The MAGA Movement Is Splintering Without Charlie Kirk

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When Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, many of his allies on the right memorialized him as a hero of free speech and the founder of an enduring political movement.

Critics on the left tended to emphasize his long history of offensive remarks and dismiss him as little more than a troll.

With a year of distance, neither view appears complete.

Since his death, the MAGA movement has stumbled: Its factions are bickering, and Republicans are facing potentially disastrous midterm elections.

President Trump seems disconnected from his base and reality.

The current plight points to Kirk’s rare ability as a political node, someone who united otherwise disparate forces under one umbrella—and also to how much the movement depended on Kirk personally.

Just how fragile a peace Kirk had managed to keep became clear three months after his killing, at an annual conference of Turning Point USA, the organization he’d co-founded.

At the summit, feuding parties each tried to claim Kirk’s endorsement of their views.

Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire impresario, used the occasion to blast the broadcaster Tucker Carlson for conducting softball interviews with anti-Semites and other white supremacists.

Citing Kirk’s stiff-arming of the Hitler-admiring influencer Nick Fuentes, whose followers were sometimes ejected from Turning Point events, Shapiro assailed Carlson for giving Fuentes a platform.

Carlson mounted a counterattack in that evening’s keynote speech, arguing that it was Shapiro who was betraying Kirk’s commitment to open debate.

These conflicts among leading right-wing figures have continued ever since.