Today marks one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University at only 31 years old, and even a full year later I still have a hard time processing what the hell went down that tragic day. Charlie had built a career around going directly into places where he knew people would disagree with him, especially college campuses, where students could walk up to a microphone, challenge what he believed and tell him exactly why they thought he was wrong. He was outspoken, unapologetically conservative and obviously controversial, and you certainly didn’t have to agree with everything he said, but in my opinion that was part of what made what he did so important. We are supposed to be able to disagree in this country, whether the conversation is uncomfortable, heated or leaves us walking away thinking the other person’s argument was completely ridiculous, but the important part is that we still walk away. How boring would life be if we all thought the same, shared the same exact beliefs, experiences and values? On September 10, 2025, Charlie showed up expecting another debate and instead he was shot and killed, leaving behind a wife and two young children who expected their husband and dad to come home.

What happened afterward is something I haven’t forgotten either, because while millions of people across the political spectrum immediately condemned his murder, there were also people who mocked him, celebrated what happened and immediately started posting old clips of controversial things he had said as though his political opinions needed to be entered into evidence before they could decide whether his murder was tragic. I don’t care whether somebody is conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat or completely checked out of politics, because the idea that we need to examine someone’s voting record or political beliefs before deciding whether we’re allowed to have compassion after that person is murdered is on another level of insanity. Charlie was a 31-year-old husband and father who was killed while speaking on a college campus, and somehow even something as basic as acknowledging how horrific that was became another opportunity for people to pick political teams.

I also feel like there is a massive contradiction in the way we talk about love and acceptance in this country, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t see it. We constantly hear that we need to love everyone, show empathy, be inclusive and treat people with respect, and I agree with those principles, but in my opinion they become meaningless when they suddenly come with terms and conditions. Telling everyone to “love all” sounds great until the person standing across from you voted differently, practices a religion you don’t understand, supports a candidate you hate or holds an opinion that genuinely pisses you off. It’s incredibly easy to post about kindness and acceptance when you’re surrounded by people who already share your worldview, but the real test comes when you’re dealing with someone whose beliefs you cannot stand and you still recognize that person deserves basic dignity and respect.

We’ve watched political demonstrations supposedly centered around justice, peace and compassion become hostile, destructive and sometimes violent, and I think it’s wild when hatred suddenly gets excused because the people participating believe their cause is righteous enough. You cannot tell everybody else to lead with love while screaming hatred at someone because they’re wearing the wrong political hat, and you certainly cannot demand respect for differences while deciding that said differences are so unacceptable that the people holding them deserve intimidation or violence. And it’s literally the definition of hypocrisy to celebrate or rationalize the assassination of somebody whose politics you hated and then turn around and lecture everyone else about kindness and acceptance as though those things somehow belong together. In my opinion, they don’t—like at all.

What makes this even more disturbing is what is reportedly being planned for today, because Turning Point USA is returning to Utah Valley University, the same campus where Charlie was killed for a memorial marking the first anniversary of his death, and there have been reports of activists planning to protest the event. Reports surrounding those plans have even described an intention to make the experience extremely uncomfortable for people attending the memorial, and I genuinely cannot wrap my head around that. I understand peaceful protest and I will defend someone’s right to disagree with Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA or conservative politics, but deliberately going out of your way to make grieving people uncomfortable while they gather at the exact place where their friend, husband, father and colleague was assassinated crosses a line. There are literally hundreds of other days of the year to protest Charlie’s politics, Turning Point USA or conservative beliefs, but choosing the anniversary of his murder and the place where he died to antagonize people who simply want to remember him feels unbelievably cruel and completely unnecessary. You don’t have to mourn Charlie and you don’t even have to honor him, but allowing his family, friends and supporters the space to remember someone they loved shouldn’t be some impossible act of human decency. Again, where is this love, respect, equality and kindness y’all scream from the rooftops?

The Lindsay Clancy case has made me think about this contradiction even more, because three innocent children died at the hands of their mother while her defense has argued that severe postpartum mental illness affected her criminal responsibility. Mental illness and postpartum psychosis are definitely real and those issues absolutely deserve serious consideration in a courtroom, so I am not saying that anyone who believes those circumstances should be considered somehow supports the killing of children. What I am saying is that I find the contrast impossible to ignore. We are capable of having an incredibly complicated conversation about context, illness, responsibility and understanding after three children have been killed, yet some people couldn’t find enough basic decency to say that Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have been murdered because they disagreed with his political opinions. I feel like something is seriously wrong when we can search so deeply for understanding in one horrific situation while immediately reaching for justification when the victim in another represents politics we despise. Am I coming out of left field here? Come on—this seems like basic common decency 101. If your belief is that every human being deserves dignity, then every human being has to mean exactly that, including the conservative Christian guy whose politics make your blood boil. Otherwise, in my opinion, you’re not practicing tolerance at all; you’re simply deciding which people qualify for it.

