Turning Point USA announced Sunday that a statue depicting the late founder Charlie Kirk outside the organization’s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, was vandalized and splattered with red paint.
In a post on X, Turning Point Action COO Tyler Bowyer shared photos of the vandalized statue next to a sign with a photo of Kirk that was also vandalized. The sign had a red “X” painted across Kirk’s face, and red paint over the word “Jesus” in the accompanying caption, “May Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving Savior.”
There was red paint sprayed across the neck on the statue of Kirk, across Kirk’s face on the statue, and on one of the hands of the statue that was holding a baseball cap. What appeared to be an upside-down smiley face in red paint was also painted over the bottom of the shirt on the statue of Kirk.
“This morning we woke up to radical criminals vandalizing our Headquarters,” Bowyer wrote. “Crossing over Charlie’s face, scratching out Jesus and the Cross & spraying red paint on his neck.”
The vandalism came days after the first anniversary of Kirk’s horrific assassination while speaking to students at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
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Mikey McCoy, who served as Kirk’s chief-of-staff, expressed in a post on X that if Jesus Christ while on the cross could pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” and that if Kirk was able to “return again and again to the campuses where he was hated and mocked and continue to meet hostility with courage and an invitation to dialogue,” then he could “surrender all the anger” and disgust he had.
“If Charlie could return again and again to the campuses where he was hated and mocked and continue to meet hostility with courage and an invitation to dialogue,” McCoy wrote. “If Stephen could be stoned to death and, with his final breaths, cry out to God, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’”
“If Christ could hang on the cross and pray, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ … Then I can surrender all the anger, and pure disgust that I feel at seeing this to a just and holy God and pray instead for the repentance and salvation of the people who carry out, mock, and celebrate these evil acts,” McCoy continued.
“We will restore the statue and replace the signs, but we are also reviewing the footage of the incident and are working with law enforcement to identify who did this and hold them accountable,” Turning Point USA wrote in a post on X. “But vandalism like this is not funny, it’s diabolical. The incident happened in the middle of the night because evil never sleeps. Beyond spray painting on the neck and face, they made the intentional decision to cross out the name of Jesus on a nearby sign.”
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