History has a funny—and often brutal—way of looping back on itself. For years, Charlie Kirk, the firebrand founder of Turning Point USA, made George Floyd a central pillar of his rhetorical brand. It wasn't just about a single event in Minneapolis; for Kirk, Floyd became a symbol of everything he claimed was wrong with "woke" America.
Then, in September 2025, the narrative took a turn no one saw coming. Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University.
Suddenly, the man who spent years dissecting the life and death of George Floyd became the subject of the same intense, polarized scrutiny. The irony is thick enough to choke on. If you've spent any time on X (formerly Twitter) or caught the clips of Kirk’s "Exposing Critical Racism" tour, you know he didn't hold back. He called Floyd a "scumbag." He pushed theories about fentanyl that the medical examiner had already addressed. He basically tried to delete Floyd’s status as a victim of police violence from the public record.
But now that Kirk is gone, the conversation has shifted. We aren't just looking at what happened in 2020 anymore; we’re looking at how Kirk’s crusade against Floyd’s legacy ended up defining his own.
The "Scumbag" Narrative and the Philadelphia Tour
In 2021, Kirk took his show on the road. Specifically, he hit Philadelphia with a message that felt designed to ignite a powder keg. During that tour, he told a crowd that George Floyd was "unworthy of the attention" his death received. He didn't just stop at criticizing the riots—he attacked the man’s character with a level of vitriol that left even some conservatives blinking.
Kirk’s argument was pretty simple: Floyd wasn't a martyr; he was a career criminal who died because of his own lifestyle choices.
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He leaned heavily on the idea that George Floyd died of a drug overdose rather than a knee on the neck. "Fentanyl" became the buzzword. Kirk and his followers pointed to the second page of the Hennepin County autopsy report like it was a smoking gun. They highlighted the phrase "no life-threatening injuries identified" to suggest that the physical restraint didn't actually kill him.
The problem? They were cherry-picking.
The full report, which has been public since June 2020, explicitly listed the cause of death as "cardiopulmonary arrest" complicating law enforcement "subdual, restraint, and neck compression." It was a homicide. Kirk knew this, or at least his researchers did, but the narrative of the "overdose" played better with a base that felt the 2020 protests had gone too far.
When the Tables Turned in 2025
Fast forward to the fall of 2025. The news cycle was already chaotic, and then Charlie Kirk was shot by a 22-year-old named Tyler Robinson.
The reaction was a mirror image of 2020, but with the jerseys swapped. Prominent right-wing figures, including then-Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi, immediately framed Kirk as a martyr for free speech. Bondi even threatened to target "hate speech" directed at Kirk, a move that civil liberties groups called a terrifying overreach.
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The contrast was jarring:
- In 2020: Kirk argued that Floyd’s past justified his treatment and that the protests were "domestic terrorism."
- In 2025: Kirk’s widow, Erika, stood at State Farm Stadium and asked for forgiveness, while others on the right called for "consequences" for anyone who didn't mourn him properly.
Honestly, it’s hard to keep up with the goalposts. When Kirk died, some people on the left used his own "scumbag" rhetoric against him. They brought up his comments about Black pilots and "prowling" criminals in urban America. It was a messy, ugly display of "eye for an eye" politics.
The Fentanyl Theory vs. The Medical Reality
Let's get into the weeds of the medical stuff for a second, because this is where Kirk really dug his heels in. He repeatedly claimed that George Floyd had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.
Medical experts, like those who testified at Derek Chauvin’s trial, noted that while drugs were present, the mechanism of death was the lack of oxygen. It’s like saying a person with heart disease who gets shot died of "natural causes." It doesn't work that way in a court of law, and it doesn't work that way in an autopsy.
Kirk’s insistence on the overdose theory wasn't just a medical disagreement. It was a political tool. By making Floyd the "villain," Kirk could delegitimize the entire Black Lives Matter movement. He wanted to prove that the "national reckoning" was based on a lie.
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Why This Connection Matters in 2026
We’re sitting here in 2026, and the dust is still settling from Kirk’s death. But the reason we’re still talking about George Floyd and Charlie Kirk in the same breath is because they represent two different Americas.
One America sees Floyd as a symbol of systemic failure and Kirk as a merchant of division. The other sees Floyd as a symbol of lawlessness and Kirk as a brave truth-teller who was eventually silenced by the very violence he warned about.
There’s a deep irony in Kirk’s final moments. He was literally in the middle of a Q&A about mass shootings when he was killed. His last words, reportedly about "gang violence," were a final attempt to pivot a conversation back to his favorite talking points about urban crime.
Actionable Insights: Navigating the Noise
If you’re trying to make sense of this mess without losing your mind, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Check the Source: When you see "autopsy clips" on social media, look for the full 20-page report. Selective reading is the easiest way to spread a lie.
- Separate the Man from the Movement: You can acknowledge that George Floyd had a troubled past while also recognizing that his death was a homicide. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
- Watch the Rhetoric: Notice when political leaders use "martyrdom" to justify crackdowns on free speech. Whether it’s 2020 or 2025, the First Amendment doesn't have a "feelings" exception.
- Empathy vs. Policy: As Kirk himself once said, he hated the word empathy. But without it, we’re just two sides screaming at each other over the bodies of people we’ve turned into caricatures.
The reality is that both men became larger than life, and in doing so, the actual human beings—with all their flaws and virtues—were lost to the machine of American politics. Whether you’re looking at a mural in Minneapolis or a memorial in Utah, remember that the truth usually lives somewhere in the uncomfortable middle.