They are Charlie Kirk

Summary

Today, Explained – “They are Charlie Kirk”

Date: January 27, 2026
Guests: Simon Van Zuylen-Wood (New York Magazine features writer)
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the state of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and youth conservatism in America following the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk. Host Noel King interviews journalist Simon Van Zuylen-Wood about his in-depth reporting on the campus right after Kirk's death—the surges in religious fervor, factional battles, the search for new leadership, growing radicalization, and the vacuum left by Kirk in student conservative circles. The discussion captures both the chaos and opportunity that Kirk’s martyrdom created among young conservatives, along with the challenges posed by influencers further right than Kirk himself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fallout from Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

• TPUSA in Turmoil: Kirk’s absence was dramatically felt at America Fest, TPUSA’s annual event, with public infighting among conservative celebrities like Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens ([00:00]–[00:51]).
• Immediate Aftermath: Kirk’s death sparked a surge of energy and religious feeling on the young right:
  • A 100,000-person memorial at the NFL stadium in Glendale, AZ ([02:54])
  • Reports of increased Bible sales and “booming” TPUSA chapters ([03:24])
  • "There was a swelling of energy on the young right." – Simon Van Zuylen-Wood ([02:54])
  • “Explicit sort of martyrdom terms compared to a number of biblical figures.” ([05:30])

2. The Memorial and Shifts in Campus Conservatism

• Kirk as Martyr: The memorial featured hours of Christian rock and speeches likening Kirk to Biblical figures, emphasizing his role as a pious and family-oriented leader.
  • “For me, he was the person that like showed me like, it's okay to speak up about your faith and your beliefs.” – Unattributed student ([03:24])
  • “[Kirk] was serving as a sort of stopgap against even more sort of malign forces that were creeping up on the young right. And without Charlie Kirk, they began to become much more prominent.” – Simon ([05:52])
• Religious Revival: Initially, Kirk’s death inspired a religious and organizational boom among college conservatives.

3. On-the-Ground: College Chapters and Student Leaders

• Case Studies:

  • University of Mississippi: Leslie Lackman, TPUSA chapter president, becomes a social “queen bee,” her group riding a wave of increased status and numbers ([06:34]).
  • Clemson University & Others: Northeast students flock to “all-American” Southern schools for a sense of belonging in this new conservative surge.
  • “She represents what appeared to be kind of the boom, the post-TPUSA boom, where not only does the campus organization grow, but her social status grows.” – Simon ([06:34])
  • "Love this country. Defend her and serve our God ... Do it for Charlie." ([07:51])

• Catharsis and Activism:

  • Many new recruits join to process Kirk's death, fulfill his perceived legacy, and “retake the campus from the left” ([08:18]).
  • Charlie Kirk and TPUSA's strong Trump alignment distinguishes them from other campus conservative groups.

4. The Leadership Vacuum & Fragmented Direction

• Leaderless Expansion:
  • Erica Kirk, Charlie’s widow, is the nominal leader but lacks his ideological presence, leaving the organization "more powerful than ever but functionally leaderless" ([10:03]).
  • Local chapters operate on autopilot, with their own campus presidents holding de facto power ([10:03]).
  • “There’s this paradox ... TPUSA is more powerful than ever but functionally leaderless.” – Simon ([10:03])

5. Radicalization on the Right

• Conservative Factionalism:

  • TPUSA is now seen as a moderate group compared to even more radical College Republican circles, some of which see Trump and Kirk as too moderate ([15:37]).
  • College Republicans and groups further right become hotbeds for “Gen Z radicalization,” especially around issues like immigration and Israel.
  • “They end up looking like moderates in this arch-right conservative ecosystem.” – Simon ([15:37])

• Campus Confrontations:

  • Student-run speaking events and “tabling” have become battlegrounds, with conservative students grilling each other from the right, echoing Kirk’s own experiences with “groypers” (followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes) ([17:40]–[20:36]).
  • “What happens at the conservative leaning colleges is that they end up getting grilled by other Republicans, not leftists ... getting grilled from the right.” – Simon ([17:56])

• The Groypers and the Rightward Shift:

