Kirk embodied conservative shift, helped rally young people

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

82% : "He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person," Trump told the New York Post.
59% : Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016.
54% : He personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that took over the Republican Party in the age of Trump.
49% : Trump won Arizona, Turning Point's home state, by five percentage points after narrowly losing it in 2020.
48% : Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by then 18-year-old Kirk and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government.
39% : But as younger voters shifted right and Trump ran up a five-point margin of victory in Arizona, Kirk and his allies claimed vindication of his view of a culture-war-oriented conservatism.
30% : Kirk announced he was organizing buses to travel to Washington to back Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and later invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answering questions from the Jan. 6 subcommittee.
29% : Kirk called the choice between Trump and then-Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris "a spiritual battle.
25% : Trump on Wednesday praised Kirk, who started as an unofficial adviser during Trump's initial 2016 campaign and more recently became a confidant.
23% : During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said Democrats "stand for everything God hates."

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