Episode 184: Charlie Kirk’s Death and Social Media’s Impact on Gen Z Today

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Today Counts Show Episode 184

Preview

Micah: Sometimes it’s just so hard to interact with conspiracy theorists because it’s not that conspiracy theories don’t lack explanatory power. They can explain everything, right? And so in the quote, he’ll say, if someone has a conspiracy that they think everyone is conspiring against them, the only thing you can tell them is that—

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Introduction

Jim: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Today Count Show. This is Jim Piper, your host. I have with me today Micah Kunkle. I want to give you a little bit of a background. We’re going to be talking about Charlie Kirk today along with a lot of other things, probably very much related to Charlie Kirk—his business, his ministry, his heart. I’m really humbly looking forward to hearing what Micah has to say.

Micah’s Background and Interests

Micah, you and I were talking before I hit the record button. You’re 24 years old. You are married. You’re a Southern California guy, like I am originally, by way of Denver and now Texas, but I have fond memories of California and surfing. I understand that you surf like your dad.

Micah: Oh yeah. Yeah. I just surfed two days ago. Yeah. I’m a big surfer.

Jim: Okay. And you do videography as a living, social media management and such. And you do that on your own. It’s your own business?

Micah: Yeah. I dropped out of college similar to Charlie Kirk, started my own business, and started doing videography, photography, and social media for businesses, organizations, individuals, events—a lot of weddings, things like that too.

Jim: Just to give context to our relationship, your father grew up in my youth group when I was a youth pastor many years ago. And now here I am talking to one of his adult children.

Interest in Christian Apologetics and Politics

Micah, what got you interested in Christian apologetics and politics? Because you’re not just kind of interested. It’s not a hobby. Those of you who are watching this on YouTube—you’re making it pretty clear where you stand by what you’re wearing. But where did this begin? I know that you had some influencers in your life, which you talk about, but it has to go deeper than that.

Micah: Yeah. So obviously my parents played a huge role in that—in exposing me to Christian apologetics and my dad taking me with him when he would go speak, and then my mom homeschooling me. And so those play a big role in it. But I’m particularly interested because one, I love ideas. I love talking about ideas. I’m very passionate about the truth—what is true and how do we know what’s true—and learning more about that, because ultimately I think thinking through those things will determine how you live. My dad has a saying that he taught me: “Ideas have consequences,” right? And so if ideas have consequences, we really want to be careful thinkers and think through what we’re believing and what kind of ideas we have.

Jim: It seems that you’re kind of wired a lot like your dad. I always remember your dad asking the hard questions to me—some of them I didn’t even think about when he was younger. So it seems like you got that DNA in you pretty well.

Micah: Yeah.

Impact of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Charlie Kirk’s Influence on Micah

Jim: So Charlie Kirk, as we all know, was assassinated, and I know that has had a massive impact on you. But even prior to that, I think he was an influence in your life. Is that fair to say?

Micah: Yeah, that’s fair to say. I had met Charlie before. I’ve appeared in a couple of these online Jubilee videos on YouTube before, and so I had actually met him at the first shoot that I did for Jubilee right before he did his. So that was really cool. But before that, I had consumed lots of Charlie Kirk content, had seen him do debates on college campuses, was very familiar with Turning Point USA. Although I never attended one of their conferences, I was very familiar with his work.

Processing the Assassination News

Jim: I know that you’ve been impacted by the assassination. How are you doing today, Micah, if that’s a fair question?

Micah: Yeah. It’s been a week now, actually—exactly—since we found out about it, at least as of the day of this recording.

Jim: How did you find out about it? I found out about it through a text from my daughter.

Micah: Yeah. So I had actually, that morning, gone to an event where I got to listen to Amy Coney Barrett, a Supreme Court Justice, speak with my mom, my sister, my brother, and my grandma. That was in the morning, and then we went to lunch, and then I got a text from a friend. He said, “Hey, did you hear what happened with Charlie Kirk?” or, “Did you hear that he got shot?”