  • Kirk was pressured rightward by persistent challenges from the groyper movement. After his death, imitators face the same dynamic ([19:01]–[21:11]).
  • “And I think what happened over the years is it moved Charlie Kirk to the right because he was constantly protecting his right flank.” – Simon ([20:36])

6. Challenges for MAGA and the Conservative Coalition

• New Influencers:
  • Candace Owens, now a conspiracy theorist, and Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, hold significant mainstream influence among the youth right ([21:42]).
  • Owens and Fuentes' rise presents electoral challenges for MAGA—Fuentes-style “identitarian, hate-driven politics” risks alienating Trump's multiracial coalition ([22:09]).
  • “It is extremely troubling how mainstream [Nick Fuentes] has become on the right.” – Simon ([22:09])

7. Gender Dynamics and the Role of Women

• Female Involvement:

  • TPUSA attracts far more young women than more radical male-dominated groups.
  • “A lot of these young Republican groups, especially the ones that are sort of interested in Nick Fuentes, are extremely male ... TPUSA ... there’s all these girls.” – Simon ([23:01])
  • Key issues activating conservative women are immigration (the case of Laken Riley) and trans inclusion in sports (Riley Gaines) ([24:04]).

• TPUSA’s Female-Driven Populism:

  • TPUSA’s broader, more ecumenical approach, plus issues around women’s sports, are energizing to conservative women, distinguishing it from hard-right groups.

8. The Power of Online Influence and the Search for New Leadership

• The Feed Determines the Future:
  • Students’ ideological direction is driven by whomever dominates their social media feeds.
  • “They are headed where their feed is headed ... it cannot be overemphasized how dominant Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes are in their feeds.” – Simon ([26:18])
  • Many students, even in mourning Kirk, find themselves drawn to Fuentes’ content, despite its extremity: “She couldn’t help herself. She would, she’d sometimes just watch Nick instead.” ([26:18])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Kirk as a Martyr:

  • “He was serving as a sort of stopgap against even more sort of malign forces ... Without Charlie Kirk there, they started to become much more prominent.” – Simon Van Zuylen-Wood ([05:52])

• On Campus Conservative Culture:

  • “It doesn't become ... just a club ... but you're doing something possibly godlike.” – Simon ([08:44])
  • “The only two policies in the entire world involve Israel and H1B visas. You cannot say those words enough on conservative campuses right now.” – Simon ([19:01])

• On Gender and Belonging:

  • “There's all these girls [at TPUSA]. ... My dating life has never been better since I became president of TPUSA.” – Anecdote via Simon ([23:01])

• On the Power of Algorithms:

  • “Absent clips of Charlie Kirk ... his greatest enemy, Nick Fuentes, is there instead. And I started to hear it in the rhetoric of the kids I was talking to ... they're watching him.” – Simon ([26:18])

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Important Timestamps

• [00:00]–[00:51]: Highlights from America Fest and internal right-wing drama
• [02:54]: The immediate aftermath and youth energy post-assassination
• [03:16]: Memorial event and surging interest in TPUSA
• [06:34]: Student leader case study—Leslie Lackman at Ole Miss
• [10:03]: TPUSA’s leadership vacuum
• [15:37]: Factionalism and radicalization on campus
• [17:40]: Tabling events as stages for right-wing intra-movement conflict
• [20:26]: The evolution of the “groypers” and pressure on Kirk
• [21:42]: Owens, Fuentes, and the dangers to MAGA's coalition
• [23:01]: Women in TPUSA and the “two Rileys” issues (Laken Riley and Riley Gaines)
• [26:18]: The dominance of online influence and the future of youth conservatism

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Takeaway

Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, TPUSA and the landscape of youth conservatism are at a crossroads: energized but fractured, powerful yet leaderless, and increasingly shaped by the loudest and most provocative online voices. The struggle is not just over campus politics—but over who will shape and define the next generation of right-wing activism. The biggest influencers are no longer organizational leaders, but those who can dominate the social media feeds of a generation searching for meaning, leadership, and belonging in a time of upheaval.

