She Was a Charlie Kirk Disciple. She Knows How Democrats Can Win Back Young Republicans.

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On Sunday night, President Donald Trump eulogized far-right conservative activist Charlie Kirk, describing him as a “martyr” and blaming his assassination on the “radical left.” Minutes before, Kirk’s wife had offered a very different address, saying that her husband would have forgiven his killer. “The answer to hate is not hate,” Erika Kirk said. “The answer, we know from the Gospel, is love and always love.”

Feeling the need to contradict the grieving widow, Trump told the gathered mourners and viewers at home that, unlike Kirk, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” The bizarre, five-hour-long spectacle didn’t come as a surprise to Caroline Stout. In fact it felt like a fitting end to Kirk’s bombastic political career, which was largely defined by his work with his ultra-right-wing political group Turning Point USA. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this would be what he’d want,” Stout told me. As an ex-TPUSA staffer, there was a time when Stout was an ardent Kirk supporter, awestruck by his charisma and wit, just like the tens of thousands who showed up to Kirk’s memorial. She sees things differently now.

The story of Stout’s political transformation is instructive for those who are wondering how to bridge what seems in this moment like an unfathomable political divide. Her story also offers insights into Kirk’s outsize role shaping that divide and how he might respond to the attack on free speech that has been undertaken in his name since his death. Stout met Kirk for the first time in 2014 when he was speaking to a group of young Texas conservatives huddled in a small room of a civic center in Harris County. Kirk presciently explained how he believed the era of the statesman was over and that what Americans really wanted were dynamic personalities over sleepy policymakers. Stout, who was 17 years old at the time, was enamored by Kirk’s ability to speak with confidence and zeal. “He seemed so smart and personable and successful and I was excited about the opportunity to fight alongside him,” she told me. On that day, Stout quietly aspired to be just like Kirk, who was just a few years her elder.

To join Kirk’s cause seemed natural for Stout, who grew up in conservative Texas with family and friends who mostly identified as devout Republicans. When she went off to college at Texas A&M University, Stout helped establish the school’s TPUSA chapter. But during her sophomore year, while Stout was an editor of the group’s national news website, at the time named Hypeline, she started to realize the stories she was in charge of publishing sounded more and more outlandish. Opinion pieces claimed Christian conservative students at campuses across the country were perpetually under attack, a common refrain of Kirk’s career. “But I don’t feel under attack,” Stout told me.

“If they’re twisting things, then are other media organizations doing that too? Like is Fox News not right?” Stout said. It was the beginning of an uncomfortable journey of self-discovery, where Stout wrangled with the philosophy TPUSA sold to her at 17 and the morals and values she thought she believed in. Questioning her political ideology was, for Stout, akin to a crisis of faith. “In the Evangelical world, you are a Republican or conservative almost as a mandate from God,” Stout, now 28 years old, explained. “When you question your political views, it can be perceived as you doubting God.” Indeed, her political transition involved a religious one, as well. Today, Stout follows a nondenominational church that speaks out against Christian nationalism.

In July, months before her former boss was tragically assassinated, Stout published a Substack where she shared her journey of leaving the conservative movement. At first, TPUSA gave her belonging and joy, something she desperately sought as a shy teenager who constantly felt like “just a background character.” But as she began questioning what TPUSA really stood for, she discovered a level of “nastiness” that appeared to thrive on “othering people, on ‘trolling,’ on making points at the expense of any sense of humanity.”

For Stout and thousands of young people across the country, Kirk offered a community with a simple message: Fiscal responsibility and limited government. It was easy to comprehend and consistent with the GOP’s age-old platform, but now it was coming from the mouth of a charismatic teenager who grew famous for his debate style. Kirk would post up on college campuses and invite students to debate him with the prompt “Prove me wrong.” The strategy was intended to open up dialogue between people across the political spectrum, but also helped TPUSA garner new supporters. In the beginning, Stout believes Kirk’s intentions were to enable good-faith discussions, but now the concept seems disingenuous.

“You have someone who’s in his early 30s going and talking with college kids who have not spent the past 10 years debating and arguing,” Stout said. “It’s that fast-talking, interrupting kind of debate where you’re not trying to actually change anyone’s mind. You’re trying to log these crafted talking points and point out inconsistencies in a way that doesn’t actually make any sort of point.”

Since his assassination, Kirk’s divisive style of debate has opened up a fierce conversation about what free speech really means, and who it is for. Suddenly those who spoke critically of Kirk were being abruptly fired or canceled, including late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Shortly after Kirk’s death, Kimmel joked that the far right was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” After that episode aired, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested ABC could face regulatory action if it did not take action on Kimmel, prompting the network to suspend the comedian’s show. By Monday, Kimmel’s show had been reinstated.

To Stout, this politicization of Kirk’s death in a farcical fight over free speech may have been exactly what he wanted. “I don’t think we can look past the fact that his entire career and life was built on politicization and promoting whatever values Turning Point was pushing at the time,” Stout argued. “Just judging from all of his actions, I wouldn’t be surprised if this would be what he’d want.”

