Charlie Kirk called Martin Luther King Jr. ‘awful’

On Sept. 10, 2025, Turning Point USA co-founder and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during a Utah college speaking event. 

In the aftermath, social media users shared a quote allegedly in which the conservative pundit reportedly said civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a good person. Posts on Facebook, Instagram, and X attributed the following words to Kirk: “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.” Snopes also received reader queries about the authenticity of the alleged quote.

(Instagram user @etanthomas36)

We found that the quote about King was correctly attributed to Kirk.

Journalist William Turton first reported on Kirk’s comments in a January 2024 article for Wired (archived). According to Turton’s report, Kirk made the statement while speaking at America Fest, a political convention organized by Turning Point USA, in December 2023.

Kirk was responding to a question from a student who said he was the subject of a Title IX investigation at his university after posting a derogatory message about transgender people on social media. Kirk noted how the student had been kicked out of school under the Title IX complaint.

Turton, who attended the event, provided an audio recording to Snopes, which verified that Kirk said:

[The student] got kicked out of school under a Title IX complaint, using the Civil Rights Act, that we as conservatives worship. “Oh, MLK’s a great guy.” Actually MLK was awful. OK? He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe. [unintelligible] Go research MLK, you should go research him.

Kirk claimed the federal government was coming after students’ free speech “using the mid-1960s Civil Rights Act that was passed with good intentions” as now a permanent diversity, equity and inclusion-type bureaucracy.

During the same event, Kirk said, “I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it. We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.”

Kirk was referring to the landmark federal law banning discrimination in public places, which provided for the integration of schools and other public spaces and made employment discrimination illegal. Title IX, which “prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance,” was not part of the original 1964 Civil Rights Act but passed under the Education Amendments of 1972

Kirk responded to the Wired article about his characterization of King during an episode of his podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show.” A clip of his response can be found on Rumble, where he reads aloud excerpts from an email sent by the Wired reporter:

“We note in our piece that Kirk describes King as, quote, ‘A bad guy.’” That’s true. “And Kirk described a ‘very, very radical view’ that the country made a mistake when it passed the Civil Rights Act.” Also true. “As we note in the piece, Kirk has previously described [King] as a hero and a civil rights icon.” That’s true, I used to be wrong. “What inspired Kirk to shift his view on MLK? Why does Kirk think MLK is a bad guy?”

As we’ve reported previously, Kirk made negative remarks about the Civil Rights Act outside of the Turning Point USA event. For example, in April 2024, Media Matters for America published (archived) a video and accompanying transcript in which Kirk said the Civil Rights Act “created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.” That footage appeared in a video on Kirk’s channel on Rumble (at 8:06).

For further reading, Snopes has also investigated claims that Kirk said Jewish money was ruining U.S. culture, that empathy was a “made-up, new age term” and his last words before the fatal shooting were about gang violence.