Remembering Our Dear Friend, Charlie Kirk

PragerU and Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA started at roughly the same time and grew up together. We shared the same values and the same mission. We took pride in each other’s successes and counseled one another when we stumbled. Whenever and however we could, we worked together.

Charlie made videos for us and spoke at many of our events. Dennis spoke at many of his. Charlie adored and admired Dennis as a friend and mentor. Dennis adored and admired Charlie as a friend—and as someone who represented the best possible future of America.

Charlie liked to say that PragerU was the Air Force and TPUSA was the Army of the young conservative movement.

We recall all this only to say that there is no way to convey how devastated we are by Charlie’s shocking murder, a senseless act of pure evil.

He was just 31 years old, with his whole life in front of him. Still, in those 31 years, Charlie did more—and lived more—than most people who live three times as long. Very few people have done more good for more people in so short a time.

Right now, we are numb with disbelief. Our dear friend is gone. Frankly, we can’t reconcile ourselves to it.

But we know what Charlie would want us to do. And so we will do it. We will fight to preserve the Judeo-Christian values he cherished, and the America he loved. And we will do it with greater determination than ever before.

That is how we will honor his memory. Our deepest hope is that we will be worthy of it.

A message from Dennis Prager:

As an American, as a Jew, and as Dennis, I am devastated at the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The truth is, as I write these words, I can’t believe I am writing them. I am in the denial stage of mourning.

As an American, we have lost the most articulate spokesman for America and its unique value system—a country founded to be free, based on Jerusalem and Athens, the Judeo-Christian value system and the Greek emphasis on logic and reason. Charlie was a uniquely gifted individual who, in his teens, created the largest movement of young Americans committed to preserving and growing America and its ideals. He tirelessly went from campus to campus, from Oxford to Utah, dialoging with any student who wished to debate him. Using his vast reservoir of facts and his exceptionally speedy and articulate mind, he gave them what seemed to be unlimited amounts of time, and then calmy eviscerated all their anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Judeo-Christian positions. I watched an inordinate number of these exchanges and thanked God that Charlie Kirk was there to do this work. America’s youth in particular have lost a moral and intellectual leader, one who would, perhaps, have one day become their president.

As a committed Jew, I thank God regularly that a non-Jew, a committed Christian, became one of the few great public spokesmen on behalf of Israel and the Jewish communities outside of Israel. Few Jews could match Charlie’s knowledge and eloquent arguments on behalf of those two entities.

As Dennis, I have lost a very close friend. Charlie repeatedly visited me in the various hospitals that I have been in since November 12 of last year, when I suffered a catastrophic fall which has left me paralyzed. When members of the nursing staff heard that Charlie Kirk was visiting me, my room became the most popular one in the hospital. Charlie brought me the manuscript of his forthcoming book arguing that everyone—Christians as well as Jews—should observe Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, just as he and his family had begun to do from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. It is a measure of our close relationship that he dedicated the book to me. His brilliant exposition of these arguments provide clear evidence for the non-necessity of a college education for most young Americans.

My heart breaks for his young widow, Erika, and for his two children, who have lost as great a man and a father as children can have. And for Charlie, who did not live to see them grow up. For one of the first times in my 20 years with my wife, Sue, I have seen her sob uncontrollably. The Prager home is in deep mourning, as are the homes of countless Americans. The loss to us personally and to the country generally is immeasurable.