The Right Finally Gets Their “George Floyd Moment”

Outside the “Turning Point USA” headquarters in Phoenix, AZ — September 16, 2025. Photo via Getty Images

JD Vance selflessly filled in Monday afternoon as guest host of “The Charlie Kirk Show.” Just like seemingly every other Republican politician in the country, the Vice President professed what a great “friend” he had been of Charlie’s. Everyone from the Speaker of the House, to the FBI Director, to the Attorney General has proclaimed Charlie to have been a “dear friend” of theirs, and it would be extremely rude to wonder if any of these “friendships” were transactionally political in nature, rather than borne of a deep emotional bond. (Not to be outdone, RFK Jr. declared that he and Charlie were “soul mates.”)

During commercial breaks for radio affiliates on the Vance-hosted broadcast, viewers of the Rumble stream were treated to video clips of Charlie holding court on his many college “debate” tours. One clip in particular stood out. No, it wasn’t one of those classic mega-viral moments in which he totally DESTROYED a gender-fluid 19 year old, as she embarrassingly stammered her way through a Trans in Sports point. It was something much more banal, but in a way, much more revelatory.

Charlie was locked in a back-and-forth with some guy over the now largely-forgotten “Signalgate” story, which turned out to be the first scandal of the Second Trump Administration. Or at least the first quasi-scandal. For those with understandably short memories for such things, in March 2025, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently added to a group chat on Signal, the encrypted messaging app, with top members of the Trump Administration as they were choreographing the launch of a new bombing campaign in Yemen. One memorable exchange featured JD Vance replying with one word, “Excellent,” the minute he was told by soon-to-be-fired National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, that the first US bombing salvo had collapsed an entire Yemeni apartment building. Apparently, Vance needed few or no details to exclaim that this development was “Excellent.” Waltz replied with American Flag and “fist bump” emojis. Vance had previously texted that he would “say a prayer for victory,” and the VP’s prayers were evidently answered by the news that a residential structure had been pulverized.

To the extent that whole episode ought to have been a scandal, the real scandalous part was that these top government officials, who knew basically nothing about Yemen and could barely even articulate what the military’s mission was supposed to be, were so flippant and cavalier about the new foreign war they were mindlessly launching. The particular shallowness of a reputed “non-interventionist” like Vance, who swiftly joined the pro-war cheerleading squad, was a useful insight. But of course, that’s not what the “scandal” came to be about. Instead it was the same recycled tedium over the proper storage and transmission of “classified information” — the quintessential DC faux-scandal.

So anyway, this is what Charlie Kirk was talking about with the guy in the hat, who was professing to be deeply concerned about the Trump Administration’s classified information protocols:

Certainly, the exchange was nowhere near as virally tantalizing as classics such as Charlie Kirk Destroys Pro-Trans Pierced-Face Leftist, or Charlie Kirk Wrecks Deluded Pro-Trans Long-Haired Hippy. It also didn’t pack the argumentative punch of other electrifying Charlie “debate” lines that our children and grandchildren will undoubtedly learn one day, when they gather ‘round for lessons on the slain truth-teller. Such as: “Do you know who Richard Spencer is, the white supremacist? Do you know he just endorsed Kamala Harris? David Duke, the former leader of the KKK, also endorsed Kamala Harris.”

But the “Signalgate” dialogue was nonetheless instructive — because it highlighted exactly who Charlie Kirk was, and what function he performed.

“I’m sure you’ve been added to group chats with 30 or 40 people sometimes,” Charlie told the hatted guy, who was very troubled by the improper retention of classified info. “And you enter in with trust that every acronym is actually a government official.”

“Obviously, that will not happen again,” Charlie assured the guy. “Just so we’re clear, Signal was an approved chat by the Biden Administration. It was an approved secure channel by the federal government.”

