Who is Charlie Kirk? Here's what he had to say on Day 1 of the RNC.

Conservative political activist and culture warrior Charlie Kirk painted a bleak picture of a degenerate America in his remarks Monday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, laying blame on the policies of President Joe Biden.

"Under Biden, our young people own nothing and they are miserable," Kirk said.

He pointed to high consumer prices and housing costs but also heavily emphasized declining birth and marriage rates as a central failure for American quality of life.

Kirk tied traditional family structures and values closely to the overall economic and cultural health of the nation: "Happy countries have children. Broken countries have addiction, depression and suffering."

“Since I last spoke at the Republican convention four years ago, I’ve become a husband and father,” he said later in his speech. “For millions of people my age, that is a dream that feels farther away than ever under the Biden-Harris administration.”

“Instead of owning a car,” Kirk said, “you’ll rent a scooter using some app” under the Biden-Harris “regime,” whose message to Americans he characterized as: “Limit your dreams, give up.”

He went on to say that because of financial struggle, young men are more conservative than at any time in the last 50 years.

Who is Charlie Kirk?

Kirk, a former wunderkind firebrand, might be most widely known for his many, often intentionally provocative statements.

In 2012, he emerged on the national stage at the age of 18 after co-founding the nonprofit Turning Point USA, which promotes conservative politics on high school and college campuses. Among its efforts is a watchlist aimed at "unmasking radical professors.” It also has a PAC called Turning Point Action.

Together, he said on Monday, those two groups are “The largest conservative grassroots organizations in the country.”

Kirk’s stated beliefs seem to have done little to slow his momentum into an opening night, primetime slot at the Super Bowl of the Republican establishment.

In an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from April, he called white people “the most hated class in America today” and said that “venom” against white people in contemporary society “feels like how we got to Auschwitz.”

He said in January that he might assume a Black airline pilot is less qualified than a white pilot because of DEI initiatives.

Wired reported that he called Martin Luther King Jr. “awful” and “not a good person” at a Turning Point USA event in 2023.

In 2023, he said on "The Charlie Kirk Show" that only straight married couples should be allowed to adopt children.

The fact checking nonprofit Politifact, run by the Poynter Institute, rated 86% of Kirk’s statements that it checked as at least “mostly false.”

Who is Kirk’s target audience?

Kirk, 30, at one point directly addressed the growing voter bloc of Gen Zers “watching this convention on TikTok right now.”

He rattled off a number of inspirational platitudes after name-checking the app, which seemed custom-written to be sliced and packaged into a clip to reach the app’s largely young demographic with a catchy (if not policy-heavy) elevator pitch for MAGA.

“You don’t have to stay poor,” he said.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement estimates that "40.8 million members of Gen Z (ages 18-27 in 2024) will be eligible to vote" in the upcoming elections.

Gen Zers were born between 1997 and 2012, falling between Millennials and Gen Alpha. The oldest are 27 and the youngest are 12.

Economic concerns are top of mind for young voters, Kirk argued. That idea is backed up by the Harvard Youth Poll, but that same poll also showed young voters supported President Joe Biden at higher rates than Donald Trump.

What does Charlie Kirk think of Trump’s VP pick?

Kirk had apparently been actively lobbying for JD Vance to be Trump’s VP pick.

“I talked to the president over the weekend,” he said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” last week, “encouraging him to choose JD Vance.”

“Spectacular pick by President Trump,” he said Monday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after Vance had been announced as the pick.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Who is Charlie Kirk? Turning Point USA co-founder, RNC speaker