U.S. Senator Steve Daines appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem News Network to reflect on the legacy of Charlie Kirk. During the conversation, Daines spoke about Kirk’s impact on his own family and described his influence on university campuses.
Daines stated, “Charlie Kirk had a big influence on my life, on my wife’s life, on my children’s lives. I’m grateful our children are solid in their faith and their worldview and their politics. And I can tell you, it’s leaders like Charlie Kirk who absolutely impacted our family. There was nobody quite like him. And when you see what he did on university campuses…. he’d been in Montana many times. In fact, some of his early starts were out here in the West…now-Governor Greg Gianforte, but back then, my colleague in a software business, we were in the software together, Greg was one of those early supporters of Charlie as a teenager when nobody knew who Charlie Kirk was. So we just had had an early insight into this guy back when Charlie was not a household name.”
Daines continued by highlighting Kirk’s approach to engaging students and opponents through dialogue: “…The way he would go on university campuses, and he would engage with I would call the Socratic teaching philosophy, which is asking questions of his adversaries versus telling them what to believe, was a really important part of Charlie as a ‘winsome warrior,’ confronting the radical ideologies that are so toxic on our university campuses today. And Charlie was one of these- bold, unafraid, humble, but as they called him, tender-hearted lion. That’s Charlie Kirk…”
He also noted Kirk’s role in Republican strategies for reaching younger voters: “…And I remember when I was campaigning with President Trump in the ’24 election, when I was running the NRSC in this last cycle, making sure we got the [Senate] majority back for Republicans. When people would ask me, they would say, ‘How are we going to win the youth vote? How are we going to influence this next generation to embrace the ideals, the foundations of this great country called the United States of America?’ I always had a two-word answer, and it was Charlie Kirk…”
Daines described changes he observed in Kirk over time: “…You could see the maturation. Not only in the way he presented his case, frankly, through a lot of just trial and error over and over on the campuses, refining the way he engaged the radical left. But I also saw deepening in his faith. He just became increasingly more anchored in his faith, which despite the popularity and the success he experienced…he never lost sight of who he served, ultimately, his Savior, and it kept him humble and grounded. You saw that as a loving husband, an amazing father, those two sweet children, and at the end of the day,I always think that people only believe what they discover for themselves,and that’s why Charlie was effective.He brought people who were opposed to his ideas through a process of self-discovery by using that Socratic teaching methodology.He helped them articulate what they really believed.And through that process ,he was almost like an evangelist in terms of for conservative thinking,but also for faith.That intersection made him uniquely ,uniquely effective across campuses in the United States.”