Why is this mundane exchange notable? Because if you notice, there’s zero actual principle at stake — other than Charlie’s supreme imperative to defend the Trump Administration at every turn. The only operative principle here, for Charlie, was that the government needed defending, and he would supply that defense. Whether the Signal app was an approved communications channel had nothing intrinsically to do with “conservatism,” or “nationalism,” or defeating the Woke Agenda, or any of the other ideological conceits that Charlie would sometimes espouse. It was simply what had to be argued that day, by pure happenstance, in support of the Executive Branch — of which Charlie was considered to be an honorary member. That’s why he can essentially speak on their behalf, like a spokesman. “Obviously, that will not happen again,” he says — with apparent first-hand knowledge of the post-Signalgate policy adjustments the administration was internally making. Acting as a government mouthpiece, while not a formal government employee, gave Charlie special utility to those in power. He could passionately make the government’s case for them, but not be constrained by the limitations that might be attendant to actual government employment. It’s very clear, then, why he was so beloved by every Republican politician and administration official. He was their unshakeable PR surrogate. So of course he would be considered a “dear friend” by the Republican political class, out of gratitude for the coveted political services he provided, free of charge.

It’s therefore easy to see why this new outburst of GOP “cancel culture” has erupted on Charlie’s behalf. Those in power — his “friends” — have extra motivation to avenge him, for obvious reasons. He was considered an indispensable member of their governing and communications apparatus. When he was shot, it was like a senior member of the Trump Administration was shot. “I saw him at the White House constantly,” said Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General. “I think he worked in [the] transition every day, in one place or another, doing one thing or another. Very much the Trump Administration has his imprint,” said Susie Wiles, chief-of-staff. “Charlie Kirk was a critical part in getting us the right people, in staffing,” said JD Vance.

Again, in a free society with lots of billionaire largesse floating around, Charlie Kirk had every right to be an influence-peddling government functionary, and play this public communications role for his “friends.” But when JD Vance gets behind the mic and melodramatically proclaims that the best way to honor Charlie “is to shine the light of truth like a torch in the very darkest places… for what was he, if not a man who told the truth?” — this is when we’re being doused with bucket-loads of nonsense. Anyone who’s rational, even if they admired Charlie on some level, should be able to acknowledge that his highest aspiration was not “truth,” but serving his powerful “friends” in the Trump Administration and the Republican Party. Yes, he may have been a skillful partisan operative, but he was an operative all the same, and the ideal of serving partisan political interests is inimical to the ideal of truth-seeking. Yet we are now being commanded to affirm that Charlie did the latter, and was martyred for it. And if you are deemed to have unduly denigrated his storied legacy, “You’re going to be held accountable, and we’re going to publicly shame you too,” says the Attorney General, Pam Bondi — who has also confided that she and Charlie “talked on the phone a lot.” The last time they saw each other in person, she said, he gave her a “giant hug.”

According to the country’s top law enforcement official, Bondi, “It’s not free speech when you come out and you say, ‘It’s OK what happened to Charlie.’ We’re firing people. We’re seeing people online who are posting hate speech — they should be shut down. They should be stopped from doing this. And they should know there are consequences for your actions.”

First of all, it definitely is free speech to come out and say “It’s OK what happened to Charlie.” Such a statement might be widely regarded as crass, repellant, enraging, or despicable — but that’s why we have the First Amendment. To protect even the most objectionable speech. There is nothing whatsoever about this hypothetical statement that would take it outside the bounds of existing Supreme Court precedent, which safeguards even the most reviled political speech. You are literally allowed to protest the funerals of dead US soldiers with signs that read “You’re Going to Hell” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” according to the Supreme Court. Someone hypothetically saying “It’s OK what happened to Charlie” would not even come close to the standard set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) which bars the government from punishing political speech, except for the most narrowly circumscribed instances in which that speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Generally cheering the death of Charlie Kirk, if you were inclined to do that, would be nowhere close to meeting this “incitement” threshold. That’s why you’re allowed to call for violent revolution in the United States. So yes, you can celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk as well. (What you can’t do is say, “Hey you, go kill that guy over there, just like they killed Charlie Kirk.”)