Transcript

[Noel King]

Turning Point USA's last big event, America Fest, was held in December without founder Charlie Kirk. Had Kirk been alive, it might have gone differently, but it was a mess. Ben Shapiro went ham on Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

[Ben Shapiro]

So no Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace's targeting of TP USA or to mirror her bullshit lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly.

[Noel King]

Kelly and Tucker hit back at Shapir.

[Ben Shapiro]

To hear calls for like deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I'm like, what?

[Ben Shapiro]

This is hilarious.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I don't think we are friends anymore.

[Noel King]

I've been a very good friend to Ben.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Nobody knew who the heck Ben Shapiro.

[Noel King]

Was when I started putting him on.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

My shows on the Fox News Channel.

[Noel King]

Erica Kirk tried to keep it light. The enemy has thrown a lot of curveballs at us today. My iPad won't even turn on. Nicki Minaj was there. Why not? And those people are adult professionals. Charlie Kirk started Turning Point USA to reach college students. It was a campus organization first. So what are the students thinking? That's coming up on Today Explained.

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[Noel King]

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[Today Explained Host/Producer]

You're listening to Today Explains.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

This is Is it Today Explain or Today Explain?

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

Explain?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Duh.

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

Explain. Duh.

[Noel King]

I'm Noel King with Simon Van Zylen Wood. He's a features writer for New York Magazine. All right, so Simon, after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah in September, the question was what would happen to Turning Point usa? You went looking for answers. What did you find?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Yeah, I think the question was not only what is going to happen at tpusa, his campus and sort of electoral apparatus, it's such a multi pronged organization that's grown over the last decade, but also what was going to happen to youth conservatism. As everybody probably remembers from the post Charlie Kirk assassination moment, there was a swelling of energy on the young right. There was the massive 100,000 person memorial at the NFL stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

[Ben Shapiro]

I would see his videos and whether.

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

I agreed or disagreed, I knew that he was doing his best to serve the country, serve his family and serve the Lord above.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

For me, he was the person that like showed me like, it's okay to speak up like about your faith and your beliefs. And that's like something that I'm going to live by to this day forward. There were reports of surging Bible sales. There was reports of booming TPUSA chapters in high school and in colleges.

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

We now have 37,000 applications to start chapters around the country.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

So I went to the Memorial and started talking to college kids and it became evident that the place to go investigate the post Charlie Kirk moment was the campus. I started fanning out around the country and especially in bigger state schools and conservative leaning campuses where the TPUSA presence was much stronger and prouder. Although I also talked to students starting chapters at smaller liberal arts colleges or even Ivy League institutions in the northeast. And I wanted to investigate this question of what was gonna happen. And the short answer, which we'll get into is that the answer in mid September looked really different from the answer in mid December just three months later. If I had written my story three weeks after Charlie Kirk was killed, and I think people started writing this story, I would have thought that there was a sort of nationwide religious revival taking place. Charlie Kirk, whatever people thought of his right wing politics, he was personally a very pious individual.

[Ben Shapiro]

To our own detriment and to our own failure, we as Christians have decided to cast away resting on one of the seven days. That idea of marriage being a covenant is a big, big deal. In fact, only marriage in the Bible is compared to Christ's relationship with the church.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

He didn't drink. He observed the Sabbath on Saturdays. He sort of, you know, had the, had the Persona of a family man. And in many ways his most ardent followers on the young rite saw him in that light. And the kind of evangelical feel of the memorial, where there was Christian rock for hours, where he was by the president and his cabinet.

[Ben Shapiro]

Charlie would have been so pleased to hear his friends and colleagues Today giving testimony and giving glory to God in.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Explicit sort of martyrdom terms compared to a number of biblical figures.

[Ben Shapiro]

So it's about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power, and they hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. This guy's got to stop talking. And there's always one guy with the bright idea. And I could just hear him say, I've got an idea. Why don't we just kill him?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

He was playing a role that only became more evident to me after he was gone. He was playing it. He was serving as a sort of stopgap against even more sort of malign forces that were creeping up on the young right. And without Charlie Kirk there, they started to become much more prominent. And so you had students who were both radicalized against the left by his death. They see the murder of Charlie Kirk as evidence of left wing intolerance, but they also no longer have Kirk as this kind of role model who was actually keeping these darker forces at bay in a way that has only become more evident after his death.

