The slab of meat jumps and contorts as .30-60 bullets fly through it. “It goes all the way straight through and you can watch all the stuff blowing out the back here,” Chris Martenson narrates as his mouse circles over an area of the computer screen. “Some of that is bones, some of that is pig ejecta from the pork roast itself. Some of it is probably some plywood.”
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Martenson sits behind a podcast mic, sporting a white scruffy beard and a navy blue suit jacket. A painting of the aurora borealis hangs on a wall behind him. He talks into his computer screen while a video loop plays of a large piece of pork shoulder roast being shot.
The hunk of pork is standing in for slain conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s neck. Martenson is one of thousands of conspiracy theorists who flourished online after Kirk’s murder and immersed themselves into a clandestine world of conspiracy theories challenging the official narrative. Martenson spent nearly $10,000 shooting meat 55 times to say there was a second shooter.
“It’s inconceivable to us at this time, based on our results here, that a .30-60 round at the stated projectory,” he said, “that that would have done anything other than clean through.”
Students were filming when the single fatal shot rang out. Social media users almost instantaneously disseminated the graphic video of Kirk’s assassination. People immediately questioned the video’s authenticity. Just as quickly, conspiracy theories cropped up.
Less than 24 hours after Kirk was shot, people claimed a 77-year-old Canadian in Toronto was the shooter. Some claimed it was a transgender woman. Others speculated about the shooter’s politics. Only a gun-toting right-winger could have made that shot. Or it had to be a liberal. Or maybe it was a foreign actor. Turning Point activists and the Trump administration began blaming the shadowy “them,” in reference to the left as the true culprits.
Kirk’s alleged killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested just over a day after the shooting. That didn’t slow the conspiracy theories.
These unhinged conspiracies aren’t limited to paranoid pig-corpse-shooting-online-theorists. They rose to the highest levels of the conservative movement. Nearly three hours into an action-packed memorial service a week after Kirk’s death, media personality Tucker Carlson took the red-carpeted stage on the floor of Glendale’s State Farm Stadium.
“It’s about 200 years ago in Jerusalem,” Carlson said to a crowd of nearly 100,000 people. “Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power. And he starts doing the worst thing you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it.”
He was there to memorialize Kirk, but that Sunday afternoon Carlson’s comments brought online conspiracy theories into the mainstream. Over the next year, far-fetched theories about Kirk’s death, which Carlson planted the seeds for, spread like wildfire.
“I can sort of picture a scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about, what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us,” said Carlson, comparing Kirk to Jesus. “There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I could just hear him say, ‘Why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up.’”
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Carlson’s team didn’t respond to a request for comment.
CIA mind control
In life, the 31-year-old created a MAGA media empire fueled by conspiracy theories. On his show, Kirk trumpeted theories about the great replacement, election denialism, Haitian migrants eating dogs and even COVID-19 vaccine deaths and lab leaks. The hyperonline, MAGA conspiracy machine that Kirk existed in — and by which his death was instantly captured — worked exactly as it was designed in the wake of his assassination: to reject the official story.
“Whether it’s Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump, these people who promoted conspiracy theories to build their bases, to build their political power, often they then face that themselves,” said Will Sommer, a senior reporter for The Bulwark, on MS NOW.
Theories quickly emerged. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, who’d been a close friend and one-time employee of Kirk, led the charge. Over the last year, Owens has essentially dedicated her YouTube channel and livestreams to Kirk conspiracies. She sells “Candace Intelligence Agency,” or CIA, merchandise, including hats and t-shirts. She’s created a complex conspiracist network for podcasters, legal experts and influencers who’ve dedicated the last year to answering the question: “Who killed Charlie Kirk?”
Owens pushed vague theories that, without evidence, suggested that the alleged shooter, Robinson, was a Lee Harvey Oswald-like patsy. His wife, the new Turning Point CEO Erika Kirk, was part of a cover-up. The U.S government or Israel — or both — ordered the hit. Perhaps, she suggested, the right-wing deep state set it up to create a martyr. Or maybe Israel led the effort due to Kirk’s shifting stance on the country over its war in Gaza. On Carlson’s show, a guest also suggested as much. It’s enough to make your head spin.
But Owens’ unfounded speculations are just one of many.
Media personality Elizabeth Lane claimed Robinson was a victim of a CIA mind control operation. Influencers alleged that texts between Robinson and his romantic partner, in which he discussed Kirk, were fake. Kirk-conspiracy influencer Zach DeGregorio alleged, without evidence, that Turning Point was in on it, citing vague fiscal improprieties.
Other conspiracy theories suggest that Kirk and his family are a psyop — rather than a real family — that is involved with the Freemasons. Some social media theorists said Kirk wasn’t there. They claim he was projected into the venue as a hologram and is still alive.
Some, like Martenson, suggest that there was a second shooter, or Robinson couldn’t have been the shooter at all. A lawyer named Baron Coleman has dedicated his YouTube channel to poking holes in the prosecutor’s case. He’s claimed that the weapon Robinson allegedly used was too powerful to not cause an exit wound. A Kirk-truther by the name of Jon Bray has pushed a popular theory that the wireless microphone attached to Kirk’s shirt was a miniature bomb, which killed him. Bray’s theory gained traction on The Joe Rogan Experience. Others say that Kirk’s security guard had a palm gun that he shot him with.
Turning Point USA and other Kirk allies have pushed back against the conspiracy theories. Over the summer, Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the organization, challenged Owens. He wrote that she targets “innocent people, ruin lives for sport, inspire a wave of harassment and death threats against them before predictably moving on to your next harebrained ‘theory’ when that one collapses.” In a now-viral video, Erika Kirk demanded that Owens “stop” spreading conspiracy theories back in December.
“Everyone always has to think there’s more to the story,” said Erika Kirk in a CBS News interview. “Well, sometimes there’s not. I’ve seen the autopsy report.”
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