At the same time, based on everything I’ve seen, these constitutional technicalities are basically moot. Very few, if any, of the individuals so far punished for their political speech in relation to Charlie Kirk has actually celebrated his murder. I’m sure there are some kooks and hotheads out there who might’ve done this — it’s a big country — but virtually all the examples I’ve seen contain no explicit celebration of the murder, and instead feature political speech that the newly emboldened Right-Wing Cancel Culture enforcers don’t like, or want to claim is somehow violence-promoting.

Perhaps the most egregious casualty thus far is Darren Michael, an erstwhile professor at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. When I first heard this person had been fired for saying something bad about Charlie Kirk, I assumed it must have been legitimately wacky. After all, he is a Theater Professor, and Theater Professors can be very wacky. Instead, what he did couldn’t have been more anodyne. He simply posted a screenshot of a headline of a 2023 Newsweek article:

At which point Marsha Blackburn, the Republican Senator from Tennessee, who is also running for governor and thus would have direct political influence over the state university system, tweeted at Austin Peay administrators, demanding that something be done for this grave crime of posting an article headline on Facebook. Within a matter of hours, Darren Michael was indeed fired from the teaching job he had held since 2007, on the grounds that his post was “insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death.” Interpreted that way by whom, exactly? Marsha Blackburn? This is just outrageous. If this isn’t “Cancel Culture” — what is? Why don’t these vindictive right-wingers just acknowledge that they never had any qualm with “Cancel Culture” as such — they just wanted to be the ones doing the “canceling”?

In 2020, you risked summary “cancellation” if you tweeted the wrong word about George Floyd, or “white supremacy,” or gender pronouns, or other such faddish concepts that were sweeping the left/liberal NGO and media complex at the time. In 2025, JD Vance is urging that all right-minded citizens be on the lookout for anyone who might express insufficiently reverential political opinions about Charlie Kirk. “Call them out,” Vance implores. “And hell, call their employer.”

This is just a carbon-copy of the left/liberal “Cancel Culture” that raged a few years ago, and which I thought we all agreed had “gone too far.” But apparently not the embittered, vengeful Right: they just wanted to control the means of cancellation. Which they now do. And they’re on a rampage.

Gov. Gregg Abbott of Texas demanded the instant expulsion of some random student at Texas State University who was captured on video being impolite about Charlie Kirk. It didn’t take long for the president of the university to announce an urgent manhunt was underway to identify the perpetrator in the video — as if some sensational crime had been committed. The University of Mississippi fired an employee for posting that she “had no prayers to offer Kirk,” because she didn’t like his political views. The Mississippi State Auditor then complained via tweet, and boom, she was immediately fired. A neurologist at the University of Miami was quickly canned after she tweeted, “What was done to Charlie Kirk has been done to countless Palestinian babies, children, girls, boys, women and men not just over the past two years of the ongoing genocide, but decades.” A bit cringe? Sure. Cause for instant termination of employment and public censure? What??? University of Miami administrators even had the gall to put out a statement affirming that “freedom of speech is a fundamental right” — while announcing that the woman was being fired for her political speech.

What seems to be going on here is that Republican politicians in Republican-leaning states have seized a political opportunity to place themselves at the forefront of avenging Charlie Kirk, the fallen right-wing hero — and what better way to go about doing that than by spitefully hounding unsympathetic public employees in small left/liberal university enclaves. Marsha Blackburn has a Republican gubernatorial primary to win in Tennessee, so of course she’s going to do whatever she possibly can to garishly lionize Charlie, and punish his detractors. Even in death, Charlie still plays the role of valuable political functionary.