So then I immediately went on to X and looked at all the news, and then I came across the video—about 30 or 40 minutes later I came across the video—the close-up video, the graphic one. And that’s when I was like, yeah, it’s pretty much over for him. I’m sure he’s not going to make it.

Jim: Yeah, I’m sure even the news that he died later was medical optimism. When you saw that—no one should see that—but when you saw that, you know that was it.

Micah: Yeah. So that’s when it hit me. My mom had just dropped me off, because we carpooled together, back at my apartment. And that’s when I saw the official news article that he had died. I was on the phone with a friend, and when we got that news, we just kind of both hung up to have our moments of silence and grieving.

Gen Z’s Shift Towards Conservatism and Religion

Defining Gen Z

Jim: Before we talk more about Charlie, how do you see Gen Z—your generation? Do you remember what years those cover? What are the borders of those years for what we label Gen Z?

Micah: Well, I know it starts—you can get different years from different sources—but it starts around the late ’90s, definitely early 2000s. It probably goes until the 2010s, early 2010s maybe.

Evaluating Gen Z’s Cultural Shift

Jim: Okay. How do you evaluate your generation? What’s going on in your generation, certainly in the Western world? Do you have your pulse on that? How would you describe it? There’s a lot of sound bites going on about what’s happening, but I’ve never taken the time to actually sit down with a Gen Zer and ask. So I’m asking now—what’s your take?

Micah: Yeah. Gen Z is very encouraging. Gen Z—specifically Gen Z men—are moving toward conservatism and religion in greater numbers than we’ve seen in past generations before. We can definitely see them reacting to a very secular liberal world culture, and they’re swinging the pendulum to the other side.

While there’s still plenty of Gen Z that’s very liberal—most generations when they were younger were really liberal—if you compare the data of how many conservative Gen Zers there are now versus other generations at that time, we are outpacing the past three generations as far as how many conservatives, Republicans we have. So there’s definitely a sense of wanting to get back to traditional values and wanting to get back to Christianity.

The Religious and Cultural Tension

Jim: So here’s a lazy thought—square it up for me. Just by looking at and listening to all the sound bites, it would cause one to think that there is a Jesus movement of some sort going on. And yet there is a far extreme atheistic—if not atheistic, certainly agnostic—kind of a deal. But yet there seems to be this growing group in the middle. And I just don’t know if it’s exaggerated through social media—rewriting the Bible, if you will—or what they’re calling a deconstruction of what’s going on.

From your vantage point, what do you think is true? What’s hyped? What’s true? Maybe you don’t have the data—maybe you do—but how do you view that? Did it make sense, my question?

The Deconstruction Movement and Millennials

The Deconstruction Movement in Gen Z

Micah: Yeah. There is the deconstruction movement, for sure.

Jim: Is that a growing movement?

Micah: I wouldn’t say so. In one sense, yes. I think Gen Z too is also just becoming very divided. It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of Gen Z people in the middle. It seems like you’re either a full liberal or you’re full conservative. In that sense, it might be growing, but I think you’re finding a lot of people that are going back to church and that are searching for meaning and purpose in their life. They’re honestly looking at millennials and saying, “That’s not the way we want to go. We don’t want to go that way.” So there’s got to be something different.

Generational Perspectives

Jim: Yeah, the millennials have been a problem since they were born, I guess.

Micah: Yeah, I think so.

Jim: Baby Boomers—which I’m a part of—haven’t always looked favorably. Sorry, all you millennials. My son, who technically falls in the millennial category, says he is not and he will not be miscategorized.

Micah: Yeah, it’s not really a group people want to be associated with, and Gen Z is included in that. We’ve been trying to get away from them. But yeah, the deconstruction movement—I wouldn’t really say it’s been a huge thing, at least for Gen Z in particular. I think for millennials it’s been a much bigger thing for them than Gen Z.

