Two days after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, his signature podcast was again on the air. To honor Kirk’s reminiscence, 4 of his closest colleagues hosted an episode of The Charlie Kirk Present. They gathered inside his previous studio at Turning Level USA’s headquarters, maintaining an empty chair for Kirk. On to the fitting sat Jack Posobiec, a conservative influencer. “I do know the seat seems empty, however it’s not,” Posobiec stated. “As a result of in a manner, Charlie is the one factor we’re all desirous about proper now.”
Not like the opposite three co-hosts, Posobiec’s major job wasn’t working for Kirk. Nonetheless, he has grow to be probably the most distinguished faces of TPUSA since Kirk’s demise. He has usually spoken on the influential right-wing group’s occasions, appeared on varied TPUSA podcasts, and infrequently stuffed in as a visitor host for Kirk’s present. He has performed high-profile media hits with CNN and CBS Information to speak about his late good friend, and he delivered remarks at Kirk’s funeral—becoming a member of an inventory of audio system that included President Donald Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, and a number of other Cupboard members.
Posobiec, who declined to remark for this story, has lengthy been a star on the earth of MAGA. He has 3.2 million followers on X, the place his podcast, Human Occasions Day by day, usually accrues greater than 100,000 views. In a 2023 Semafor ballot, dozens of Republican strategists mostly named Posobiec because the influencer with the largest pull among the many get together base.
Posobiec and Kirk have many variations, Posobiec’s pals and colleagues emphasised to me. “No person can substitute Charlie,” Raheem Kassam, the founding father of The Nationwide Pulse, a right-wing media website, advised me. The late TPUSA founder ran a sprawling group with its tentacles in voter-registration efforts, campus occasions, fundraising, and media. He additionally introduced himself as a level-headed one that was prepared to calmly interact together with his political opponents. “Charlie was making an attempt to be a uniter,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, advised me. “Jack is completely totally different.” Posobiec’s strategy to politics is way more adversarial.
Even so, Posobiec is healthier positioned than anybody else to fill a minimum of a few of the void Kirk has left as probably the most necessary figures on the modern proper. He shares one in all Kirk’s greatest strengths: His skill to concurrently attain each the MAGA base and essentially the most distinguished Republicans in Washington. “If there ever was a pure heir,” to Kirk on this respect, Kassam conceded, “Jack has that skill.”
Earlier this month, Posobiec attended Trump’s antifa roundtable, gathering within the White Home alongside high administration officers, together with Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel. In June, Posobiec posted a photograph of himself within the Oval Workplace subsequent to Trump and Vance. Even when nobody can substitute Kirk, Posobiec, together with his massive viewers and his deep connections, is now extra indispensable on the fitting than ever earlier than.
I first got here throughout Posobiec in 2017, when he dashed by me whereas I used to be protecting a Democratic press convention about web neutrality on the Capitol garden. Posobiec handed out flyers and requested the senators holding the occasion why they supported “satanic porn.” What did demonic erotica should do with regulating internet-service suppliers? He by no means clearly defined. In the event you had advised me then that Posobiec would grow to be probably the most necessary influencers on the fitting, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Posobiec began his path to political commentary round 2015, whereas working a Sport of Thrones fan weblog. He wrote “The Girl and the Trump,” a satirical Sport of Thrones story wherein the then–presidential candidate falls in love with Sansa, a teenage character within the present. He was 30 years previous on the time and was working as an intelligence officer for the Navy Reserve. Posobiec’s early strategies appeared incompatible with establishing a critical political profession. In 2016, he went to Comet Ping Pong—the pizzeria in Washington, D.C., that conspiracy theorists had determined was floor zero for a supposed pedophile ring being run by liberal elites—and livestreamed his beginner investigation. In doing so, he helped mainstream Pizzagate: On a Sunday afternoon, lower than a month later, a gunman fired a number of photographs inside Comet Ping Pong whereas households gathered there for lunch.
In 2017, a month earlier than I noticed him on the Capitol garden, Posobiec and fellow right-wing stunt artist Laura Loomer interrupted a efficiency of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park to protest its references to Trump. Whereas Posobiec was trolling the libs, Kirk, simply 24 years previous on the time, was busy elevating hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to develop TPUSA into a robust group on the fitting.
In the course of the early Trump years, Posobiec additionally flirted with the far-right fringe. Not less than twice in 2016, he posted references to 1488, a quantity widespread amongst neo-Nazis. (It combines the variety of phrases in a slogan about preserving a white future—14—and the place of h within the alphabet, a reference to “Heil Hitler.”) He has additionally repeatedly unfold hoaxes. In 2017, Posobiec circulated a submit that falsely claimed that CNN had revealed after which deleted an article defending Invoice Maher’s use of an anti-Black slur. In 2020, Posobiec tweeted: “2 crates stuffed with pipe bombs found close to Korean Struggle Memorial in DC after suspects noticed in bushes. Federal property in pursuit.” None of this was true.
Posobiec now not pulls the stunts that he used to. Prior to now a number of years, he’s slid right into a extra standard influencer function, each podcasting and steadily posting on X. (Bannon takes credit score for this. In 2020, he “chewed his ass out” and advised Posobiec that he was “too priceless” to be losing his time with goofy escapades, Bannon advised me.)