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Among the people Pam Bondi has vowed to “hold accountable” and “publicly shame” are Office Depot employees who were captured on video possibly mishandling a request to print Charlie Kirk vigil posters, although as usual, it’s not entirely clear what happened from the fragments that have been posted. But regardless — really? We’re back to destroying the lives of service workers who didn’t exemplify the correct political etiquette? This is like George Floyd / COVID mania all over again, except this time the individuals calling for “accountability” and “public shaming” include the Attorney General, with the full weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus behind her unhinged threats. At least in 2020, you could theoretically just ignore the emotionally volatile journalists and NGO activists demanding that everyone take part in their bizarre racial cleansing rituals. It’s a bit harder to ignore the Department of Justice.

And before anyone tries to claim that I’m personally hypocritical here, because I must’ve somehow supported or never criticized the previous iterations of “cancel culture,” you couldn’t be more hilariously wrong. Please, do two seconds of googling before you make a fool of yourself. I was literally swarmed and confronted by Portland protester freaks for daring to do basic journalism. Black-clad “antifa” thugs snatched my phone, threatened to curbstomp me, and chased me away. I was perhaps the only journalist in America who spent months traveling the entire length of the country covering the protests, riots, and destruction. I was at war with half of the online media industry over their insane emotional blackmail tactics. They would have absolutely loved to “cancel” me, but they couldn’t, because I had no boss for them to tattle to. (And I still don’t — tough luck, JD.) Why Media Liberals Have To Lie About “Cancel Culture” is the headline of an article I wrote for this Substack in April 2021. Here’s a June 2020 article I wrote for Unherd, entitled How US journalism lost its spine: the media is petrified of showing even mild scepticism of woke orthodoxy. I didn’t personally write that headline, but it’s accurate enough.

So please, spare me the “hypocrisy” lectures. Spare me the hand-wringing that I’m now bad because I have the ability to re-calibrate when political circumstances change. Sorry that I’m not interested in remaining permanently stuck in 2021, which I know is a shtick that a lot of people have found very lucrative. Forgive me for recognizing that the Right has now taken power, and among their first orders of business was to launch a government-wide censorship crusade — first on behalf of Israel, now on behalf of Charlie Kirk. Sorry if it triggers you to be told that the Right is currently the main threat to Free Speech, despite the utter bullshit that was relentlessly shoveled into your YouTube and X feeds during the campaign last year:

And sorry if you don’t want to hear that the problem starts at the top, despite the laughable Executive Order that Trump signed hours after he took office on January 20, supposedly to “restore Freedom of Speech” — when he and his sycophants have been doggedly doing the exact opposite.

This morning, when he was asked about Pam Bondi declaring her intent to vigorously go after “hate speech,” Trump bragged that he had already successfully sued ABC News for engaging in “a form of hate speech” — and he’d extracted a $15 million settlement directly into his own personal coffers. For the record, I actually agree that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos committed journalistic malfeasance when he falsely said Trump had been “found liable for rape.” Nonetheless, Trump’s retributive glee does suggest a level of comfort with using government power to inflict punishment for political speech he doesn’t like, on the newly-concocted grounds that it could constitute “hate speech.” While his comment today about ABC came across as semi-joking, Trump clearly had no desire to rebuke Bondi for her “hate speech” jihad. In fact, he repeats over and over what a fantastic job he thinks she’s doing.

Let’s remember, the central reason Trump appointed Bondi in the first place was her willingness and eagerness to serve, first and foremost, as a loyal stooge to Trump. (Kind of like Charlie Kirk, albeit with prosecutorial power.) If that sounds like a shrill MSNBC-style attack line to some readers, I get it, but please cite a single other reason why Pam Bondi would’ve been nominated by Trump as a second-choice AG pick after another devoted Trump stooge, Matt Gaetz, had to bow out. Bondi and Gaetz were both people whose entire identity as public figures was singularly devoted to pleasing and ass-kissing Trump. Certainly, it’s doubtful that Trump would have nominated either of them for their legal acumen — Gaetz was barely even a practicing lawyer. Bondi had been out of office as Florida Attorney General for six years, and in the interim had filled her time with such stimulating pursuits as Qatar-funded “Human Trafficking” lobbyist and Fox News pundit.