[Noel King]

All right, so you talked to a lot of young people as you were reporting out this piece. Tell me who stood out to you, who was illustrative of these themes?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

There's two poles in the piece, and they're represented by two big state schools that I spend time at. The University of Mississippi and Clemson University in South Carolina and the University of Mississippi. Basically, the main character in my piece is the president of the TPUSA chapter at Ole Miss. I am Leslie Lackman, president of your Ole Miss chapter of Turning Point, USA. She's 20 years old. She's from Westchester County, New York. She represents a kind of micro trend in the piece, which is kids from the Northeast who want to go to college at these big, quote, unquote, all American schools in the South. And I met a lot of these kids actually at Clemson, at Ole Miss, at other places, she represents what appeared to be kind of the boom, the post TPSA boom, where not only does the campus organization grow, but her social status grows. As I'm spending time with her on campus. I mean, she's a queen bee. Everybody knows who she is. Everybody wants to come to her table outside the student union, outside the big campus grove, a famous gathering spot in Oxford, Mississippi. On campus, there was a posthumous tour that Charlie Kirk was supposed to be on, the tour that he was killed on. They continued, TPSA continued after his death, and they brought VIPs to kind of speak and debate with students in his stead. So Erica Kirk, Charlie's widow, and J.D. vance came to Ole Miss.

[Ben Shapiro]

The greatest contribution that you can make.

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

To Charlie Kirk's legacy is getting involved.

[Ben Shapiro]

In citizens saving this country.

[Noel King]

Love this country. Defend her and serve our God.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Do it for Charlie. So not only was Leslie Lackman, the TPUSA president, sort of presiding over this newly ascended campus organization, she was also kind of helping run this, you know, this massive confab on campus. And I was there for all of it.

[Noel King]

What are Leslie Lockman and other students who are joining tpusa? What are they looking for?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Some of them, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, are finding a way to kind of achieve some sort of catharsis, I think some way to honor his legacy or some way to get further involved in campus politics. A lot of them are, even before his death, were trying to fulfill Kirk's legacy of kind of retaking the campus from the left. I mean, it's not an accident that Charlie Kirk started his organization on campus.

[Ben Shapiro]

These universities have become complete opponents to Western civilization.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

This has been a goal since William Buckley on for the last 50, 60, 70 years, which is to kind of to do counter revolution, basically, on campus. And Charlie Kirk arguably was the most successful of it of all time. But it really is until his death that TPUSA becomes something that feels like hegemonic in its own right. I mean, TPUSA existed. My character, Leslie, was running this chapter before his death. But it doesn't boom until afterwards. It doesn't become a kind of social signifier that you are the top dog on campus, that you are not just sort of running a club for engaged students, but you're doing something possibly godlike. I mean, the University of Mississippi is the kind of place where, like, all the pressure runs in not just a kind of baseline conservative direction, but also Christian. Like, it's the kind of place where if somebody asked you, do you believe in God? You'd feel kind of awkward saying no if you didn't. Whereas in a lot of liberal campuses, the pressures run in the total opposite direction. And so the implicit Christian element of a group like tpusa, just like the baseline pro Trump conservatism, and it's very aligned with Donald Trump TPUSA in a way that some of the other campus conservative groups are not actually because of Charlie Kirk's close relationship with Trump and the administration, makes it sort of a natural place, not just for political junkies, but for all kinds of students who aren't even that plugged into politics.

[Noel King]

How are they changing the organization as they process Charlie Kirk's death?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I don't know who they It's a great question because there's no Erica Kirk nominally is the leader, but she's also a widow who is dealing with the murder of her husband. She is not the sort of ideologue or sort of polemicists pugilist that Charlie Kirk was. And so what I saw was a organization that was kind of running on autopilot up to the whims of its campus leaders like it is ostensibly answerable to the national organization, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona. But there's this paradox which informs everything I started learning, which is that TBSA is more powerful than ever but functionally leaderless. And that leads to this question of sort of like what's going to creep in and come next.

