Right-wing conservative influencer and political pundit Charlie Kirk held an event at the University of Colorado Boulder just hours before last week’s second presidential debate of the 2024 election.
While Kirk’s presence at college campuses is far from unusual, the arguments he made before a crowd, made up of equal parts fans and hecklers, would be echoed by former President Donald Trump during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last Tuesday.
As part of his “You’re Being Brainwashed” tour, Kirk was invited to Colorado by the CU Boulder student group Turning Point USA at CU Boulder, an offshoot of the organization Kirk himself started for conservative students.
Kirk’s event centered around inviting onlookers to ‘debate’ him and prove him and his beliefs wrong. All of Kirk’s exchanges with students were filmed and, historically, Turning Point USA has used footage from similar events to cherry-pick Kirk ‘destroying’ woke, college liberals for digital content.
Over the course of the 3-hour long event, Kirk sparred with people in the crowd over a range of issues, including the January 6 riot, Christian statehood, reproductive rights, international development, crime, religion, and immigration. Kirk told his young audience that college was a scam and useless in today’s economy.
Kirk spent a disproportionate amount of time railing against undocumented immigrants, at one point stating he believed there should be a total ban on immigration, adding that the government should station 17,000 soldiers at the southern border to enforce American border policy.
“Does Israel have open borders? Of course not, or let’s talk about Japan. I feel safe walking around the streets of Tokyo at night because they don’t have a bunch of foreigners raping people in their cities,” Kirk said in an exchange with a CU Boulder student who had pushed back on Kirk’s claim that immigration was tied with an increase in violent crime. “They don’t allow Haitians and Guatemalans and Nicaraguans to run amuck. If you’re from a country that is war-torn and poor, you know nothing except the cycle of violence. We’re giving preference to the poorest, most awful counties on the planet coming to America.”
At this point in the conversation, Kirk pivoted to discussing Haiti and Haitian immigrants. “Do you think Haiti is a great country?” he asked, “Why is Haiti not a great country? Because of their values, because they’re infected with voodoo.”
When the student pushed back saying he didn’t believe voodoo was necessarily a ‘bad’ value, Kirk became visibly irritated. “You don’t think voodoo is a bad value? You don’t believe cannibalism is a bad value?” It appears that Kirk’s information on the practice of Haitian Vodou is based on the tall tales brought back from the American occupation of Haiti in the first half of the 20th century, when American soldiers gave unfounded reports of cannibalistic cults and wicked ‘black magic’ practitioners.
Kirk then brought up two talking points that have picked steam in the right-wing media sphere, Venezuelan gangs supposedly taking over Aurora and Haitian immigrants “eating people’s pets” in Springfield, Ohio. Kirk threw out these allegations, which are false, to support what he called the ‘irresponsible Democrat open border policy.’
Kirk’s misinformation about immigrants eating cats and Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora would be brought up again by Donald Trump in his debate with Kamala Harris.
In the Aurora case, the situation is a lot more complicated than Kirk or Trump have made it out to be. Indeed, members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) have been active in Aurora, and reportedly about a dozen gang members have been intimidating residents of an apartment complex run by CBZ management, an out-of-state property management company. However, according to a report by Denverite, residents of the apartment called the allegations of gang control to be exaggerated or outright false. Rather residents pointed to CBZ’s mismanagement of the property as responsible for their poor living conditions.
The Springfield, Ohio case does not appear to have any basis in reality. The story originated from a Facebook post whose author now admits was based on an unsubstantiated rumor. After the debate, the Trump campaign pivoted to arguing that a Haitian immigrant was responsible for the murder of an 11-year-old boy from Springfield. However, this claim also has received pushback, including from the family of the deceased. Aidan Clark, the boy in question, was killed in an August traffic accident that involved a Haitian immigrant driver who was in the country legally.
There has been a wave of immigration from Haiti following the political instability in the country. According to a report from AP, most Haitian immigrants have taken legal pathways into the United States with Haitians only accounting for 92 of the more than 56,000 border arrests in July.
The Colorado Times Recorder spoke with Carson Turner, the CU Boulder freshman who engaged with Charlie Kirk on the topic of immigration. Turner said he has always been politically active and participated in high school speech and debate before he came to Boulder.
“I think [Kirk] values more isolationism in the U.S. and the reduction of the ‘burden on the taxpayer,’ which is where we ideologically disagree,” Turner said in an interview. “I think that the role of the United States, as he frames it, as the greatest country in the world to have ever existed if truly believes that, I believe that our role should be to help our neighbors and stabilize countries that are struggling and support people when they need it.”
The Colorado Times Recorder asked the organizers of the event if anyone wished to comment on the claims made about Aurora or Springfield, Ohio. However, organizers with Turning Point USA at CU Boulder declined to be interviewed. When asked, Kirk himself only said that he was glad he was: “Able to reach the students of CU Boulder.”
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has doubled down on the claims of Haitians eating pets in an attempt to illustrate what the Trump campaign sees as the abject failure of the Biden administration on immigration.
Kirk and his organizers claimed at the start of the event they wanted to spend equal time on a variety of issues, but immigration was given a disproportionate amount of time. Over the past few months, conservatives, both elected officials and media figures, have tried to paint Vice President Kamala Harris as the Biden administration’s ‘border czar’. With congressional Republicans taking time to pass a resolution “strongly condemning” Harris, even as a potential government shutdown looms.
This was the second event Turning Point USA had planned on the CU Boulder campus this year; however, the previous event, featuring a noted hate group, Gays Against Groomers, was canceled in April.