So yes, in other words, it’s fair to say anything Bondi does has the enthusiastic backing of Trump. Including her latest “hate speech” vendetta. Recall, Trump rattled off one of his wildest-ever social media posts, which is really saying something for him, on July 12 — specifically for the purpose of defending Bondi, who had come under criticism by so-called “MAGA influencers,” or as Trump put it, his “boys” and in some cases, “gals.” The gals included Laura Loomer who, in the wake of Bondi’s epic bungling of the “Epstein Files,” had amusingly taken to calling the Attorney General “Scam Blondi.” In this way, Laura was merely emulating Trump’s signature nicknaming style, but he didn’t seem to appreciate it much. Instead, he posted a manic wall-of-text on Truth Social, inveighing that his “boys and gals” — which at the time would have prominently included Charlie Kirk — were not standing steadfast enough behind Bondi.

Because it was at Charlie Kirk’s famed “Turning Point USA” gathering that the likes of Dave Smith were being permitted to come onstage and declare — as though proven fact — that Trump had just actively covered up “a giant child rapist ring.” Conference attendees, who otherwise adulate Trump to the point of absurdity, nonetheless saw fit to clap like seals for Dave Smith’s preposterous statement — impugning their Favorite President as a child-rape enabler. That must’ve been some world-historic cognitive dissonance. Imagine hooting and hollering for the idea that the President is actively covering up a massive pedophile ring, while also happily parading around in your red MAGA Hat, and not perceiving any tension.

In any event, Trump was happy to flamboyantly denounce and disown his most hardcore supporters on behalf of Pam Bondi, because he thinks she’s just that fantastic. “She’ll go down as the greatest Attorney General we’ve had,” Trump said on August 21. “I really mean it too.”

“Pam Bondi — people don’t know what a star she is. She’s incredible,” Trump said on September 12.

So if you don’t like the fact that Bondi is promising to aggressively criminalize “hate speech,” please don’t insult our intelligence and try to posit some distance between her and Trump, because that whole Trump-absolving pivot is beyond pathetic at this point. Also pathetic is still brainlessly regurgitating RFK Jr., that firehose of unremitting propaganda, who was shameless enough to appear on the JD Vance show yesterday and declare that what he and his “soul mate” Charlie had most bonded over was their “total commitment to free speech.” This after RFK has spent months spearheading an intergovernmental effort to punish political speech deemed intolerably critical of Israel. And on that very same show, Vance gave one of the most rousing endorsements of Right-Wing Cancel Culture (aka, censorship) you’ll ever hear — calling for the political speech of private citizens to be monitored, snitched on, and punished. The audacity of the spectacle would almost be funny, if it wasn’t so pernicious.

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Schools across Oklahoma today were ordered to observe a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk on the ground that he promoted “meaningful debate.” But having now watched several of these vaunted “debates,” which tend to be accompanied by a smug headline and sleazy YouTube thumbnail, they’re probably among the least “meaningful” examples of public expression I’ve ever witnessed. What Kirk did was a cheap imitation of “debate,” designed to humiliate hapless college sophomores, whose beguiled facial expressions could then be used to generate viral slop content and revenue. No one authentically interested in cultivating substantive “debate” would conduct themselves like this. If anything, it gives “debate” a bad name. That said, yes: the participants were adults, even if we might colloquially refer to them as “college kids,” and they participated voluntarily. So in a free society, everyone is entitled to take part in these clown-show “debating” exercises if they really want to. However, living in a free society also means we don’t have to just sit idly by and let government agents browbeat us into complying with their contrived beatification rituals — where we’re all supposed to nod our heads and solemnly agree that Charlie Kirk has been inducted into the national pantheon of martyred truth-tellers. If it’s so obvious that Charlie is worthy of this distinction, why don’t we honor what people claim his legacy is, and have a proper debate?

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