On October 16, 2025, Senator Herman Quirmbach had an opinion column published in the Iowa State Daily concerning Charlie Kirk and the free speech debate that has followed his assassination. He made two claims that I would like to address here. One was that “A great number of [Charlie Kirk’s] remarks belittled or condemned women, Blacks, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants and a host of others.” The other was that Caitlyn Spencer’s termination was “wrongly decided by Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen.”
In the interest of full disclosure: I am the acting vice president of Iowa State’s Turning Point USA chapter; however the views expressed here are entirely my own and not indicative of Turning Point’s official opinion on these matters.
As for the claim that Charlie Kirk’s remarks belittled or condemned certain groups, it bears acknowledgment that the “source” for this claim provided by the senator is an X AI search where he asked the AI to “List all of Charlie Kirk’s racist, xenophobic and sexist comments.” Anyone familiar with AI will know that such a prompt will yield biased results on any LLM. If I were to give an AI a prompt like “give me the reasons why Charlie Kirk’s comments were not racist, xenophobic or sexist,” it would give me a similarly biased list in favor of my position.
Any student would know that such a source is not to be taken seriously in any academic or official capacity. In fact, if I were to submit such a source in any of my undergraduate work at ISU, the result would be failure of the assignment, if not academic discipline. Frankly, we should expect more rigor from our duly elected representatives. But we will set the source aside and address some of the most cited examples of Kirk’s supposed bigotry straight from Senator Quirmbach’s AI list.
“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” This statement occurs at the 50:37 mark of episode 29 of Kirk’s show Thought Crime, aired on January 20, 2024 (Thought Crime Ep. 29).
Let us analyze the context in this clip that Kirk’s critics ignore. Kirk and his cohosts were discussing the United Airlines initiative to make 50% of new pilot trainees women or people of color over the next decade. That diversity figure currently sits at 19% (Reuters). National diversity demographics sit even lower at 5.3% women and 7% people of color (Embry-Riddle).
Kirk expressed concern that, given these demographics, the only way it could reach its stated goal would be to pass up on more qualified candidates who do not fit its diversity metrics in favor of less qualified candidates who do. It is an argument based in statistical analysis, not bigotry. In fact, after the “Boy, I hope he’s qualified” remark, Kirk goes on to say “That’s not who I am; that’s not what I believe… I don’t want to think that way, and no one should.” We see in the full context that from Kirk’s perspective, DEI quotas create “an unhealthy thinking pattern” because DEI quotas necessarily mean the artificial elevation of lesser-qualified candidates based on their identity.
Another example of supposed racism from Senator Quirmbach’s “source” is that Kirk called the Civil Rights Act a mistake. Kirk did call it a mistake and advocate for a revision, but not because he thought that minority groups should not have civil rights, as his detractors are fond of insinuating. We can refer again to Charlie Kirk himself when asked about the comment at the University of Utah in August 2024 (Charlie Kirk). “The intent was noble, which was to say that no American can be not allowed into a place of business based on the color of their skin and their ethnic heritage. Totally in agreement with that.”
Kirk’s concern was with the way the Civil Rights Act is now being used to “push men into women’s bathrooms,” justify DEI policies, argue against voter ID and label any disparity between racial groups a violation of law. He goes on to clarify his position, saying, “it’s too broad, too wide and it’s being used well beyond its original intent.”
We can certainly debate the merits of Kirk’s arguments described above, but to call the arguments bigoted is to speak out of willful ignorance of the context. The accusations of bigotry levied at Kirk are almost universally derived from this sort of willful ignorance.
Some of the quotes in Senator Quirmbach’s “source” are entirely fabricated. For example: “He described gay people as a ‘disease.’” There is no evidence that Kirk ever said this in any context, something Senator Quirmbach might have realized himself had he done the appropriate legwork.
I could spend the remainder of this column picking out quotes from Senator Quirmbach’s “source” and providing the context; Charlie Kirk was one of the most misrepresented figures of our time. However, I think the point is made, and I leave it to the reader to do their due diligence and decide for themselves. We all should be careful when we hear such accusations made of anyone, to practice intellectual honesty and seek out the context before spreading misinformation.
Moving on to Senator Quirmbach’s second claim: he describes the firing of Caitlyn Spencer as a violation of free speech. The senator, and most of the individuals making this argument, fail to quote Ms. Spencer’s words directly: “I agree with you Nick, gun violence in this country is horrific and out of hand. Given Charlie’s previous comments about their ‘necessity’ to protect 2nd amendment rights though, this jackass got what was coming and I’m happy he’s rotting in hell now.” (Iowa Standard)
As a pro-Second Amendment student at Iowa State, my thought when I heard statements like this after Kirk’s passing was “If you think he deserved death for his view of the Second Amendment, do you think I deserve death too?” That is the line Spencer crossed. She not only celebrated the violence; she tacitly advocated for further violence. Anecdotally, I can say that I was not alone among conservative students in wondering if I was safe at a university that would allow its employees to condone violence in retaliation to the expression of run-of-the-mill conservative opinions.
The issue is much deeper than “calling for economic retaliation against those who disagreed with Kirk,” as the senator states in his attempt to gloss over the true character of Spencer’s words. The chilling effect that such public celebration of political violence has on students fits the description of “adverse impact to the efficient and effective operations of the university” provided by the Board of Regents, although the distinction seems to have eluded Senator Quirmbach.
On the idea of hypocrisy, Kirk did not hold the position that Senator Quirmbach is attempting to posthumously foist upon him: that university employees are somehow to be shielded from professional consequences for any speech that does not explicitly violate the First Amendment. He famously kept a public professor watch list, advocated for parents to demand accountability for those professors and served as the impetus for dozens of instances of disciplinary action and termination at universities across the country (FIRE).
Kirk’s stance aside, this is a particularly rich line of argument coming from the left of the aisle after more than a decade of cancel-culture proliferating through our society. I think it most appropriate to end with the same refrain we have heard time and time again from Democratic voters, pundits and leaders alike: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
If Senator Quirmbach — or anyone else who disagrees with the arguments I’ve made here — would like to debate these points with people who are intimately familiar with Charlie Kirk’s work, they have a standing invitation to attend a Turning Point Meeting. Like Kirk, we value respectful conversation with people who we disagree with. You can find out about us on the ISU Student Org page.
Self-written bio: Isaiah Alexander is an Agriculture Studies sophomore at Iowa State University, VP of Turning Point USA’s ISU Chapter, previous urban farm manager and Chicago public-school supervisor.
