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What College Students Really Think of Charlie Kirk

New data from Generation Lab undercuts Trump’s mythmaking about his murdered ally, who was unquestionably a savvy organizer, even if he wasn’t at all popular on the campuses he loved to visit.

Charlie Kirk
Even though Kirk had a massive online following and powerful friends in the White House, it needs to be said that even among college students, Kirk was not popular at all. Photo: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Peter Hamby
September 16, 2025

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Charlie Kirk was certainly famous—in politics, on campuses, in the halls of Donald Trump’s White House. But I imagine that, for plenty of sports fans attending Major League Baseball or NFL games over the weekend, it must have been a tad confusing to peer up from the stands and see Kirk’s square-jawed face on stadium jumbotrons. A bunch of teams—from the New York Yankees to the Dallas Cowboys to the LSU Tigers—honored Kirk this way, with tributes and a moment of silence.