Politics is a blood sport. We all know that. But sometimes a single sentence from a pundit ripples out so far it starts to define an entire era of the culture war. That’s exactly what happened with the Charlie Kirk empathy quote.
If you’ve spent any time on X (formerly Twitter) or scrolling through political TikTok lately, you’ve probably seen the clip. It’s Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, leaning into a microphone and basically declaring war on one of the most basic human emotions.
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually," he said.
It sounds harsh. Honestly, it sounds borderline robotic to some people. But to understand why he said it—and why it became such a massive flashpoint after his death in late 2025—you have to look at the specific way Kirk viewed the world. He wasn't just being "mean." He was making a very deliberate, ideological distinction between "feeling" and "acting."
The Moment It All Started
The quote didn't come out of thin air. It originated during an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show on October 12, 2022. Kirk was riffing on how language gets weaponized in modern politics. He didn't just say he disliked empathy; he called it a "made-up, New Age term" that "does a lot of damage."
Here is the meat of what he actually said:
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term, and it does a lot of damage. I much prefer the word compassion, and I much prefer the word sympathy. Empathy is where you try to feel someone's pain and sorrows as if they're your own. Compassion allows for understanding. I prefer the word sympathy, because politics has weaponized empathy."
Kirk’s argument was essentially that empathy is narcissistic. He believed that when you try to "become" the other person or feel their pain exactly as they do, you lose your ability to be objective. You get swept up in the emotion of the moment rather than looking at facts or long-term consequences.
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Why Empathy Became a Political Target
For Kirk, empathy was a trap. He often pointed to Bill Clinton’s famous "I feel your pain" line as the ultimate example of political manipulation. In Kirk's eyes, that wasn't genuine care—it was a performance designed to shut down debate.
Think about it. If someone tells you, "I'm suffering, and you need to feel exactly what I feel," it becomes very hard to say, "I understand you're hurting, but this policy is still a bad idea."
By rejecting empathy, Kirk was trying to protect the "rational" side of his arguments. He saw it as a "clean spirit" vs. "unclean spirit" situation—a terminology he occasionally used when speaking to his more religious audiences. He argued that "toxic empathy" was being used to destabilize traditional institutions, from the church to the nuclear family.
The Sympathy vs. Empathy Divide
Kirk didn't want to be seen as heartless, even if his critics definitely saw him that way. He went out of his way to praise sympathy and compassion.
To him, the difference was simple:
- Sympathy: I see you are hurting, I feel bad for you, and I want to help you.
- Empathy: I am hurting because you are hurting; your pain is now my pain.
He felt that sympathy kept a healthy distance. It allowed a person to remain an individual while still being kind. Empathy, on the other hand, was "impossible" and "destructive" because it demanded an emotional surrender that he felt was dishonest.
The 2025 Resurgence
Fast forward to September 2025. The news cycle exploded when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during an event at Utah Valley University. Suddenly, this 2022 quote about empathy wasn't just a clip on a podcast—it was a litmus test for the entire country.
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The irony was thick. As news of his death spread, a lot of people on the left—people who usually champion empathy as a core virtue—found themselves struggling to feel any for Kirk. Social media was a mess of "selective empathy."
Critics pointed to his past comments as a reason why they didn't owe him any emotional grace. They argued that if he spent his career "demonizing empathy," he couldn't expect it in return. Meanwhile, his supporters used the same quote to defend their own lack of empathy for "the other side," creating a feedback loop of coldness that Kirk himself might have actually predicted, even if he didn't want to be the victim of it.
The "Toxic Empathy" Connection
Kirk didn't come up with these ideas in a vacuum. He was heavily influenced by the growing conservative critique of emotionalism. He frequently interviewed Allie Beth Stuckey, author of Toxic Empathy, who argues that empathy often leads people to make "harmful decisions" for society because they are too focused on individual feelings.
They would argue things like:
"You have empathy for the person crossing the border illegally because they are tired and hungry, but your empathy for them makes you ignore the safety of the citizens already living there."
In Kirk’s world, empathy was a zero-sum game. If you gave it to one person, you were inevitably taking it away from someone else.
What Most People Get Wrong
The biggest misconception about the Charlie Kirk empathy quote is that he was calling for people to be cruel. If you listen to the full context of his shows, he actually talked about "Christ-like compassion" a lot.
Whether he actually practiced it is a different debate, but his intellectual point was about the definition of the words. He believed that the modern definition of empathy—total emotional identification—was a tool used by the left to bypass logic.
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He was essentially trying to "de-platform" an emotion.
It’s a weird thing to try to do. Most psychologists would tell you that empathy is a biological function, not a "new-age term." But in the hyper-polarized world of 2026, even biology is up for debate if it can be used to win a segment on cable news.
Actionable Insights: Navigating the Empathy Debate
Regardless of what you think of Charlie Kirk, the "empathy vs. sympathy" debate is going to keep happening. If you want to navigate these conversations without losing your mind, here’s how to look at it:
- Define your terms early. If someone says "you lack empathy," ask them what they mean. Do they mean you don't care about their suffering (sympathy), or that you refuse to agree with their perspective based on how they feel (Kirk's definition of empathy)?
- Watch for the "Empathy Trap." Be aware of when someone is using a personal story to shut down a factual discussion. It’s okay to acknowledge the pain (sympathy) while still holding your ground on the policy.
- Practice "Cognitive Empathy." This is different from the "Affective Empathy" Kirk hated. Cognitive empathy is just understanding how someone thinks. You don't have to feel what they feel to understand why they feel it. This is the ultimate tool for winning a debate.
- Look for the "Selective Empathy" in yourself. We all have a tendency to feel more for people who look and think like us. Recognizing that bias is the only way to get closer to the "objective compassion" Kirk claimed to value.
The legacy of the Charlie Kirk empathy quote isn't just about one man. It’s about a broader shift in how we talk to each other. We’ve moved away from trying to find common ground through shared feeling and toward a world where even our emotions are partitioned by party lines.
If you want to understand the modern political landscape, you have to understand that for a large portion of the country, "empathy" is no longer a virtue—it's a tactical move. And once you see it that way, it’s very hard to unsee it.
For those looking to dig deeper into the actual philosophy behind these claims, the best move is to look at the work of Paul Bloom, a psychologist who wrote Against Empathy. He makes a secular, academic case for many of the same things Kirk argued on his podcast. It's a lot less "culture war" and a lot more "data-driven," which might give you a better handle on whether Kirk was onto something or just stirring the pot.