Charlie Kirk gazed upon the crowd of about 200 people assembled before him, throwing hats into the morass and triggering yelps of joy from young men who leapt for the free merch as “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses blared in the background.
“Maybe we can turn San Francisco red,” he remarked to cheers. One man with graying hair unfurled his TRUMP 2024 flag, waving it as the crowd launched into a chant of U-S-A! U-S-A!
Near me, a young worker for Turning Point USA, the far-right organization led by Kirk, waved a clipboard. “Disagreements, come to me! Disagreeing opinions over here to get in line!” he yelled, gesturing like a carnival barker.
So began Kirk’s “American Comeback” tour, which landed at San Francisco State University on Tuesday to evangelize about, among other things, how the violent woke left was destroying the country, and why biblical scripture is the only true guiding light. After his intro, Kirk and co-host for the afternoon, anti-trans former athlete Riley Gaines, took their seats under a pop-up tent emblazoned with Kirk’s de-facto slogan: PROVE ME WRONG.
As a former culture reporter who wrote about extremism, I’ve seen plenty of Kirk’s clips online, where TPUSA pumps content of the 31-year-old debating and “owning the libs” in his cross-country tours. What I expected on Tuesday was a vibrant, sometimes vicious, perhaps deeply offensive locking of horns over the future of the nation.
What we got over the next two and a half hours, however, was a high-school level debate club interrupted by a bunch of broccoli-haired white boys crying out for more hats. Can San Francisco go red? Maybe, if it loves watching a know-it-all with a creepy smile interrupt a bunch of college kids asking poorly prepared questions and getting flustered.
What struck me about the discourse was its banality — so much so that even Kirk seemed exhausted at multiple moments and declined to keep answering the same queries. Round and round we went: On Palestine (“Israel is a good actor surrounded by barbarian thugs”), undocumented immigrants (“We can’t deport fast enough”), how Christianity ended slavery (?), and Islam (“there’s no such thing as Islamophobia, just Islamic Realism”).
At one point, a question about climate change led Kirk to utter the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say: That rising temperatures would actually be a good thing for people who currently freeze to death.
This is the face of Gen Z fascism creep, who claims he is going to fuel a takeover of SF? Some milquetoast millennial with a handful of Cliff Note-level hot takes on issues that conservatives have been debating for 40 years?
Meanwhile, Gaines served effectively as Kirk’s prop: Largely silent except for a few rehearsed quips about abortion and faith. A former collegiate swimmer, Gaines has channeled one competitive loss to a trans woman into a full-blown career on the right-wing commentary circuit, usually railing about “protecting women.”
At around the mid-point of Tuesday’s event, a few protestors approached the mic; one mocked Gaines for “looking like a trans woman, anyway” — a bit of a multi-layer joke if you think about it — while another ragged on Kirk’s appearance and made insinuations about his sexual preferences.
“You’re ugly as shit and get no pussy,” they crowed as the crowd jeered.
Later, I ran into “Mandy,” one of the few people who insulted Kirk to his face.
“Charlie Kirk came to SF State to stir up shit. That’s how he gets his views. So we’re here just to say, ‘Fuck you, man.’ We live here, we go to school here, fuck you,” Mandy told me. “The pretense of polite debate is how we got Charlie in the first place. Imagine where we could be if we met MAGA with their energy all the time.”
But what I recall most vividly is how bored people seemed to be by 1 p.m. Some wandered away from the speakers to chat with friends. Others just lay down on the turf, soaking in the sun. Some Trump fans decked out in MAGA gear told me that they were here to support Kirk, and had not really been listening to the debate itself. Many college-aged attendees weren’t even fans, just curious, and I could see giggles and eye-rolls in the crowd the longer Kirk droned on about the superiority of white Western civilization.
One of those eye-rollers was Haley Nicola, a junior at SF State.
“I’m really bored. We’re students here, and we’re shocked that people from all over the Bay Area here to support Kirk when… this is it. He talks about the same issues all the time. He picks on people, and people come to this to pick on him,” Nicola told me. “I just wanted to come to see how State students would do, and obviously we’re not doing a good job. I’m bored as shit and leaving for lunch now.”
Kirk founded TPUSA in 2012, courting young people with social media and expanding rapidly thanks to funding from conservative heavies including Foster Freiss. In short, Kirk’s ambition is to organize conservative college students, influence mainstream politics, and go viral again and again while doing so — usually by pumping out clips of Kirk dunking on dissenting strangers in short debates, all while ensconced by a crowd of his own fans.
He strikes a curious balance — he is not a full-on hate troll like Nicholas Fuentes, the “king of incels,” nor is he a conventional commentator like former Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson. They might agree on racist conspiracies like the “Great Replacement” of whites, but Carlson could never dream of having Kirk’s Extremely Online® reach. The agitation has led to genuine influence, with Kirk even aiding Trump in choosing cabinet positions.
In San Francisco, however, Kirk’s event failed to attract any newsworthy resistance, for better and worse. Earlier in the week, multiple students at Portland State University attempted to break into the building where Gaines was speaking; five were arrested. Back in 2023, a similar event hosted by TPUSA at SF State led to a fierce protest that left Gaines trapped in a classroom for several hours.
No such action unfolded on Tuesday. A tiny protest of just a half-dozen people at noon did grow into a mass of hundreds, who gathered along the perimeter of the rec field and began chanting and waving signs in support of, among other things, trans people and immigrants. A few metal and hardcore bands set up on a grassy island along the road; I could hear them roaring from the field.
I remember, just a few years ago, how the arrival of right-wing extremists into SF elicited a much more aggressive reaction. MAGA organizer and J6 insurrectionist Philip Anderson got his teeth knocked out on Market Street in 2020. I watched counter-protestors slash tires, break windows, and jump a man in Proud Boy regalia in Sacramento in 2021. Around the Bay Area, small groups of anti-fascist activists plotted to confront the proliferation of far-right militias in public spaces.
In 2025, however, much of that energy has dissipated elsewhere. The MSNBC crowd has defaulted to protesting at Tesla dealerships and gathering in the Civic Center for the occasional outburst against Trump and his administration, as with the DOGE protest earlier this year. And even on Tuesday, the lack of anti-Kirk action was almost… disappointing to see. At least that would’ve spiced up the day.
At one point, I ran into Jane, a San Francisco resident who had shown up curious about what Kirk had to say. After the first hour, though, she found the debates practically unintelligible. I found her literally walking around the edge of the crowd, asking if “any libertarians” were around to connect with.
“I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about,” Jane told me. As Kirk railed about the dangers of Islam in the background, Jane asked me whether I was interested in Austrian economics.
As far as intellectual exchange goes, our conversation was my highlight. I ran into her again at the end of the event, where she thanked me for discussing the finer points of microeconomics in public school systems and the populist politics of collectivism.
As I was walking out, however, I couldn’t help but laugh at what a young kid in a “47” hat blurted to his friends.
“Bro, that was so cool. Charlie tossed a hat straight to me! He was looking at me!”
