Charlie Kirk quotes, Cardinal Dolan, and Saint Paul
[one Cardinal Dolan quote and a bunch of Charlie Kirk quotes]
Update: As of Wednesday, September 24, around 8:00 AM Eastern, I have adjusted the comment settings for this post to paying subscribers only.
Beyond the allusive comments in my homily a week ago Sunday, I had not planned to write about Charlie Kirk at all—until the New York Archdiocese’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan went on Fox News and offered a glowing quasi-canonization.
This guy is a modern-day St. Paul… He was a missionary, he’s an evangelist, he’s a hero. He’s one I think that knew what Jesus meant when he said, “The truth will set you free.”
What can I say about these appalling remarks without writing a full-on longread? Perhaps the best thing I can do is to let Charlie Kirk speak for himself.1 I will confine myself to briefly observing that more than one thing can be true.
Charlie Kirk was a human being created in God’s image and redeemed with all of humanity by Jesus Christ. He had inherent human dignity, essential value, and an inalienable right to respect from his fellow human beings. He was my neighbor, as are his widow and his children. The day he was killed, my family remembered him and his in our evening Rosary, along with those affected by the Evergreen, Colorado school shooting.
His murder was a heinous crime, above all against Kirk and his family, but also against society and the common good. Every act of political violence makes further political violence more likely and puts everyone at greater risk.
If invoking the name of Saint Paul means anything, it should mean publicly repenting of heinously wrong and harmful opinions and actions. Anyone who dies still advocating heinously wrong, offensive, and harmful views should not be compared to Saint Paul.
On Kirk’s public advocacy of heinously wrong, offensive, and harmful views throughout his career, see the quotations below. Kirk did not publicly repent of these views, which are still championed today by the machine he built and in his name.
Kirk’s inflammatory rhetoric and offensive claims are likely one reason that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has not issued a statement on this highly publicized murder. They may also have influenced Pope Leo XIV’s decision not to make a personal, public statement of condolence, instead privately telling U.S. ambassador Brian Burch that he was praying for the Kirk family, as reported by press office director Matteo Bruni.
Incidentally, should anyone wish for any reason to contact the Archdiocese of New York for any reason, it’s not hard to do.
Charlie Kirk in his own words
On Pope Francis: a “Marxist” who says “crazy things” and is “maybe not the pope”
I can’t get over the idea of this Marxist who calls himself the head of your church being a representation of Christ our Lord. I mean that as someone who loves the Catholic impact on the world, that says it openly, and by the fruit you will know it, and you have very Marxist fruit. Why should I care at all what that guy from Argentina has to say? Well, because you care what your pastor has to say, yes, but if my pastor starts saying crazy things, I find a new pastor. So if your pope starts saying crazy things, maybe he’s not the pope and maybe that’s a bad representation.2
On Joe Biden: a “corrupt tyrant” who deserves the death penalty for “crimes against America”
“Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled, Alzheimer’s, corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty, for his crimes against America.”3
On people of color as predators
Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target White people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.4
The Haitians in Huntsville that are raping your women, hunting you down at night…It’s only going to get worse… they’re having a field day, and they’re coming for your daughter next.… They’re gonna get even worse. There will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians brought into Alabama, and they will become your masters.5
On Black women and intellectual incapacity
I started to write some commentary on these quotations, and on what Kirk did and didn’t say—and why, while he didn’t say perhaps the most racist and sexist thing he could possibly have said, what he said is still incredibly racist and sexist. But then I reminded myself that I am not mounting an argument here: I am merely letting Mr. Kirk speak for himself. Readers who can’t see on their own what is wrong with these quotations are owed no explanation from me.
If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. But now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us. … they’re saying, “I’m only here because of affirmative action.” We know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a White person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.6
If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?7
On Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act
After previously hailing King as “a hero” and “a civil rights icon,”8 Kirk “repented” of his normie views on King, calling him “a bad guy” who didn’t believe the “one good thing” he said.9 He also opposed the Civil Rights Act, calling it a way to “re-found the country” and “a way to get rid of the First Amendment.”10
[King] was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.11
We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act.12
Kirk on Jewish money subverting society
Jewish donors have a lot of explaining to do. A lot of decoupling to do. Because Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open-border, neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews.13
Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years.14
Kirk on the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory: “The left” won’t stop until “you and your children” are “eliminated”
In Soviet Russia, kulak was a label the Soviets gave to their designated class enemies.… In America, the regime is creating a new kulak. The new kulak are ordinary middle Americans. Rural White people are the acceptable target of American life.… This is why the left literally needs endless, constantly increasing migration from the third world.… The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace White rural America with something different.… The same way that Joseph Stalin went after the kulaks, they wanna go after you.… You’re the problem. Didn’t you know it? You believe in God, country, family, faith, and freedom, and they won’t stop until you and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.15
Among other lists and resources I used in compiling the list below, I am grateful to my friend Emma Fox Wilson for her own compilation of Kirk quotations on Facebook—and for providing the URL for the Archdiocese of New York contact webpage.
“Catholicism v. Protestantism Debate Ft. Michael Knowles” (Charlie Kirk YouTube channel, 3 January 2025). Kirk also accused Pope Francis of “falling into the … heretical trap” of “thinking they can win people by conceding everything, and saying what the weakest people want to hear.”
After the election of Pope Leo XIV, Kirk also accused “Mr. Prevost, the new pope” of “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.” See The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 May 2025 (via MediaMatters). (HT Letters from Leo — the American Pope & US Politics)
The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 July 2023 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 27 September 2024 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 14 July 2024 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2023 (via MediaMatters).
It seems to me a pretty good bet that the “one good thing” that Kirk acknowledges that King said, but which he posits King didn’t really believe, is the famous line from “I Have a Dream” about people being judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Because, of course, King believed in systemic racism and in acknowledging how race affects outcomes, which I suppose from Kirk’s perspective means King “really” believed in judging people by race. Because King believed that people being judged by race is a thing.
See note 5.
“Viral Claims about Charlie Kirk’s words,” Factcheck.org. For what it’s worth, Pope St. John Paul II called King’s role in the Civil Rights struggle “providential”:
Today as we recall those who with Christian vision opted for non-violence as the only truly effective approach for ensuring and safeguarding human dignity, we cannot but think of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and of the providential role he played in contributing to the rightful human betterment of black Americans and therefore to the improvement of American society itself.
The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 October 2023 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 7 November 2023 (via MediaMatters).
The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024 (via Media Matters).