By Max Blumenthal

Jun 18, 2026

Charlie Kirk’s media empire and his right-wing activist organization, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), have come under the control of the Israel-directed forces he spent his last months antagonizing

The Charlie Kirk Show is now distributed by a federally registered agent of Israel tasked with seeding American media with Zionist propaganda. It is part of a whopping $46 million dollar annual contract between the Israeli government and Brad Parscale, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. This may be the largest lobbying contract in the history of foreign influence operations in the US.

On September 10, 2025, Kirk was assassinated during the first stop on his American Comeback Tour at Utah Valley State University. Eight days later, Parscale registered as a foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, assuming responsibility for a propaganda blitz “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets.”

The deal meant that the Charlie Kirk Show, which had been distributed by the Salem Media Network since 2020, was placed under the control of a foreign agent for Israel, with Parscale assuming a role as Salem’s Chief Strategy Officer. According to the terms of the contract, Parscale’s Clock Tower would “integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties.”

According to a December 2025 report by Radio Ink, The Charlie Kirk Show “will continue as a podcast on the Salem Podcast Network, as Salem Media ‘will maintain its close professional and personal relationship with Turning Point USA.’”

Since Kirk’s killing, his successors have done their best to bury his vehement opposition to war on Iran, as well as his public fits of disgust with Netanyahu and his army of lobbyists in the US. Kirk’s widow and replacement as TPUSA CEO, Erika Kirk, now insists that she and her husband never wavered in their support for Israel. She has also been unwilling to state what her late husband would have thought about the war the US and Israel waged on Iran this year.

“My husband isn’t here to say whether or not we should be at war with Iran,” Erika Kirk said in response to a question at a May 2026 TPUSA event. “I would love for him to be here right now and tell us if we should or should not.”

However, in the months before his killing, Kirk left little mystery about where he stood on the US imposing war on Iran. In one of many tirades against attacking Iran, he slammed Sen. Lindsey Graham and other cheerleaders for war as “pathologically insane.” He went on to warn that a regime change war inevitably “creates a quagmire. And then there is civil war.”

Kirk’s replacement dishonestly denies Israel connection

Since Kirk’s killing, TPUSA’s longtime communications director, Andrew Kolvet, has filled his anchor chair on The Charlie Kirk Show. During an episode of the show this May, Kolvet took aim at antiwar Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who had just been defeated by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger backed with a record $15 million in donations from Israel lobby organizations. While acknowledging that Kirk had been a “big fan” of Massie, Kolvet claimed that his late colleague had become “really frustrated” in private with the congressman’s obstruction of Trump’s agenda.

The curiously sourced comments prompted Massie to ask Grok, the AI chatbot of Twitter/X, “is it true that the Charlie Kirk Show is now distributed by a registered foreign agent of Israel?”

After sustained nudging by fellow X users, Grok finally coughed up a reply confirming that, “Yes, there’s a substantive connection here worth noting.” Grok went on to explain that “the distributor (Salem Media) has direct high-level overlap and active collaboration with a registered Israeli foreign agent.”

Grok’s reply directly contradicted Kolvet’s attempt to deny Massie’s allegation. According to Kolvet, The Charlie Kirk Show The CK Show “is distributed on [Steve Bannon’s Real America’s Voice], not Salem. I’ve been here for the entire journey. Booked all the guests.. Developed all of the editorial. We follow Bannon’s War Room.”

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, however, Kolvet explicitly thanked the Israel-controlled Salem Media for continuing to distribute The Charlie Kirk Show. “Salem has been so gracious through this process and even encouraged us to continue broadcasting the show on the Salem Radio Network,” Kolvet told Radio Ink.

To this day, The Charlie Kirk Show is hosted on the website of the Salem Podcast Network.

Kolvet’s attempt at damage control had failed, deepening the public backlash against TPUSA for betraying its founder’s evolving positions on Israel and Iran.

