Tags: tucker-carlson, bill-ackman, benjamin-netanyahu, donald-trump, candace-owens, megyn-kelly, charlie-kirk
A leaked WhatsApp screenshot allegedly shows Charlie Kirk lamenting that Turning Point USA lost a major pro-Israel donor pledging $2 million per year over the group’s refusal to cancel Tucker Carlson, a revelation that has intensified scrutiny of internal donor tensions amid the ongoing investigation into Kirk’s fatal shooting.
On the morning of September 8, 2025, Charlie Kirk wrote in a WhatsApp group allegedly composed of ten participants that “Just lost another huge Jewish donor, $2 million per year because we won’t cancel Tucker,” a line that Candace Owens published as a screenshot on her program on October 6, 2025, according to her public statements and subsequent online posting. Andrew Kolvet, identified publicly as Turning Point USA’s communications representative, confirmed the authenticity of the screenshot that shows Charlie Kirk addressing a donor withdrawal of $2 million per year, a figure that matches contemporaneous press reporting in the New York Post and Jerusalem Post about a major Jewish donor pulling funds from Turning Point USA. Charlie Kirk’s September 8 message, which also reads in the screenshot “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. They’re leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause,” appears to contradict Kirk’s May letter to Benjamin Netanyahu and Kirk’s August appearance on Megyn Kelly where he publicly reiterated pro-Israel bona fides. Those contradictions have become central to public debate after Kirk was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, two days after the screenshot date, and before any explanation of his private intentions could be adjudicated in public.
The WhatsApp screenshot that Candace Owens released shows time-stamps and participants’ initials consistent with a group chat format, which she identified on-air as a ten-person chat on WhatsApp, a detail contested by some commentators who speculated early on about Telegram; the exchange was later presented as WhatsApp on October 6, 2025, in multiple clips and social-media posts from Owens. Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet responded publicly on October 7, 2025, by acknowledging that the messages were consistent with internal tensions at Turning Point USA regarding hosting Tucker Carlson at AmericaFest, while offering no further private-chat logs or identifying the other nine participants in the alleged group conversation. The absence of full chat logs prompted immediate demands from commentators for the remaining messages and participant names, a demand that Candace Owens declined to satisfy immediately on-air, saying only that more material might be revealed later, a decision that intensified accusations of selective disclosure and media strategy.
The specific donor named in media follow-ups appears in press reporting as a major pro-Israel contributor who withheld an annual pledge of roughly $2 million after the Turning Point organisers refused to disinvite Tucker Carlson, a decision that management sources say took place around July 2025 when Tucker participated in Turning Point’s SAS event. Charlie Kirk’s WhatsApp remark that “they’ve left me no choice” must be situated against a series of public actions in 2025: Kirk’s May letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging stronger pro-Israel public messaging, Kirk’s July hosting of a debate at SAS that included Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith, and Kirk’s August Hamptons meeting with donors including Bill Ackman, where insiders describe donors “lighting into him” over his outreach to dissident voices. Those public events establish a pattern in which Kirk both cultivated pro-Israel donor relationships and attempted to broaden Turning Point USA’s big-tent strategy by platforming critics like Tucker Carlson, a strategic tension that the September 8 WhatsApp text explicitly describes in crude financial terms.
The timing of the message, the $2 million figure, and the format of the WhatsApp post have produced two distinct analytical tracks in public discussion: one track focuses on whether Charlie Kirk was changing his alignment with pro-Israel donors and whether that realignment explains discord within Turning Point USA, and a second track explores the more charged claim that those tensions provided motive for a political assassination. The first track is supported by contemporaneous public evidence in May through August 2025—Kirk’s letter to Netanyahu, the SAS debate on July 2025, the Hamptons donor meeting in August 2025—and by Kirk’s own archived interviews; the second track requires independent evidentiary proof of external action, such as proof of an agent acting on behalf of any foreign government, proof that the $2 million donor coordinated with security operatives, or proof tying the suspect arrested in Utah to those donor networks. Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet has said only that the messages are consistent with internal pressure and donor frustration; prosecutors in the Utah homicide case have asserted they possess video, DNA, and a murder weapon but have not released full evidence to the public as of October 8, 2025.