Social Media and Its Challenges

Jim: One of the things that bothers me about social media is that in a lot of ways it just seems cowardly. You get on there—there are intellectuals who claim to be part of the deconstruction movement—who get analytical, who almost sound like they have an argument for this or that. But then again, they’re not in a conversation. They’re just backing up their truck and dumping it.

And then, of course, you’ve got the people that—it doesn’t even make sense what they’re saying. It’s like they wake up with an idea and throw it out, and then they go away. I’m just thinking about that. I mean, social media is part of how you survive—it’s your livelihood. But what do you think about social media?

Thoughts on Social Media

Advice on Leaving Social Media

Micah: I would advise anyone that has social media to try to either delete it or get off of it as much as possible.

Jim: Wow. I did not expect you to say that.

Micah: I think social media is really bad for a lot of people. And so while I think as Christians we’re called to go into dark places, right? And to be a light and to spread the gospel and to win the war of ideas, we also do need to be taking care of ourselves. I’ll be the first one to say I spend too much time on social media too.

I had a friend actually message me recently, “Hey, I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m on social media and I don’t think I’m going to download it.” I told him, “Don’t download it. Stay that way. Keep it off your phone.”

Of course, I think appropriate amounts of social media are okay, but yeah, I would advise people to try to stay off it because it can be extremely toxic on social media. You just go on Twitter, you go on TikTok, and you can see some of the most vile, nasty things said.

Algorithms, False Realities, and Toxicity

Additionally, I think it can give you a false sense of reality. The way the algorithms work is that anything that keeps people on the social media platform is boosted in the algorithm. What keeps people on the algorithm sometimes is very hateful, disgusting things. We can get an idea that that’s what the majority of people think out there, and that’s not the case.

Jim: That’s good insight. So in other words, my daughter was coaching me today. I was out on the range trying to fix my driver, and she wanted me to listen to a certain podcast that was centered around Charlie’s assassination. As I was listening to that, I also confessed to her that I’m so sick of IG. She started educating me regarding the algorithm of how I can try to manipulate it better so that I don’t have that.

Fasting from Media and Personal Boundaries

Our church does an annual one-week fast on all media. In the beginning, I did it because we’re a community and we do those things together. But now I’m thinking if I don’t get off of social media altogether, I need to fast from it a lot more than one week a year. No matter how careful you are, you just get exposed to this stuff. You don’t even know what’s true and what’s false anymore in the sense of news being reported.

Facebook spends more money than anybody, I think, on security, yet clickbait is all over the place. It makes you kind of wonder who’s behind all that.

Why Charlie Kirk Was Loved and Respected

Why was Charlie, from your vantage point, loved so much? I think it’s probably fair to say he certainly wasn’t hated as much as he was loved, was he? And talk about these accusations on his personhood, his character, the stuff that’s being thrown out now. But first, let’s start with why he was loved and respected so much.

Micah: He was loved and respected because one, he was so bold in what he believed in. He’s inspired me to be more bold given what I’m wearing today. I think the other thing is that he always treated his debate opponents with gentleness and respect. He always let people who disagreed with him up to the microphone first. He always engaged civilly with people.

There’s a clip of him that’s been going around where someone early on, when he started doing college campus stuff, comes up and asks him, “Why are you doing this?” And he says, “Because when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.” Then he says, “In marriages, when marriages stop talking, divorce happens.”

That’s why I think he was ultimately loved and respected—because he wanted to talk. He didn’t want to resort to other things. He wanted to talk and debate. And if he was wrong, he wanted to know.

Addressing Accusations Against Charlie Kirk

Jim: That’s good. What about these accusations that are being thrown at him—by those who are either taking that intellectual approach, like, “Well, what did he expect?”—to just some of the downright accusations about bigotry and hate? The list is pretty long, actually.

Micah: This is what I’ll say too, kind of going back on the social media piece: Don’t trust videos on social media to give you the truth.

