STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Did conservative activist Charlie Kirk, shot and killed September 10, 2025, ever say "If somebody ever shoots me through the neck during a speech in Utah in 2025, I lowkey think that rocks". No, that's not true: There's no public record of Kirk saying what was attributed to him by a social media post. That post showed a fake CNN headline which did not appear on their website.
The quote was part of a September 10, 2025 X post (archived here) on the @jeremysmiles account with the text:
"damn there really is a Charlie Kirk quote for every aspect of this story huh"
This is what the image in post looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of the image in a post at x.com/jeremysmiles.)
Kirk's provocative debates with college students were widely covered in the news and also widely discussed on social media.
A Google Search using the "site" operator to limit results to pages on cnn.com returned no results (archived here) for pages with the phrase "If somebody ever shoots me through the neck during a speech in Utah in 2025".
Lead Stories used key words to search the Google News index of thousands of news sites. That search (archived here) found no instances of Kirk saying that:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results at GoogleNews.com.)
Lead Stories also used those search terms in the Yahoo! News index of its partners and news services. That search (archived here) found no such quote attributed to Kirk.
In comments on the X post containing the fake quote, account operator @jeremysmiles responded to commenters, without addressing the fact the quote in his X post is fake, as follows:
I am not happy he died. Charlie said he thinks gun violence is "worth it" but I personally disagree
Kirk critics pointed out, soon after his death, that Kirk at a 2023 Turning Point Faith event said:
I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other god-given rights. That is a prudent deal..
Updates:
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2025-09-11T12:04:16Z 2025-09-11T12:04:16Z Fixes typo in the date.