Charlie wasn’t perfect, and frankly I don’t need him to have been perfect to defend his right to live. There were things Charlie said that angered people, positions he held that people found offensive and plenty of arguments where people thought he was completely wrong, but none of that is relevant to whether he deserved to go home to his family. If you thought Charlie was wrong, tell him he was wrong, and if you thought his arguments were stupid, make a better argument, because if you believed his politics were dangerous, you had every right to organize against him, and convince other people that you’re right. Charlie spent years putting microphones in front of people who disagreed with him and giving them an opportunity to challenge him directly, and I feel like that’s exactly how political disagreement in America is supposed to work.

What I find particularly disturbing is how comfortable we’ve become reducing human beings to political labels until we apparently forget there is an actual person underneath them. Charlie wasn’t simply “that conservative guy from Turning Point USA” to the people who loved him, because to his children he was Dad, to his wife he was her husband, to his parents he was their son and to his friends he was Charlie. His family didn’t lose a political commentator that afternoon, they lost the person they expected to spend the rest of their lives with, and I feel like that gets completely lost when everything becomes political. His children lost birthdays with their dad, Christmas mornings, vacations, graduations, family dinners, advice, inside jokes and thousands of completely ordinary moments that nobody outside their family would ever know about but would have meant everything to them. He was only 31 years old, and the fact that all of that was taken away because somebody decided political disagreement should be answered with violence is reprehensible.

Social media has turned disagreement into a mass pile-on, where one comment, one opinion or one mistake can suddenly invite hundreds or even thousands of people to attack someone at once, and instead of disagreeing with what a person actually said, people start digging through their entire life looking for another reason to hate them. I feel like we have become way too comfortable treating another human being as a target simply because the internet has collectively decided that person is wrong, offensive or on the “bad” side of an issue. People who constantly talk about kindness and mental health will sometimes join the same pile-on without even recognizing the contradiction, and that is so sad to me. There is a huge difference between holding somebody accountable, criticizing an opinion or saying you think an argument is completely insane and joining hundreds of strangers in trying to humiliate, intimidate or destroy the person behind it. At some point we stopped saying, “I disagree with you,” and started saying, “I disagree with you, therefore you are a terrible human being and everyone else should hate you too,” and I genuinely believe that mentality has helped create the political environment we are living in now.

That’s probably what frustrates me most one year later, because Charlie’s response to people who hated his worldview was usually pretty simple: come talk to me, take the microphone, make your argument and give me a chance to make mine. Sometimes Charlie made the better argument, sometimes the student standing across from him did, sometimes neither person changed their mind and I’m sure plenty of people walked away thinking the other person was completely insane, but they got to have the conversation. Nobody should expect political debate to always be comfortable or polite, because democracy can be messy, loud and frustrating, but I’ll take two Americans arguing with each other for an hour over one deciding the other shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

While Michael’s Jam is primarily about sports, music and entertainment, I feel that when something happens that genuinely affects me or makes me feel a certain way, regardless of the topic, I will always have the right to talk about it and express what I believe in a respectful manner. Michael’s Jam represents what I care about, what interests me and sometimes the topics I simply cannot stop thinking about and I never want this platform to become a place where I feel like I have to stay silent because a subject might make someone uncomfortable or create controversy. I don’t expect everyone reading this to share my politics, agree with my opinions or see the world exactly the way I do. Whether I’m talking about the Cowboys, a new album, something happening in entertainment or an event like Charlie’s assassination that genuinely affected me, this is still Michael’s Jam, and I want it to remain an honest reflection of what matters to me.

When I remember Charlie today, I’m not asking anyone to pretend he was perfect, rewrite everything he ever said or suddenly become a conservative because he was murdered. I’m remembering a 31-year-old husband and father who believed deeply in what he stood for, wasn’t afraid to defend those beliefs directly in front of people who challenged him and should have had decades ahead of him to continue doing exactly that. I feel for his wife, Erika Kirk, I feel for his children and I feel for everyone who woke up on September 10, 2025 expecting Charlie to still be part of their lives when that day was over, because politics aside, that is a horrible loss for any family to experience.

Today, one year later, I still believe Charlie should have left Utah Valley University that afternoon, gone home to his family and woken up the next morning ready to debate somebody else who thought everything he believed was ridiculous, because in my opinion that’s the America worth defending. It’s an America where we can disagree fiercely, vote completely differently, challenge each other, get pissed off at each other and still understand that the person standing across from us is a human being whose life has value. I hope Charlie’s death continues to remind us that disagreement should lead to more conversation rather than less, and that all the words we throw around about love, acceptance and respect don’t mean much if we abandon them the second they’re tested by someone we don’t like.

Today should be about remembering a life that ended far too soon, allowing the people who loved and admired Charlie the space to grieve and recognizing that treating another person with basic human decency has never required agreeing with them. I still cannot believe Charlie’s opportunity to live the rest of his life was taken away from him, and I will never believe that someone’s political opinions, no matter how controversial they may be, justify taking away their chance to go home to the people who love them.

Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk. October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025.

Charlie Kirk 📸 Google Images