Of course, there are always videos that are great and wonderful, but you should have a healthy skepticism of these videos—taking clips out of context, taking quotes out of context—to use it for whatever purposes the person wants.

That’s what I would encourage. If anyone hears a Charlie Kirk quote and thinks, “Oh, that’s not very great,” go look up the context. Go watch the full thing for yourself, because very often he clarifies it.

Jim: It’s such an elementary truth, yet here you are having to state it again. It’s just like walking by two people that are having a conversation—you hear three words and you conclude what they were talking about, and you could be completely wrong, taking it out of context. In fact, that’s a lot of the deconstruction movement as well.

I don’t want to get Pharisaical, but lack of education can— We’re talking about reading, linguistic education, theological education, historical, cultural, I keep adding words.
There’s so much disrespect today for, “Well, how did we get our Bible?”

I’m actually going to be having your dad on the podcast here in the near future. I think what I’m going to do is—

Micah: Why would you have that guy on the show? He doesn’t have anything insightful to say.

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Vigil for Charlie Kirk

Jim: I think what I’m going to do is be the devil’s advocate and just drill him on the Bible. It’ll bring back some good memories of the old days, when we got to talk about things like that.

Micah: That’s good.

Jim: So how are you doing emotionally, spiritually, with this? Because you were involved in a vigil. Was that last night or was that Monday night?

Micah: Yeah, that was on Monday night.

Jim: Tell me about that vigil. Where was it? How well was it attended? What was your part in that?

Micah: Looking back on it—very providential. Last Tuesday, I had seen a post, and a friend had sent it to me about Turning Point USA Vanguard. They were doing a get-together down in Newport Beach. I grew up in Newport Beach. I love that area. So I decided to go and connect with them. Someone I had met through the Jubilee videos, Sarah Stock, was there as well.

Literally, that was the day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Very providential. We got added to their group chat after that, and almost right away they were saying, “Hey, we need to plan a vigil. We need to get people there.” Right away I jumped in and said, “Hey, I’d like to say something.” I said, “I can livestream it for you guys. I’m a videographer, photographer. I can do photos and videos for it as well.”

That was the role I played. They handled the logistics and location and things like that. Then on social media, I ended up promoting it there—promoted it on on TikTok. I actually got a ton of views and hate from TikTok. It was crazy.

Promoting the Vigil on Social Media

All the TikTok was—was me promoting the event All I said was, “Hey, I want to invite you to this vigil honoring Charlie Kirk. It’s here. I hope to see you there.” And I got thousands of hate comments: “Charlie Kirk is this,” “Charlie Kirk is that.” Nasty. Threats. All kinds of things.

But I actually thank God for that because it boosted it in the algorithm. I think it’s at almost 75,000 views. There were multiple people that told me, “Thank you for posting it. That’s how I found out about the vigil.” I would say we ended up having around a hundred people show up—maybe more. I can send you some of the images, too.

It was a really great night. We had worship. We had prayer. Several people spoke. We had two city councilmen in that local city came and spoke as well. It was a really cool night.
>It really helps with the processing. It really helps with the grieving process.

Speaking and Praying at the Vigil

Jim: Trying to make theological sense out of things. You had a role in it too. Didn’t you get to say a few words and a prayer?

Micah: Yeah. I was able to say a few words. I spoke specifically on what the answers to evil are. You have atheism’s answer, which is just that things happen, and that’s life, and then you die and it’s over. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But Christianity’s answer is so good and so true and so beautiful.

I got into that a little bit. Then I gave a beautifully written prayer from this book called Every Moment Holy. They have a bunch of different prayers and liturgies for different events that might happen in your life. They have one for lamenting the passing of a public figure, and I read that.

It was a really beautiful time. If you look at my YouTube channel, my speech is up on there.

Jim: Great. Great. Maybe we can do that—put that in the show notes. Send me some clips, if you would. As we get this ready for production, we can drop some of those in—at least on the YouTube section. Did you guys have any kind of security there or not?