Bringing TPUSA back into line with Israel

As The Grayzone reported, in the weeks leading up to Kirk’s killing, the TPUSA founder agonized over the growing pressure he felt from Israel’s cutouts, and from Netanyahu himself, to preside over a blitzkreig of youth-oriented Zionist propaganda. On August 6, 2025, just over a month before his death, Kirk openly raged against Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders” harassing him for his criticism of Israeli policies. “It’s all of the sudden: ‘oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” he fulminated to podcast host Megyn Kelly.

Days before Kirk’s public rant, he attended a private retreat convened in the Hamptons by Zionist billionaire Bill Ackman. There, as The Grayzone revealed, an Israel lobby operative named Natasha Hausdorff unloaded on Kirk for complaining about “moral blackmail” from Tel Aviv. By this point, Kirk had rejected a massive infusion of Israel-directed donations to TPUSA, and was on his way to refusing a personal offer from Netanyahu to visit Jerusalem. He was also providing space on stage at TPUSA events for some of the most outspoken right-wing critics of Israel, from Tucker Carlson to Megyn Kelly to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith.

On September 6, 2025, an arch-Zionist centi-millionaire named Robert Shillman denounced Kirk from the dais at a private gala in Los Angeles, expressing regret for showering his fortune on TPUSA now that its founder had turned against Israel. As The Grayzone revealed, Shillman had just withdrawn a $2 million donation to TPUSA as punishment for Kirk’s heresy.

Four days later, Kirk was shot through the neck by a sniper in front of thousands of attendees of his so-called American Comeback Tour.

Just over a week after the shocking assassination, the Israeli Foreign Ministry effectively took control over the Charlie Kirk Show through its lobbying contract with Parscale’s Clock Tower X. Given the statements Kirk made both publicly and in private to confidants about Israel in the weeks before his killing, it seems unlikely he would have consented to any agreement that gave a registered lobbyist for Israel responsibility for distributing his show.

Days later, on September 15, one of the most visible propagandists of Netanyahu’s political network in the US, Ben Shapiro, appeared in TPUSA studios to make a dramatic announcement. Seated beside Kirk’s former co-hosts, Shapiro declared that his Daily Wire outlet was donating $1 million to TPUSA to supposedly “bring people back to Christ, and bring people back to church, and back to biblical values.”

Given that the Daily Wire was bleeding money, laying off staff and losing viewers at a rapid rate by this point, the whopping donation raised questions about whether Shapiro was serving as a pass-through for Israel lobbyists exploiting Kirk’s unexpected death to restore control over TPUSA.

To date, there is no evidence that the state of Israel was responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Yet it is undeniable that Kirk’s killing removed one of the greatest obstacles to Israel’s plans to compel Trump to launch a massive regime change war on Iran.

As The Grayzone reported, Kirk was the only figure in Trump’s inner circle to personally appeal to the president against committing US forces to Israel’s 12-day-long assault on Iran in June 2025. Trump “barked” at Kirk for his disobedience, according to a source, and angrily dispatched him. Days later, Trump ordered US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, setting the stage for Operation Epic Fury the following year. This account has since been confirmed by Vice President J.D. Vance.

Burying Charlie Kirk’s evolution

When Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026, he initiated an imbroglio that would fulfill Kirk’s most dire warnings about the consequences of waging a regime change war on Tehran. Four days after the war began, TPUSA posted a video on X implying that he would have supported the assault on Iran. The post ignited another yet angry backlash, with hundreds of angry commenters denouncing the organization for misrepresenting Kirk’s vehemently stated opposition to the war.

By this point, Erika Kirk had been working to bring TPUSA back into line with the Israeli agenda which her martyred husband had defied.

On December 13, 2025, Kirk’s widow starred in a televised town hall hosted by self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss and broadcast by CBS News, which had been purchased by the billionaire Israeli asset David Ellison four months prior. During the carefully stage-managed and cringeworthy spectacle, Weiss nudged Kirk on her late husband’s views on Israel.

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Via https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/israeli-foreign-agent-took-over-the