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Joni Ernst, chair of the Senate DOGE Committee, may lead one of the more hip caucuses in Congress – which has attracted young conservatives to policy debates – but no one has done that better than Charlie Kirk, she told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday.
Ernst’s daughter, a West Point graduate, first broke the news of Kirk’s death to her during a Senate committee hearing.
“I was actually sitting in a Small Business Committee meeting and my daughter texted me that Charlie had been shot,” Ernst recalled. “I was trying to pay attention to the hearing while getting updates from her on what was happening.”
Her daughter, who had seen videos circulating online, told her, “There’s no way that Charlie is alive.” Ernst responded, “Pray, honey, because miracles happen. Unfortunately, this wasn’t what we prayed for.”
The senator said Kirk’s message resonated deeply with her family.
“They have followed Charlie Kirk and his message, and they’re always so excited that he is biblically founded, he believes in God’s word, and he has really drawn in a lot of young conservatives — people who felt they didn’t have a voice, especially after the four years under President Biden with all of his woke agenda,” she said.
Ernst, R-Iowa, said that her daughter and son-in-law admired Kirk’s willingness to debate opponents directly. “It made them more comfortable discussing difficult topics with friends and coworkers,” she said.
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“[Kirk was] really grounded and centered in speaking truth. So they appreciated that. They followed him on Instagram and different platforms.”
Ernst said she and her family were also drawn to Kirk by his lack of apprehension to civilly debate anyone – and led them to be comfortable discussing similar topics with friends and coworkers.
“Unfortunately, the tragedy is as we thought it would be, because she saw it unfold with all the postings that were out there.
“The reassurance that I have to her and her husband are that his voice will continue to be out there and folks like her, they’ll amplify it, too. So his mission will live on.”
Ernst’s DOGE work, simultaneously popularized by Elon Musk, helped bring young people into the conservative fold.
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The lawmaker noted she had been working on DOGE-type work before the term even came into being. After her first election to the Senate, Ernst put out a statement pledging to make Washington “squeal” – in terms of slashing so-called pork-barrel spending.
“Prior to that, I was a county auditor and then in the state Senate. I’ve always been engaged in oversight of budgets, but coming into the senate, I have my ‘Squeal’ work. It really didn’t take off until we had [Musk] and President Trump really promoting DOGE. And Charlie Kirk was the same,” she said.
Prior to Kirk, the late radio host Rush Limbaugh inspired a generation of so-called “Rush Babies” in the 1980s and 1990s — young conservatives who regularly tuned into his AM talk show and credited him with shaping their early political views.
“[Rush Babies] simply illustrate how minds are shaped, opinions are validated, and sometimes how long it can take,” Limbaugh said in 2006, expressing sentiments that echoed what has been said of Kirk:
“I have always felt confident that what’s being built here is going to last a long, long time. You might lose an election here and there, obviously, but these kinds of roots, they’re deep, and they’re going to get even deeper.”
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While comparisons have been drawn between Limbaugh’s political magnetism and that of newer faces like Kirk, Ernst said the latter connected even more with young conservatives than the late commentator did.
“I love Rush, and no offense to Rush, but I think Charlie was even more so,” she said.
“He was really capturing that next generation and going to where they were — not just being on the radio or broadcast — but actually going out and meeting face-to-face with people that maybe saw very differently than he did, and being willing to take those slings and arrows and most literally on that final day.”
“I think it’s hard for young people to communicate face-to-face, as we saw in many of his debates,” she added, citing how some critics had a difficult time debating him because they were often busy on their phones or were not used to connecting person-to-person.
“I would say he’s even more so than Rush. And it’s just so unfortunate and tragic that his life was cut so short.”
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