Saint Charlie of MAGA

Charlie Kirk’s death became a stage-managed resurrection, where faith, politics, and even artificial intelligence collided to transform grief into spectacle, propaganda, and a manufactured martyrdom.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a tragedy. No one should confuse that. No one should celebrate it. A man in his early thirties, a husband, a father, and yes, a political activist, gunned down because this country is sick with rage and division. That reality deserves a pause. But what we saw at his memorial was not a pause. It was not mourning. It was not reflection. It was theater, carefully choreographed to transform grief into political fuel and one man’s death into a rallying cry for MAGA’s survival.

President Trump’s speech made it plain. This wasn’t about Charlie Kirk the human being, it was about Charlie Kirk the symbol. “Charlie's murder was not just an attack on one man or one movement. It was an attack on our entire nation,” he thundered. He teased an autism announcement. He attacked his opponents. He framed Charlie’s death as a bullet aimed at all of us; a metaphor designed to conflate Kirk’s assassination with the fate of MAGA itself. He promised the Presidential Medal of Freedom, dangling it like a relic to be blessed in “the very safe Washington, D.C.,” a city Trump now boasts of controlling after his federal police takeover.

The memorial was billed as unity, but it was division draped in scripture. Erika Kirk, in her grief, offered forgiveness to her husband’s killer. Her words were powerful, raw, genuine, human. But the stage around her was filled with voices who have built careers sowing the very rage and discord that made Charlie Kirk a target in the first place. Vice President JD Vance, Health Secretary RFK Jr., DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson—each spoke with reverence about Charlie’s kindness, faith, and bravery. Each painted him as a modern-day disciple who died “with his boots on.” And yet, every single one of them has spent years weaponizing grievance, demonizing opponents, and poisoning the well of public discourse.

And then there was the spectacle that unfolded far from Arizona but carried the same signature of manipulation: at Prestonwood Baptist in Texas, Pastor Jack Graham introduced an AI-generated Charlie Kirk, preaching from beyond the grave. His voice urged the congregation to “pick up your cross and get back in the fight.” The clip was fake—everybody knew it—but the congregation gave a standing ovation anyway, treating lines of code as holy writ. The moment was recorded, shared on social media, and now dozens of other churches are replicating it. The message wasn’t subtle: Charlie may be gone, but he still speaks, and his words are now immortal, available for endless remix and reuse.

This is quickly becoming the new normal: using the tragic death of a young man not for sober reflection but as an opportunity to instill loyalty, faith, and political commitment. Instead of mourning, congregations are handed AI simulations that sanctify grief and recycle it into propaganda. Instead of acknowledging senseless loss, they’re told to celebrate a martyr who keeps preaching from heaven, blessing MAGA from the digital clouds. It’s not about Kirk the person; it’s about what his image, voice, and resurrection can sell.

The irony was almost unbearable. Tulsi Gabbard lecturing about protecting free speech when she’s made a career out of vilifying critics as traitors. RFK Jr. recalling talks with Kirk about dying with honor—then pivoting to warn about children raised as “slaves” if America strays from their version of liberty. Anna Paulina Luna crowning herself as Kirk’s legacy, proclaiming, “We are all Charlie Kirk now.” This wasn’t grief. It was branding.

Charlie Kirk’s widow spoke of his faint smile, a mercy from God, proof he didn’t suffer. That image is searing, heartbreaking, unavoidably human. But what MAGA has done is take that humanity and package it for distribution. His death has become a backdrop, a set piece in a performance designed to canonize Kirk as a martyr and rally the base.

The rhetoric of discipleship and martyrdom wasn’t accidental. “Charlie was a modern-day disciple,” Sergio Gor declared, echoing the tone of revivalist religion. “He embodied the MAGA warrior,” he added, sanctifying Kirk’s loyalty to Trump as the highest virtue. This wasn’t a memorial; it was a production meant to keep Turning Point USA alive and keep Gen Z within the fold. It was spectacle substituting for substance.

Because here’s the truth: one production doesn’t make a movement, and one tragic death doesn’t make a martyr. Charlie Kirk’s life ended violently, and that should trouble us all. But the very people now elevating him to sainthood are the same people who built the ecosystem of hate and vitriol that defined his career and created the climate in which political assassination is possible. They want us to believe that the assassin’s bullet struck the whole movement. But the reality is that it struck at the heart of a culture they helped create; one where disagreement is painted as treason, where opponents are dehumanized, and where violence simmers just below the surface.

Trump framed Kirk’s assassination as an attack on the United States itself. That’s the lie. It was not an attack on the nation. It was a tragedy born out of a nation already under attack: from within, by the relentless sowing of division, rage, and fear. By an epidemic of gun violence that is out of control. By the very voices that filled that stage in Arizona.

Charlie Kirk is gone. His death should have been a moment of reckoning, a call to turn down the heat, to end the rhetoric of war and apocalypse. Instead, the memorial—and now, the churches adopting AI sermons in his likeness—became proof of how demented this movement has grown: canonizing its fallen as saints, feeding on grief, manufacturing spectacle to mask weakness. MAGA doesn’t want to heal; it wants to weaponize.

And so, we leave Arizona not with clarity or comfort, but with the knowledge that even death itself is not immune from exploitation. A man was killed. A family is shattered. And yet the machine rolls on, louder, angrier, more determined than ever to trade in blood for power; because in MAGA’s world, even a grave can be a stage.

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