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The New York Times issued a major correction on Thursday after wrongly attributing an antisemitic claim to Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The Times had alleged that Kirk himself declared in a 2023 podcast that Jewish communities are “pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites” that they want people to stop using against them. In fact, Kirk was quoting a tweet and critiquing it, prompting the paper to retract the charge.
“An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement,” the correction read.
The New York Times told millions of readers that Charlie Kirk was anti-semitic.
And then, quietly, they offered this correction that only a handful of readers see – that the opposite was true. pic.twitter.com/TOfSZp8fMx
— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) September 12, 2025
On the program, Kirk made clear that he opposed blanket accusations. “Now let me just say, this is not a very well-written tweet. It’s very confusing. I’ll go through what they’re basically saying here. Half of this tweet is true, half of it, I don’t like. You want the truth said to your face. There it is. Elon responds, and he says you have said the actual truth … But the first part is absolutely true. Let’s go to this. Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” Kirk said, according to The Daily Caller.
He added, “Now I don’t like generalizations. Not every Jewish person believes that. But it is true, the Anti-Defamation League was part and parcel with Black Lives Matter. It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.”
After his death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Kirk as a “lionhearted friend of Israel” who “stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”
Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom. A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization. I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel. Sadly, that visit will not take place.
We lost an…— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) September 10, 2025
The Times article in question devoted much of its space to criticizing Kirk’s conservative stances, highlighting his opposition to gender ideology in schools and his dismissal of society’s fixation on race and George Floyd. It also noted his rejection of climate change alarmism, stating that he dismissed global warming as an “existential threat.”
The correction came as authorities confirmed the arrest of a 22-year-old leftist named Tyler Robinson for Kirk’s assassination following a sweeping manhunt. According to The Guardian, “In a phone interview on Friday, someone who said they were friends with Robinson in high school, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that the suspect was ‘pretty left on everything’ and was ‘the only member of his family that was really leftist.’
‘The rest of his family was very hard Republican,’ the friend said.
Around sophomore year, the friend said, Robinson became more extreme in his political views and would ‘always just be ranting and arguing about them.’
When the friend saw the news on Friday, he said that he was shocked. ‘I knew he [Robinson] had strong political views, but I never thought it would even go near that far.'”
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