Max Blumenthal has accused Turning Point USA of deceptively presenting the slain conservative activist as a regime change supporter
Journalist Max Blumenthal has accused the conservative group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) of distorting the stance of its late co-founder Charlie Kirk to defend the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Kirk, a well-known podcaster, was killed by a sniper last September while speaking at a college in Utah. His widow, Erika Kirk, has since taken over the leadership of TPUSA.
On Monday, two days after the US started conducting airstrikes in Iran, TPUSA posted a video on X of Kirk praising the Westernization of Iran that persisted until the shah was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “If you are serious about actually protecting human rights, you should want to make Iran Western again,” Kirk says in the clip.
“How do you know it’s going to be better? Yeah, the ayatollah is awful but maybe he’s one of the few guys that can keep that country together and not have a 90-million-person civil war,” Kirk said on his podcast last year, adding that the downfall of the government could trigger sectarian violence and a wave of refugees into Europe.
Trump has publicly supported the protests and riots that began in Iran in December and urged Iranians opposing the government to use the ongoing airstrikes as an opportunity to seize power.