Charlie Kirk’s RNC speech featured issues GOP actually made worse

Arriving at the Republican National Convention stage in Milwaukee on Monday with a mixture of mellow cheers and chants of “winner-take-all,” Charlie Kirk spoke to a packed audience about the financial challenges facing Gen Z.

The founder of Phoenix-based Turning Point USA said the generation has to “pinch pennies just so that they can never own a home, never marry and work until they die, childless.”

Yeah, Charlie, it sucks! We wonder who is responsible?

Kirk’s speech, which followed Donald Trump’s announcement of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, attempted to motivate young people to vote for former President Donald Trump with the promise of financial improvement.
And while Gen Z’s financial struggles are indeed bleak, Kirk’s accounting of them Monday was laced with half-truths and inaccuracies.

What's more, he seemed willfully ignorant of how the Republican party has made most of those same issues worse.

Here’s how the claims in Kirk’s Republican National Convention speech hold up.


THE CLAIM: “According to current projections, one-third of today’s Americans will never get married.”

THE FACTS: While the claim is technically true, it leaves out a lot of important context.

These “current projections” came from a February 2024 study from The Institute for Family Studies, a conservative think tank whose stated mission is to “strengthen marriage and family life,” according to their website.

IFS’ projections are based on the marriage rate of around 20% of 25-year-olds today compared to the much higher marriage rates of the late 1960s, when 75-85% of 25-year-olds were married. But anyone could have told you that.

Based on this information, the think tank stretches the data to say that plausibly – an important keyword left out of Kirk’s speech – marriage rates will decline and only one-third of today’s 18 and 19-year-olds will be married when they are 45. A lot can change in 30 years.

THE CLAIM: “Young men are the most conservative they have been in 50 years.”

THE FACTS: There is evidence to suggest that young men aged 18 to 24 have become more conservative in recent years, yet Kirk’s claim is misleading.

Young American men are the only population group to become more conservative in the last decade, but they’re barely so. According to a 2023 Reuters poll that used 43 questions to place respondents on a 1-to-5 scale – 1 being most conservative, 5 being most liberal – young men grew less than 1% more conservative since 2014.

A Gallup poll from the Survey Center on American Life reached similar findings. While young men are more conservative than liberal, there has been little change in their political views over the last 20 years. In fact, more young men identify as moderate than conservative.

THE CLAIM: “The average American is having fewer children than ever before. Why? It’s because for far too many, they simply can’t afford them.”

THE FACTS: This claim by Kirk is true.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. birth rate declined to its lowest level in history in 2023. The trend of falling fertility rates has been occurring since 2007, the onset of the Great Recession.

However, this reality isn’t new under the Biden-Harris administration, as Kirk asserted. And he cites no policy suggestions by Trump to alter this reality.

The cost of childcare is up 30% in the last decade and more than 200% over the past 30 years. Childcare is also increasingly sparse, according to the Center for American Progress, as 50% of families live in areas where childcare is not available. And while Trump promised to lower childcare costs during his first term as president, that did not happen.

Additionally, there have been heightened efforts by Republicans to limit in vitro fertilization, or IVF – which is an important procedure to help many prospective parents have kids. Trump has said he supports the procedure.

THE CLAIM: “Homeownership is now out of reach unless you make over $106,000 a year.”

THE FACTS: This claim by Kirk is mostly true.

According to a new Zillow analysis, Americans shopping must earn more than $106,000 a year to comfortably afford a home, which is 80% higher than in January 2020.

However, that standard drastically changes by location. Buyers in Pittsburgh, Memphis and Cleveland could comfortably afford a home with an annual income between $58,000 to $70,000. Meanwhile, other cities, specifically in California, require income levels to be $200,000 or more to afford a home, according to Zillow’s analysis.

The issues facing increasing home prices are complicated, to say the least. Problems facing Arizona’s housing market include low housing stock, housing flipping and AirBnbs flooding the market, restrictions on affordable housing development and NIMBYism – all of which negatively impact the average potential homeowner.

Trump’s housing plan remains simple and doesn’t address these problems. Instead, he simply suggests cutting energy costs and interest rates to improve the country's bleak housing situation.

THE CLAIM: “Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to illegals and foreign nations.”

THE FACTS: Kirk is referencing the billions of dollars in aid that federal lawmakers have passed to send to Israel and Ukraine for military support in their separate conflicts. Since March 2022, the U.S. government has provided $107 billion in aid to Ukraine. Additionally, an aid package in April provided another $10 billion in aid to Israel.

Yet, his reference to undocumented immigrants is false.

The Department of Homeland Security has directed funding – upwards of $300 million in April – through grants to support local communities that have received an influx of migrants who came to the U.S. to claim asylum. The funding aims to support the communities that are providing services to these individuals, which include temporary shelters and other costs related to serving migrants waiting for the outcome of their immigration proceedings, according to DHS.

THE CLAIM: “When he (Trump) was president, young people were richer than ever before, and he will do it again.”

THE FACTS: This claim by Kirk is false. According to Federal Reserve Board data analyzed by the Center for American Progress, the wealth of young Americans has increased since Trump left office at the end of 2020.

Americans under the age of 40 have seen the fastest wealth growth of any group since the onset of the pandemic. They experienced a 49% increase in wealth – calculated as the value of a household’s assets like stocks and bank accounts, minus its liabilities like mortgages and student loan debt – from 2019 to 2023.

Notably, Trump has criticized Biden’s efforts to forgive student loan debt, perhaps the single most impactful measure that could increase the wealth of young Americans.