Charlie Kirk visits USC, draws crowd of fans, protesters

Political content creator and conservative activist Charlie Kirk visited the University of South Carolina this week to debate any student who would step up.

The American Comeback Tour drew hundreds of USC students and Columbia residents to USC’s Greene Street despite intermittent rain. The conservative social media political activist held debates with students in the crowd as they stepped up to a microphone.

Kirk’s social media presence includes a 6.4 million-follower TikTok account. His debate video content rakes in the most hits, with view counts surpassing 40 million on several posts.

Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, sponsors and promotes conservative activism among high school and college-aged young people. USC hosts its own Turning Point chapter, one of more than 1,000 chapters at institutions across the United States., according to its website on USC’s Garnet Gate.

Fan of Kirk and USC student Rachel Griffin said she learned of him and his content on social media.

“I saw it on social media, like Instagram posts, TikToks,” she said. “I just saw him debating people, and so I just kind of got invested in videos and stuff.”

Another student and fan of Kirk, Caroline Bailey, said she hoped the debates would be intense.

“I am excited and hopeful that there will be, like, some heated debate going on,” she said.

Kirk described his social media strategy on an episode of the Valuetainment podcast from November 2024.

“So over the summer I said, ‘Well what if this election season I do, like, 25 campus stops, and we kinda create these open-air discussions,’” Kirk said. “‘And they might go viral, especially on TikTok. That could influence a lot of people to view the election the way, obviously, I want them to view it.’ And, look, on TikTok alone, it was a billion views in 90 days.”

Other stops on The American Comeback Tour have been filmed and turned into TikTok posts. Monday’s event at USC had a camera filming the stage.

Jest Dennis attended the event as a protester. Dennis described Kirk as a fascist and chose not to participate in his debate.

“From what I’ve seen, going through his page, they never post any videos where Charlie Kirk is put on the ropes,” she said. “Anywhere that Charlie isn’t shown in a favorable position or, like, accepts that he’s wrong, they will never show that because that reduces their platform and reduces his credibility.”

Dennis brought a speaker to the event to play music to drown out Kirk. Police shut down her protest quickly. Other protestors were present but chose to stay anonymous behind masks or not present themselves as protestors, she said.

Dennis said Kirk’s ideology and large platform are dangerous.

“His views are at the very best – when separated from the platform that he’s built – are uninformed and inaccurate,” she said. “When combined with the platform that he’s built for himself, (they) are dangerous and provide context and encouragement for other dangerous ideologies that will get people hurt on campus and in Columbia.”