[Noel King]

New York Magazine's Simon Van Zylen Wood in the second half of the show. He's gonna come back to tell us what is coming next.

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[Noel King]

This is Today explained Simon Van Zylen Wood of New York Magazine is back. All right, so there is Turning Point usa, that's Charlie Kirk's group. And then there is conservatism on college campuses. And you discovered that these two things are not one and the same. What does the conservative ecosystem on campuses look like now?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

There's a bunch of different groups, TPSA being the sort of top dog right now. But there's Young Americans for Liberty, which is kind of the Ron Paul style libertarian group. The Young Americans for Freedom, outgrowth of an old William Buckley group. Then there's the classic College Republicans groups which are themselves divided into all these various. They're sort of like situated in all these umbrella groups. What's really important and I found out is that tpusa, I kind of assume that because of Charlie Kirk's identity and the way that he would sort of debate liberal students, as you know, this is his calling card, basically was going to be the group on these campuses engaging in kind of bare knuckle culture war. Especially after the radicalization that followed Charlie Kirk's death. It turns out it doesn't really work that way. The group was very loyal to Trump and it actually kind of serves as a sort of a pep squad for Team maga. That might sound really right wing to a lot of listeners, but they end up looking like the moderates in this arch right conservative ecosystem. The radicalization of Gen Z is sort of the through line of my piece. And what happens is that a young woman like Leslie Lackman who's running tpusa, she's got, you know, impeccable conservative bona fides, but actually there are many, many students even to her right who feel like Trump is too moderate. J.D. vance is suspect. Charlie Kirk was barely acceptable as a moderate and they loved him anyways because of what he stood for and the power that he had and also that devout Persona I talked about. But he was barely acceptable to them on any number of issues, from immigration to Israel especially, which is a major flashpoint for Gen Z conservatives right now. I think we should question any foreign country's relationship with our government.

[Ben Shapiro]

That's totally fine, but I'm just wondering.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Why you serve American interests. And so as you start to get into camp, College Republicans groups, which I assumed would be kind of the bow tied, milk toast type conservatives, in fact a lot of them are much more radical than tpa and they're not really hemmed into by this loyalty to the administration that TPOSA is.

[Noel King]

Describe what the more radical thing looks like. There's a couple moments in your piece where you talk about these events where people stand up and they speak and they're collaborating with each other. Tell me about that.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

This is like a really interesting trope that seems to exist on the right in a way that it doesn't on the left. And Kirk had a lot to do with it. You know, Charlie Kirk used to go to colleges and initially he'd do these, they're called tabling or tenting events, where he would basically sit at a table under a tent and just have anyone Come up to him for one, two, three hours.

[Ben Shapiro]

We know deep down it's wrong to murder a baby.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

You're not murdering a baby. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

All right, so without looking at the phone, look at me. What should the penalty be for breaking into America?

[Today Explained Host/Producer]

I think there should be a system.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Where it's more merit based. Do you feel proud of yourself for debating college kids who are unprepared to speak in front of an audience like yourself?

[Ben Shapiro]

Are you a voter?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I am a voter.

[Ben Shapiro]

Oh, so I vote and you vote. So I'm talking to voters of this country that will determine the future of Western civilization.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

What's happened is that there's a whole microculture where kind of Kirk type imitators will do the same thing. And so they'll show up on campus, you know, these are 19, 20 year old students and they'll just organize their own tours, they'll bring their videographers, they'll connect with TPUSA or college Republicans group and then they'll get grilled. What, what happens at the conservative leaning colleges is that they end up getting grilled by other Republicans, not leftists, because there's not really that many leftists around anyways. And they're getting grilled from the right. So that right after Charlie died, there was this guy called Bryon Hollihand who's an evangelical Christian who goes to Auburn University.

[Ben Shapiro]

I remember one of the last things.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

That Charlie and I talked about was that the day that civil discourse dies.