Security Concerns and Real-Life Threats

Micah: Yeah, that was a big part. Especially if I was going to promote that publicly, I made sure there was going to be at least some sort of police or security presence there.
We did have police keeping an eye on us. I promoted that in the post and made sure people knew that. I’m sure that was a good deterrent for some people.

Social media—you can go on there and say whatever you want. But when it comes to real life, not a lot of people are willing to actually put in the work to go to something like this and do that. But I think with the assassination attempt, it’s become clear that there are more people than we thought who are willing to do that. So security for a lot of different conservative Christian things is probably going to be upped now.

Jim: Yeah, it’s amazing. I wonder what the expense is now to the church in our nation. It’s hard to find a church that doesn’t have at least one officer standing around. I know that ours, we have multiple campuses, and yeah. It’s there. When Charlie was there in Utah, he was on a tour, right? Is that what I understood it to be?

Charlie Kirk’s Tour Format

Micah: Yeah, he was on a tour, and he’s done multiple of these tours before where he tells you which college campuses he’s going to, and you can show up and debate him.

Jim: And that’s really what it is. That was really the format, right? He doesn’t really give a speech. He gives many speeches within a dialogue that goes on, right?

Micah: Yeah. It’s just a back-and-forth conversation.

Jim: People get into it, they do their deal, and they go after it. It seemed to me, like in some of the videos that I’ve seen, that even those who were really struggling with Christian ideas, they even seemed to appreciate Charlie and were able to have that kind of open discussion.

Micah’s Role in His Generation

You mentioned earlier, Micah, that you’ve already been inspired, but then his boldness has inspired you. You’ve also mentioned that you yourself have been dabbling in debating and what have you. As you kind of look out and you’re trying to figure this out, what role do you see yourself playing in your generation? Your dad has Maven, and your mom and dad do, and that’s a growing influence. That’s similar but different, isn’t it?

Micah: Yeah. I wouldn’t say Maven is necessarily political—at least not quite yet. It’s worldview, right? And so that would obviously include politics. So I don’t want to say that we’re never political. My parents do, on their podcast, have some great, I would say, political-type episodes that are really insightful.

I’m not entirely sure. We’ll see what the Lord has in store for me. I definitely am more motivated than ever to pursue doing content. I’ve definitely wanted to take at least a week to just sort of mourn and grieve. It just didn’t feel right jumping into political content quite yet. But it’s definitely something I want to do more.

I’m open to debates all the time and doing these Jubilee videos, and that’s opened some opportunities for me as well. I’ve had several people since then ask me to debate, and so I’ve done debates with them and things like that. So yeah, hopefully—right now it’s pursuing social media content. But I’m very open to whatever God has in store for me and willing for Him to use me in whatever way He wants.

Coping with Grief and Conspiracy Theories

Processing Grief Together

Jim: How’s your bride doing with all of this?

Micah: Yeah, she was very distraught from all of it. It definitely has taken a toll on her too. We’ve both been there for each other, comforting each other through this. She specifically has just been hurting for Charlie’s wife, Erica, and his two kids. That part of the assassination has really been weighing on her.

But it’s been good. We’ve been able to process. She was there at the vigil. I hosted a get-together on Sunday for whoever wanted to come, and it was just a night of, “Hey, let’s just talk, let’s just process through it. Bring drinks, bring food, bring snacks. We’ll hang out. Bring cigars if you want. We’ll hang out and process through this.”

We had about 15 people there. It was a really great group discussion. We had people of all ages. We had a 14-year-old that showed up, all the way to a 55-year-old. Those things have been just extremely helpful like talking it out and being able to be in our grief, but not let that consume us. Eventually, to have hope that this is not the end. Christ conquered death, and so we can safely say that Charlie is with our Lord and Savior right now.

Confronting Conspiracy Theories

Jim: What do you think, Micah? I don’t know how much you’ve been paying attention to it. You’re kind of torn right now, and I hear that pretty clearly. But there’s this wave of conspiracy theories—that we’re not getting the full story. Do you give much credence to that?

