A generation of fledgling White House staffers and other young conservatives grew up on a steady social media diet of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, the same way an older guard did on radio commentator Rush Limbaugh.

Kirk’s life shaped their political views, and his influence is likely to have a profound effect on those steering the country, or who hope to, for decades to come.

“He was the best of us,” said Nick Solheim, chief executive officer of the conservative personnel development organization American Moment. “Every young man who works in the White House had a story just like his, and they admired him for being a leader amongst our cohort.”

Solheim’s group has a symbiotic relationship with Kirk’s Turning Point USA and helped find recent graduates and 20-something conservatives fired up by Kirk their first Washington jobs, often in the White House or Trump administration.

Kirk, who was killed Wednesday in Utah while speaking on a college campus, was a close friend of Vice President JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and many others in the White House, but his influence went far beyond those high-profile relationships. Kirk, through his organization, events on college campuses and online platform, created space where conservatives felt safe and emboldened to talk about their Christian faith and debate controversial issues, including immigration, abortion, race and the role of religion in politics — many of which have become central to Trump’s second-term agenda.

“His advocacy for the rights of the unborn, especially after Dobbs, when so many Republicans were looking to cut and run on the issue … was hugely influential on young staffers on the Hill and throughout the movement,” said Theo Wold, a White House official in Trump’s first term who remains close to the administration.

For many conservatives of Kirk’s generation, the activist’s often inflammatory and provocative rhetoric — “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years,” Islam is “at odds” with Western values — was thrilling and liberating, even as it drew stern condemnation from traditional arbiters of civil discourse. He gave many members of the Cabinet, Congress or senior staff in the White House to echo his points and set policy accordingly.

“If Charlie could say it in his winsome, persuasive, charismatic way, it opened the aperture for others to do so,” Wold said. “I can’t really think of anyone who’s in the White House, or in a senior role in administration, or a respected figure in the movement, who isn’t shaped and influenced by Charlie — especially his Christian witness.”

And his influence on young conservatives wasn’t only a Beltway phenomena. Easton Urbanek, who worked on Trump’s 2024 campaign in Michigan, said he got into politics because of Kirk, saving up money while in high school for a plane ticket from Detroit to Tampa for a Turning Point Student Action Summit. Now, he is a legislative aide for Republican state Rep. Josh Schriver in the Michigan statehouse.

“I was this dorky kid with braces going up to this really tall guy who I’ve seen on television and such. And it was a little intimidating. But to every person he went around with, he was like, ‘Hey, thank you for being here. Where are you from?’” Urbanek said. “He had a really down to earth personableness.”

Kirk had a pulse on the party’s grassroots and communicated with them through memes, short videos and his radio program syndicated on more than 200 programs nationally. He also wasn’t afraid to push the White House on uncomfortable issues he knew resonated with a younger audience, like the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, documents related to the late, convicted sex offender that many in the MAGA movement have been clamoring to be released. Kirk at one point posted that “the communication and transparency [from the administration] could be much improved,” warning that “the base wasn’t going to just move on.”

Kirk was also one of a small handful of people that Trump spoke to as he mulled over the decision to bomb Iran. Polling has generally shown millennials, who lived through more than seven years of the Iraq War, and Gen Z were less supportive of the airstrikes than older voters, and are overall more opposed to foreign intervention.

“I said, ‘I trust you 100 percent Mr. President, whatever you do, we have your back. Would allow me to try to introduce one element, which is the younger voters that I represent on college campuses. They are war weary. They don’t want foreign conflict. They don’t want foreign intervention. And so just please keep that in mind when you’re going about this,’” Kirk told Megyn Kelly in an interview on her show in June of his conversation with Trump.

Kirk’s reach expanded beyond political junkies and Republican staffers. More than 1 million people tuned in to “The Charlie Kirk Show” every day, according to Turning Point USA.

“My 22-year-old assistant said, and I quote, ‘I’ve never seen so many normies posting about somebody like this,’” said one senior White House official, granted anonymity to speak openly about the administration’s response to Kirk’s death.

For now, it’s unclear who will take up the mantle of Kirk’s work, if it’s possible at all. People close to Kirk describe him as a singular figure who was both intensively provocative and charming, had an unmatched ability to debate and was adept at running a massive organization.

Other provocateurs, like Ben Shapiro, have built brands with the Gen Z MAGA audience but have broken with the administration on issues like trade and foreign policy. Kirk, by contrast, hewed more closely to the MAGA cause.

“He is irreplaceable. He could do it all. There isn’t another person alive who can do everything he did for our movement,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a prominent Gen Z strategist close to the White House. “However, he inspired millions. And helped platform hundreds of the biggest conservative voices there are today. We will all have to step up.”