However his penchant for the intense hasn’t gone away. Final yr, he co-wrote Unhumans, a e book wherein he contends that progressives are subhuman and seems to defend Augusto Pinochet—the Chilean dictator who killed dissidents by dropping them out of helicopters. “Wherever Pinochet was, there was no communism,” writes Posobiec and his co-author, Joshua Lisec. The e book is devoted “to the reminiscence of those that have fought communism.” (Vance glowingly blurbed Unhumans on its e book jacket.) Final October, he boosted false claims that then–vice presidential candidate Tim Walz had sexually abused one in all his former college students. At a TPUSA occasion in July, he pushed the thought that it’s “fallacious” to assume that “if you happen to simply hand somebody a chunk of paper, that makes them American.” He targeted particularly on Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayoral candidate who was naturalized as a citizen in 2018. “Is Zohran Mamdani an American like we’re?” he yelled to the gang. “No, he’s completely not!”
Posobiec maintains shut relationships with many individuals within the Trump administration. I spoke with half a dozen of his pals and colleagues, who all talked about his connections. In February, Posobiec joined the press corps with Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on a visit to Ukraine and was invited as press on a diplomatic journey with Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth to Germany. Donald Trump Jr. described Posobiec to me, in a press release through a spokesperson, as “probably the most influential media voices within the America First motion as we speak.”
Throughout a speech final March that Posobiec attended, Vance named “Jack P.” as one in all his “good pals” within the crowd. Kassam advised me that Posobiec has “virtually fast entry to anyone he desires within the White Home. He can in all probability stroll into Mar-a-Lago each time he desires.” Bannon and Kassam each advised me that Posobiec has relationships with Peter Navarro, White Home senior counsel for commerce and manufacturing, and Sergio Gor, the ambassador to India. (Till earlier this month, Gor was the director of the White Home Presidential Personnel Workplace.)
Anna Kelly, a deputy White Home press secretary, declined to touch upon Posobiec’s ties to Navarro and Gor. “He has been invited to cowl quite a few White Home occasions resulting from his standing as a trusted voice throughout the MAGA motion and attain that dwarfs that of The Atlantic and others,” she stated in an electronic mail. A spokesperson for Vance declined to remark.
Largely, Posobiec has been in a position to ingratiate himself among the many strongest individuals in Washington for a easy motive: He’s good—a minimum of to conservatives and particularly to Trump. “Jack’s a terrific man,” Libby Emmons, the editor in chief of the publication Human Occasions, the media outlet he podcasts for, advised me. “He’s an excellent household man. He’s an excellent good friend. He’s reliable. He makes pals simply.” (Immediately, Human Occasions agreed to the Pentagon’s media restrictions and joined its “new media” press corps.) Others I spoke with supplied comparable explanations for his deep connections. “Everyone loves him. There’s a genuineness to him,” Lucian Wintrich, a right-wing media persona and good friend of Posobiec’s, advised me.
I couldn’t assist however consider the similarities with Kirk, who was additionally extensively beloved in MAGA circles. That is steadily not how issues work on the fitting. Loomer—a provocateur and media determine with affect over Trump—is infamous for selecting intra-party fights. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration and doesn’t shrink back from attacking different distinguished influencers. (Carlson has stated that Loomer is “the world’s creepiest human”; Loomer has referred to as him “Tucker Qatarlson.”) In the meantime, Posobiec typically doesn’t get mired in MAGA squabbles and focuses his ire on the left.
There are different causes for the way Posobiec has grow to be so well-connected. He’s seen as an professional on China by his interior circle—virtually everybody I spoke with cited his skill to talk Mandarin. Tom Sauer, a determine on the fitting who served within the Navy with Posobiec, advised me that his “time within the Pacific” has given him a novel information of geopolitical affairs. Each Sauer and Bannon stated that Posobiec was in consideration for a place on the Nationwide Safety Council earlier this yr. (The White Home declined to touch upon whether or not Posobiec was thought of for an NSC job.)
And together with his massive following, Posobiec is seen by many on the fitting as each a bellwether for what the bottom cares about and a strategy to attain that base. “Individuals ask his opinion,” Bannon stated. “They know that in the event that they should drive a message, Jack has an enormous attain.” Final month, Posobiec focused Mark Bray, a Rutgers historian, calling him a “home terrorist professor” on X. As a result of Bray research anti-fascist actions, Posobiec accused him of belonging to antifa. “The day after the Posobiec tweet, I obtained a really direct demise risk saying that somebody was going to kill me in entrance of my college students,” Bray advised Wired. Fearing for the protection of his household, Bray determined to depart the USA and transfer to Spain.
Posobiec is sufficiently unctuous to the right individuals, he espouses the right ideological positions to align himself with the administration, he triggers the libs, and he can rally the bottom. These are the issues that matter to Trump, and Posobiec excels at them—as did Kirk. Every man has had a present at influencing. They usually each illustrate the paradox of what it means to be influential in MAGA world. Kirk’s and Posobiec’s nativist views have strengthened the acquisition of these concepts within the administration, however the two have been finally advocating for issues Trump had already stated he wished—closed borders, fewer migrants, financial nationalism. Posobiec is now among the many most necessary figures in MAGA, however MAGA has all the time began and ended with Trump.