Kirk launched TPUSA in 2012 when he was just 18 years old, shortly after he graduated from high school in the suburbs of Chicago. That same year, Kirk pitched Republican megadonor Foster Friess, one of the first to embrace Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential bid, and it worked. Friess donated $10,000 to TPUSA. Since 2012, TPUSA has raised nearly $400 million under Kirk’s leadership, and today there are nearly 800 TPUSA chapters at colleges across the country and over 1,000 high school clubs. It’s been a wildly successful endeavor, credited with delivering a surprising number of younger voters to Trump during last year’s presidential election. Kirk’s death has galvanized major Republican donors who have pledged to double their usual donations to TPUSA, while a spokesperson for the group said it had received 54,000 inquiries about opening up new chapters.

Though Kirk is no longer here to run TPUSA himself, Stout believes the organization will be more united in the wake of his death. It has the infrastructure already in place, and not just physically in schools. Kirk published two books and has a third one forthcoming, plus his talk show, The Charlie Kirk Show, has jumped to the No. 1 spot on Apple Music’s podcast chart in the wake of his murder. And just this month, the U.S. Department of Education announced a partnership with TPUSA where Kirk’s organization will develop civics programming for schools across the country, something that will enable his influence for years to come.

Money and support for TPUSA grew in recent years, despite Kirk’s troubling messaging, so it doesn’t seem like anything done in his name will immediately change that trajectory. Kirk, when he was alive, consistently disparaged Black Americans, justified gun violence in the name of protecting the Second Amendment, pushed Islamophobia, and villainized immigrants. Last year, Kirk went so far as to say he would demand his 10-year-old daughter continue a pregnancy even if it were conceived via rape.

“I think where Turning Point really has an upper hand with reaching people is when you’re in your late teens and early 20s,” Stout said. “You do not have the context, life experience, or nuance that go into forming a political opinion.” When TPUSA approaches a college student, it’s offering a “perfectly packaged political ideology” that doesn’t require much input. It is centered on basic conservative principles that are easy to buy into: limited government, free speech, fiscal responsibility, market-based health care. Accept this ideology and one is granted entry into a group filled with like-minded young people. Armed with resources and talking points, suddenly an amateur college student sounds and feels like the smartest person in the room.

It’s a scenario Stout found herself in a decade ago. Upon entering college, she had an overwhelming desire to find a role that would give her a sense of validation. “Unlike high school cliques, in the political world, you didn’t have to be pretty, athletic, funny, or cool,” Stout recounted in her Substack. “You just had to agree.”

It was 2016 when Stout began to question this path. She was a sophomore who had worked for TPUSA for about a year. It took time for Stout to allow herself to question not just TPUSA’s intentions, but the entire conservative movement. “Before then, any skepticism I had I would tell myself, Oh no. I can’t have liberal thoughts, that’s wrong. That’s morally wrong.” At the very same moment, political division within the U.S. was rising, as Trump was actively running for president and using rhetoric like “lock her up!” to denigrate his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, advocating for building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico—also characterizing Mexican immigrants as rapists—and none of it sat well with Stout, who now believes in gun safety policy measures, humane immigration reform, and labor rights.

“I was raised to believe in treating people well and with dignity. Then we have the right latching onto language that is inherently undignifying, demonizing and otherizing people,” Stout said. “That’s when I started to really dig into that.” While going through this political awakening, Stout was also studying political science, which gave her insight into different methods of governance and how other countries operate. Suddenly, the U.S. did not seem like a bastion of liberalism compared to the rest of the world.

By the end of Stout’s sophomore year, she quietly asked to be taken off TPUSA’s staff so she could focus on her schoolwork. Letting go of numerous close friendships that had been built on of a shared love and loyalty for TPUSA was tough. “It felt lonely too because my family is very conservative and this wasn’t really something that I could walk with them through. It felt isolating,” Stout said.

It has been nearly a decade since then, and today Stout is an attorney practicing commercial litigation while also serving as communications director for Democrat Mark Nair’s congressional campaign in Texas’ 13^th District. She also has plans to start her own podcast where she’ll use her legal training to give people insight into how they can engage in political activism.

Back in July, Stout posted a TikTok where she explains how she essentially deprogrammed herself from far-right ideology, and it went viral—it has over 3 million views. She’s received hundreds of responses from former MAGA conservatives who had similar political awakenings. Former TPUSA staffers have also reached out to Stout, privately applauding her decision to join the resistance.

“Almost a decade ago, I realized I’d been duped, and now it seems like a faction of the right-wing base is starting to wake up too,” Stout said. Speaking directly to conservatives, Stout implored them to think critically about the political party, and figures, they choose to support. “There’s a reason that ICE raids and Jan. 6 and abortion bans make you uncomfortable—that is the humanity inside of you screaming for you to change.”

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