James O’Keefe: Charlie Kirk Was the Greatest Man I’ve Ever Known

James O’Keefe: Charlie Kirk Was the Greatest Man I’ve Ever Known

Charlie Kirk Staff

Investigative journalist James O’Keefe delivered a deeply personal tribute to Charlie Kirk, calling him “the greatest man I’ve ever personally known.” O’Keefe reflected on their friendship, Kirk’s faith and consistency, and the movement he built from scratch into a national force.

O’Keefe recounted their first meeting in a Chicago diner in 2012, when Kirk was just 18 years old with “ambitious, grandiose, and seemingly improbable” plans to create a mass youth movement. Over the years, O’Keefe said, Kirk became not only a political leader but a moral and spiritual guide who helped him through his darkest times, even providing financial support when O’Keefe was struggling to rebuild.

JAMES O’KEEFE: Charlie Kirk’s death is a dark moment for America per President Trump. It’s also a turning point for you and me, a call to action and a time for choosing.

First let me tell you about my relationship with Charlie. Charlie was the greatest man I’ve ever personally known. He was a moral, kind, generous and irreplaceable man. Charlie was Turning Point USA, the organization he founded. We are sad today, because he represented the best of America and what we as men aspire to be.

What set him apart was that he was the least hypocritical man I’ve ever known. He practiced what he preached in his professional and personal life like no other. Now, as for what he built, I would often watch him work and utter to myself, he’s a force of nature. He was a modern-day William F. Buckley Jr. meets Rush Limbaugh meets community organizer, and it hurts to see him gone from this earth after all that was seemingly planned for him. Many of us know he would have one day been President.

As Kierkegaard once said, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one that you’ll never have.” For those of you who have never met Charlie Kirk, this feels like a death in the family. But for those of us who did know him, and thousands of us were his friends, that says a lot about his character. By the way, we’re heartbroken and grieving with a depth we’ve never before experienced in our lives.

I first met him in a Chicago diner in 2012 when he was 18, and I was 27. He was persistent in reaching out to me, looking to obtain a meeting, to receive guidance and advice on what he set out to build. He spoke confidently at this diner about his plans to build a mass movement of young people. I remember thinking at the time just how ambitious, grandiose and seemingly improbable all these plans seemed, even for this precocious kid. But it was a world-changing idea.

Yet few people actually had the X factor that Charlie Kirk had. That was actually something that one of my previous board members, Jim Young, said — many people recognized that in him. Sitting across from me was this teenager with a half-eaten sandwich, speaking with the quiet conviction of Martin Luther: “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

I saw him shortly thereafter, living on a couch at Lee Handel’s house on Palm Beach Island. Lee was a donor I was soliciting for money on that day. Charlie was running around the country, sleeping on couches, starting this organization out of his parents’ place in Chicago. He was indefatigable, relentless, executing his vision. I vividly recall Rush Limbaugh saying, “Everywhere I go, I run into Charlie Kirk.” He said that at the time, while at Mar-a-Lago.

A decade later, Charlie built his mass movement. But the irony was, it was now me, 10 years his senior, asking him for advice. I had to start all over. I was in the rebuilding phase, and he was on the phone with me, coaching me through my darkest days. I remember pulling over to the side of the road on the highway, pacing through the grass next to the overpass as we had profound conversations about the difference between knowledge and wisdom, as he tried to help me find God in the face of unimaginable evil and betrayal.

And I’ll never forget the question he asked me on the phone that day. He said, “Do you love yourself, James?” He made me be a better person.

Then shortly after that, in San Diego in September of 2023 at the Turning Point Faith Conference, he summoned me on stage. This was not planned. On stage with Pastor Rob McCoy, he asked the entire convention center of 1,200 pastors to pray for me. Charlie put his hands on my shoulder and said, “I want us to pray for James O’Keefe and show him some encouragement during the difficult time he’s going through.”

But it wasn’t just spiritual advice. Charlie prayed as if it depended on God. He acted as if it depended on him. For example, he helped me make payroll one month that year, 2023, when I was rebuilding the company. That was an act that moved even the nonbelievers on our staff.

Many others who knew him have many similar stories like this. I looked up to him and deeply admired him. He was a role model of what a man ought to be — a better man than we, a model of civility and heroism in an age where those things have been under constant attack.