[Ben Shapiro]

America goes to a civ war.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

And he immediately started it looked like he was kind of trying to take up Charlie Kirk's mantle or even replace him. So I went to Clemson University, one of the 10 schools that he'd visited, and he got absolutely ambushed. He was seen as too moderate on Israel because he was too Zionist. He was too pro Israel. He was too in favor of the US Israel relationship and US support for Israel's war on Gaza. He was seen as too pro immigration. And mind you, this is somebody who wants to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country. He was too in favor of legal immigration. Big flashpoints on the young Gen Z right now is the question of legal immigration and H1B tech oriented visas, especially at STEM schools. A lot of these kids basically just think, well, we can't compete with foreign labor. It's too good, it's too cheap, it's too whatever. And there's these litmus tests so they'll just over and over again, it's like you, you sit in these rooms and it's like the only two policies in the entire world involve Israel and H1B visas. Like, you cannot say those words enough on conservative campuses right now. And so Charlie Kirk used to get grilled the exact same way. And he would get grilled by the so called groipers.

[Ben Shapiro]

Is that the troll that keeps tweeting about? He's not a troll. He's a very intelligent guy who has a lot to say. Some might have a troll.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

He seems to be getting a lot of you guys to say stuff for him tonight. So this happened for years. Groipers are followers of the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who's a podcaster who broadcasts every Night alone. And he's sort of a darkly transgressive figure who says stuff that, you know, would have been beyond the pale before him.

[Ben Shapiro]

Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up. Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It's that simple.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

And a lot of these kruipers would, exhorted by Nick Fuentes, would go and do this to Charlie Kirk. And I think what happened over the years is it moved Charlie Kirk to the right because he was constantly protecting his right flank. In Trump's first term, Charlie Kirk was talking about, quote, stapling green cards to every college diploma. He was talking about increasing immigration to help stem urban population laws. Before his death, he was talking about banning all, quote, third world immigration.

[Ben Shapiro]

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I mean, he'd gone completely far right on immigration. And I think part of the reason is this pressure. And so what happens after his death is the same dynamic just keeps repeating, but with new imitators and new antagonists.

[Noel King]

At the time Charlie Kirk was killed, I think people who are not familiar with Charlie Kirk were surprised to hear statements like, Charlie Kirk got Trump elected in 2024. Right. What does it mean for Trump and for MAGA that Charlie Kirk is gone and now there are lots of kids to the right, even the far right of Charlie Kirk.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

There's two ways to look at it. One is that it's extremely troubling that two main figures in my piece that are just dominating the feeds of these students are Candace Owens, who's a conspiracy theorist and has, you know, rocketed up the Spotify podcast charts by spreading really out there theories about his death.

[Noel King]

Does all of this mean that this somehow proves that Israel was involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. No, we have no evidence of that. But I don't like little lies.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

And Nick Fuentes, who's an out outright anti Semite, this is the biggest part of his brand. It is extremely troubling how mainstream that it's become on the right. But as an electoral consequence it's actually arguably more troubling to maga's chances. If you are doing pure identitarian, hate driven politics in the Fuentes vein, you probably instantly just doomed the emerging multiracial coalition that brought Trump to the office in November 2024. So there are already these quote, anti groiper politicians on the right who are trying to sound the alarm.

[Noel King]

One of the things that was striking about your piece was the presence of so many young women, right young women deciding which side of the right where on the right wing spectrum they're going to. It did make me wonder where you find Erica Kirk in all of this.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

I think there's two things to separate. I think the TPC's appeal to young woman is actually a little. It's not quite about Erica Kirk, although Erica Kirk now being the figurehead is going to accelerate the female dominated nature of tpusa. This was a really interesting thing, is that a lot of these young Republican groups, especially the ones that are sort of interested in Nick Fuentes, are extremely male. To the point where I was hanging out with these kids and they were basically kind of complaining like why can't we get any girls to come to our meetings? Like tpa. There's all these girls. There was this male president of a TPUSA chapter that was saying that, you know, his dating life has never been better since he became president of tpusa. Like it's that sort of dynamic, even pre Erica Kirk. Part of it is this more kind of ecumenical, populist look at politics. They're not obsessed with immigration in Israel to this kind of debilitating extent. There's a kind of bigger tent. And there's also a handful of issues that TPC really homes in on that is activating for conservative women in the heartland of the south, or Kirk country, as I call it all over the country. TPC has an influencer called Alex Clark who hosts a podcast and she's a big MAHA influencer.

