Typically, conservatives try to at least pretend that they respect Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., especially on Martin Luther King Day. But, Turning Points USA co-founder Charlie Kirk decided to go in the opposite direction — vowing to share “the truth” about the famous civil rights icon on Monday.
“Who was MLK?” wrote Kirk on X. “A myth has been created, and it has grown totally out of control. While he was alive, most people disliked him, yet today, he is the most honored, worshipped, and even deified person of the 20th century. Today, we are going to tell the truth and explain how this myth was born. Happy Monday.”
So, what secrets did Kirk spill about King?
He had conservative commentator Vince Everett Ellison on his YouTube show, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” to discuss the civil rights icon.
Ellison, who is Black, started by talking about how revered King is in the Black community…before spending the next 40 or so minutes calling him a liar and an awful person.
Ellison and Kirk argued that Black Americans are worse off as a result of Dr. King’s fight for civil rights, before launching into a more personal line of attack on King. They evoking a piece of old propaganda alleging that King witnessed and encouraged a rape. To be clear, there’s no real evidence of this.
Their allegations are not new by any stretch of the imagination. They all echo, if not directly repeat, attacks made against King during his lifetime by his opponents, including the FBI.
But the modern Republican Party has for years at least pretended to agree that segregation was bad and that King was a hero.
One could argue that it’s less insulting to have someone like Kirk — who loves Donald Trump and thinks racism is fake — just come out and say they hate MLK rather than try and pretend he was an anti-DEI, anti-woke crusader. But it’s not exactly a good sign regarding the direction of the Republican Party that people like Kirk don’t even feel they have to pretend to care about civil rights.