Micah: No. No, I don’t. It kind of angers me just a little bit, because—for, and this isn’t everyone—but it feels like for a lot of these people, maybe some of these influencers, they’re using his death for clicks and to support their ideology or their view of the world. That angers me a lot, especially when a lot of these claims are based on either no evidence or really just terrible evidence.

I’ve interacted with some of these people, and I’m just not impressed at all by the reasons that they’re giving. This is what I’ve encouraged people to do too is watch the actual press conferences—the FBI, the governor, and the attorney general. Watch them yourself. Don’t take people’s word for it. They give you the evidence. They’ll walk you through their findings that they have.

Chesterton, Circular Thinking, and Evidence

I posted a quote by G. K. Chesterton the other day, talking about how sometimes it’s just so hard to interact with conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theories don’t lack explanatory power, they can explain everything.

In the quote, he says, if someone thinks everyone is conspiring against them, the only thing you can tell them is, “I wouldn’t conspire against you,” Which is exactly how you’d respond if you were conspiring against them.

His point is—it’s kind of circular. It all feeds into each other, into the different beliefs. That’s what I’m finding with a lot of these really silly explanations. It ultimately comes down to a lack of trust in the FBI and our institutions, which—some of it is warranted. I’ll absolutely grant that. But we have to take things based on evidence.

There is no evidence—like a popular theory right now is that Israel killed Charlie Kirk. There’s absolutely no evidence that this is the case. There’s’ zero. Absolutely zero. It makes me a little angry that sometimes these things are being spread for personal gain.

A Balanced Christian Perspective

Jim: Well, thank you for sharing that. And like you said, even in our recent—not just recent, but in our history—we do have black eyes about things that cause us to push back on government and institutions. But it’s kind of like in Christian theology—we believe Scriptures teach that there is Satan and there are demons. But the rational mind recognizes  They’re not infinite. So there’s not one behind every bush.

Yet those who exaggerate that—it’s everything’s the devil’s fault. Everything is Satan’s fault.
As if we’re not evil enough on our own.

Micah: Yeah, that’s a great point.

Jim: And in what we do, we do. Yeah.

Conclusion

Honoring Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on the show. It was great to reconnect with you. I haven’t seen you for a long time. And I appreciate your open comments. I appreciate what you’re doing. I appreciate the time you gave me. I’m sure people will get a lot out of our conversation today.

Memorials as Defining Moments

Micah: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I think this is really important to talk through and process through. Next Sunday, I’m going to be there at the memorial that Turning Point is doing for Charlie. So I encourage you, if you’re in the area, to go. Yeah, it’s going to be in Arizona. It’s going to be at State Farm Stadium—the Arizona Cardinals play there.

I already know they’ve had 80,000 people register for tickets. So it’s basically almost already sold out. But I’m going to make the drive there because I think it’s really important to honor Charlie Kirk and his legacy. But also to process through it and connect with like-minded individuals.

Anyways, appreciate you having me on.

Jim: Well, Micah, it’s a defining moment for many people, right? In the Old Testament, we’d read about—that’s often where we would build an altar, right? It’s a memorial. They’re important things.

How many Americans right now—look at our age difference. How many Americans can even remember the attacks on 9/11? It’s amazing how quickly that can be forgotten in history. Whereas I’m living it like it was yesterday. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I could not believe my eyes.

We went back to New York before they had the redesign and rebuilding—when it was in shambles. We felt like we needed to go. Not just to honor, but to be frank, to live.
To live and recognize that we needed that too. And of course, we’ve been back a couple times to visit—which now is more of a museum, I guess you could say.

So I’m glad you’re doing that. That’s fantastic. Micah, thanks a lot for joining us.

Micah: Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Outro

Winston: Hey, thank you so much for joining us on the Today Counts Show. We’ve got so much more planned for you. So stay tuned and stay connected on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube. And remember—today counts.
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