with the dynamics said.
Donald Trump Jr, right, at an event with Kirk, left, in March.Credit: AP
When it came to advising the president, Kirk was careful to pick his spots. As an early supporter of J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy, he encouraged Trump to endorse Vance in 2022 – and then, two years later, to select the Ohio senator as his running mate.
During the 2024 transition, Kirk also sat in on high-level personnel discussions, including for secretary of state, but did not push strenuously for any personal favourites.
He did, however, help ensure that one of his organisation’s top donors, Stacey Feinberg, became Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg.
Occasionally, Kirk disagreed with Trump. When he did, Kirk’s posture was that of a faithful custodian of the MAGA base who feared that its leader was inadvertently straying from his own principles.
Though he publicly supported the president’s decision in June to bomb nuclear sites in Iran, he spoke fretfully to Trump in the Oval Office that same month about the prospect of igniting another intractable war in the Middle East.
A month later on his podcast, Kirk pushed for the Trump administration to release its files on the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had once been a friend of Trump’s. But then, after receiving a call from a plainly irritated president, he reversed himself, saying, “I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being”.
The flip-flop created a stir among Kirk’s followers, compelling his communications director, Andrew Kolvet, to issue a clarification: “Charlie is not done talking about it. The ball is in the administration’s court to find a solution.”
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As a close ally of the vice president who spoke with relish to friends of an eventual Vance presidency, Kirk remained mindful of whom the boss was. In one of his last posts on X, the day before he was killed at a university outside Salt Lake City, Utah, he applauded Trump’s decision to assume control over law enforcement in Washington.
“We’re taking our country back,” Kirk wrote, adding two fire emojis.
Less than 24 hours later, he was dead. Vance then took Kirk’s body home from Salt Lake City to Phoenix on Air Force Two.
