One Year Later: The U.S. Military Continues Quartering Charlie Kirk Assassination Celebrants
Last updated 06:29 AM EDT • Read time: 8m
“Charlie Kirk has been shot.” I was in a production studio recording podcast episodes on September 10th last year when it happened. I look forward to each opportunity to spend time with a new guest and the phenomenal media production team at the Herzog Foundation. But this day was especially unique. My fellow military public affairs officer, and truth teller, Theresa Carpenter had flown in to record two special episodes. We had planned this day for months, to have an illuminating dialogue about the cultural difficulties of being both an honest broker, and military public affairs officer. The two unfortunately have a long history of being at odds, despite value-based oaths, creeds, and regulation. We completed the first episode about our shared experiences as military communicators frequently at odds with the institution, and decided to take a break. It was then that producer Noah Hoskins told us the news.
Charlie Kirk’s name was well known to me; though, I was not a close follower of his work. In 2024 I had the chance to see Mr. Kirk at a live event at the University of Kansas, and came away highly impressed at his intellect and mastery of facts drawing from history, culture, politics, philosophy, and faith. Back in the studio that afternoon, hearing the words “Charlie Kirk” and “shot” in the same sentence brought immediate shock.
Theresa and I immediately pulled out our silenced phones to learn what we could about the event in Utah, and Kirk’s injuries. Noah said Charlie had been struck in the neck. I found a video taken from a distance, and heard the unmistakable sound of rifle shot. We both knew immediately how the story would end.
The air felt heavy, my basic awareness numbed, my mind clouded. Theresa captured the essence of why. She looked at me and said (paraphrasing) that ‘Charlie was a truth teller. That’s who we are, and they killed him for it.’ Both of us endure threats to our safety and even our lives from the same kind of people who demonstrated joy at Charlie’s demise. Yet the mission to finish production of an important episode about the military’s broken investigative culture remained before us. We pulled it together and recorded a conversation that proved very raw. When the cameras cut the second time, what we knew to be inevitable had been officially announced: Charlie Kirk was dead. That night I went to bed with a heart heavied by this historic tragedy, suddenly understanding the tears shed by so many Americans when President John F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King succumbed to the assassin’s bullet. Never for a moment would I have predicted that the next day would be marked by extremists celebrating Charlie’s demise. Even worse, military members shared in that luciferian ritual.
I awoke the next morning to a colleague’s note about a military officer who made a post expressing what appeared to be casual approval of Charlie’s public assassination. Military members are sworn to protect Americans. Charlie’s assassination violates the special trust that military members are accorded. Celebrating such a crime violates that trust, and the oath, not to mention a violation of decency and respect – values the military signals as immovable institutional moral bedrock. Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Military Community & Family Policy Stephen Simmons nailed the crux of the moment in saying that sheepdogs responsible for defending the nation demonstrated themselves to be wolves.
Moments later I received word of another similar post by yet another military member. It became a steady stream of content widely reported on X by many accounts including Libs of Tiktok, Mostly Peaceful Memes, Dept War & Dept VA Accountability, and my own. The amount of military-affiliated content condoning and celebrating Kirk’s death resulted in mainstream news coverage. Simply put, this was not a small occurrence by a few isolated individuals. A friend of mine on Fort Leavenworth shared that a military officer told him that if Tyler Robinson were his son, he wouldn’t have turned him in to the police. As in the days of Biblical Judges, these actors did what was right in their own eyes. Participants included active duty, reserve, national guard, and civilian military-affiliated Americans. Through it all, military commanders who are known for advising conservative-minded military members to stay silent and ‘out of politics’ had very little to say about upholding military values, respect, and no tolerance for extremism in those moments.
The military is a regulation-based entity. Online misconduct of this type violates social media regulations that troops are subject to, in addition to Articles 133 (conduct unbecoming) and 134 (conduct that brings discredit upon the armed forces) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as well as military anti-extremism policy enacted during the Biden era. That begs the question of what happened to the military members—estimates ranging from hundreds to thousands—who participated in this post-assassination celebration ritual? Neither the Pentagon, nor any of its subordinate commands are saying.
Undersecretary of War for Public Affairs Sean Parnell and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth rightly condemned the conduct as unacceptable. According to numerous public news reports, approximately 300 military members faced investigation for inappropriate online conduct, with the Military Times reporting that over one dozen personnel were suspended from key positions during the investigatory process. The Washington Post reported that 126 military members were investigated, with 26 receiving administrative reprimands – in addition to 158 military civilians placed under investigation, two of them being terminated. It’s impossible to know if that’s the full story, as the War Department failed to issue clear accounting of final dispositions. I recently submitted a small number of participant names to the relevant public affairs offices with a simple question: is this person still a military member? None provided this basic – publicly releasable –status in time for publication. If anyone beyond the two reported by the Washington Post faced meaningful consequences, the number appears to be infinitesimal.
Contrast this with the rapid discharge campaign carried out against roughly 8,000 military members who declined to participate in Covid mass gene therapy experimentation from 2021-2022. One group wanted to avoid unnecessary self harm and faced severe persecution. The other endorsed lethal harm against an innocent, and remain in full standing as taxpayer-funded military employees.
The challenge we wrestle with is not a lack of legal avenues to deal with extremists, but a lack of will - a demonstrated weakness among managers in the ranks to administer military justice. Such would have been unthinkable during most eras of American military history. Imagine a Union soldier expressing satisfaction in John Wilkes Booth’s murder of Abraham Lincoln in a letter to the editor in 1865. Would such a man’s career have been spared by his military command? Just 25 years ago would the Department of Defense have tolerated a uniformed or civilian employee making public declarations of approval for the 9/11 terrorist attacks? On June 2nd, 2012 I personally witnessed a military contractor be terminated for posting a video showing the aftermath of a Haqqani network attack on Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan. We once had commanders with spines. Imagine being a commander who will do nothing about subordinate military members cheering Tyler Robinson’s actions, for which Robinson now faces a death penalty trial. The cowardice and enablement military leadership practices today is historically unprecedented in American history. It’s no wonder that since yesterday there are at least two reports of U.S. Army soldiers making gleeful social media posts about the first ‘kirkversary.’ They know the consequences – if any – will be minor at worst.
Militaries are imperfect as human institutions. Inevitably, mal actors slip through the cracks. Yet it remains an irrevocable responsibility of military leadership to courageously punish and remove those who demonstrate antipathy toward the mission of defending our nation and its founding ideals. A War Department that cannot, or will not, carry out this most basic task of self-policing is in no position to expect continued high levels of public trust, nor legitimacy over the historic mercenary tradition.
One year since Charlie Kirk’s death, the military has proven to be as safe a place for people who make light of assassination as the Chicago public school system. In both places, people who celebrated Charlie’s murder remain employed – at no lesser rank than they held one year ago - on the taxpayer’s dime. These rightly labeled #revolutionariesintheranks remain a prescient threat on our soil. The question we should all ask is why there is no one across the military’s global complex with the courage to take this on.
Chase Spears served as a U.S. Army public affairs officer for 20 years and is host of the Finding Your Spine podcast. Among other pursuits, he enjoys writing about courage, civil-military relations, communication ethics, and policy. Chase holds a Ph.D. in leadership communication from Kansas State University, where his research focused on the political realities of military norms and actions. You can connect with his work at chasespears.com.
image: Ryan Shaw holds American flags during a vigil for Charlie Kirk on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, in Provo, Utah. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)