[Noel King]

What if 2026 was the year of butter? Sounds wild, right?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Maha extremely popular right now with young conservative women. There are other kind of quote trad, unquote influencers who are affiliated with tpa. There's also two really, really interesting issues that are activated in the deep south and in kind of athlete focused state schools in particular. And I call it the issues of the two Rileys, Lake and Riley and Riley Gaines. Lake and Riley was a nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan migrant in 2024 near the university of Georgia campus, a Venezuelan who entered illegally during the Biden administration. And then there's Riley Gaines, who is a swimmer who was at the University of Kentucky, who competed against the trans athlete Leah Thomas, who swam at University of Pennsylvania. Trans sports issues and illegal immigration are issues that TPA focused on a lot, and especially the transports issue. And you go to these big state schools and tpa, conservative women, especially on the Riley Gaines issue, the swimming issue, are extremely radicalized against liberals. They feel like liberals have sold women like them out. A lot of them are athletes or they know athletes or in general embody more conservative values, where, you know, they were already coming in extremely skeptical of something like trans rights. But on the athlete issue in particular, they just. They would not. Most of them call themselves feminists, but they basically think, oh, this is now a Republican slash conservative issue. Like, oh, who's gonna stand up for my female only swimming team? We don't want to compete against people like that. That comes up all the time. And the Leslie who's TPA president, Ole Miss, she was already kind of going to meetings last fall, last spring, 2024, when Riley Gaines, the swimmer, came and spoke. That's when she threw herself into TPSA and then became the president.

[Noel King]

Simon, there's something that occurred to me while I was reading your really excellent reporting. When you are young, as these college kids are, and you're looking for leadership, you're looking for someone to follow, the question emerges. Do you follow the martyr, the person who has passed on, or do you follow who is still available, the person who's still on YouTube, on Twitter? And these young people are making that decision in real time, where do you think they're headed?

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Based on everything I saw, they are headed where their feed is headed. And it cannot be overemphasized how dominant Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes are in their feeds. It is not like these kids are born out of the womb, bigoted anti Semitic conspiracy theorists. But in a culture that rewards conspiracism and the appetite on the American right, the young American right for conspiracy is just bottomless all of a sudden. Absent clips of Charlie Kirk on his podcast every day or on the campus. You know, his greatest enemy, Nick Fuentes is there instead. And Fuentes, to some of these kids, has a dark charisma that they can't stay away from in some cases. And although the energy of the called groiper right it's very male, it comes for some of the women in my piece too. And in their radicalization, in their grief, in their search for someone else, almost like touching wet pain or almost like spiraling further down into whatever dark place they're in. They find themselves watching Fuentes and they find themselves watching the person that their leader, their old leader, never. He wouldn't even say his name. He wouldn't platform. He's the one person Charlie Kirk wouldn't have been. That's how extreme Charlie Kirk found him. And yet he's just there. The algorithm is giving him to them. And I started to hear it in the rhetoric of the kids I was talking to. Eventually they basically just came out and said yeah, everyone we know is watching him. We're watching him. Well he's funny, don't take him too seriously. He's a provocateur, he's an entertainer. He's not a role model like Charlie. Don't worry, we know that. But they're watching. By the middle end of December the discourse around Nick Fuentes influence was inescapable. And I started asking Leslie, well, well, you know, how does he factor into your life? And she told me that when she was sad, when she was feeling lonely, when ordinarily she would have scrolled over and seen what Charlie Kirk was up to, she couldn't help herself. She would, she'd sometimes just watch Nick instead.

[Noel King]

Simon Van Zylenwood There was so much more in his piece. You can find that at New York magazine. Consider subscribing perhaps their long form stuff is really second to none. Kelly Wessinger produced today's show. Go Tigers. Amina El Saadi edited Go Seahawks Bridger Dunigan and David Tadashore engineered and Andrea Lopez Cruzado checked the facts. I'm Noel King. It's today explained.

[Simon Van Zuylen-Wood]

Sam.