Most people who aren’t actively engaged in this type of discourse like you and I, or don’t pay meticulous attention to conservative media outlets, likely don’t know who Kirk is, let alone care.

Kirk’s had his face plastered all over the news, his voice jammed into podcasts and radio shows, and his physical form injected into college campuses for over fifteen years running. You don’t need to be an academic to know who he is, any more than you needed to be a wrestling fan to know Dwayne Johnson or a pop music obsessive to recognize Taylor Swift.

I have no doubt your average conservative that watches Fox News has been exposed to Kirk

That’s tens of millions of people. And then you’ve got the average liberal who watches MSNBC or tunes in to Colbert’s Late Night. They can spot him, too. And then - again - anyone on a major college campus over the last fifteen years knows this guy purely because of his reputation as National Debate-Me Bro. The man did the college circuit hundreds of times. He’s been a popular meme for at least a decade. He died running his mouth at a C-list university in Utah, ffs. That’s how prolific the man was.

I would gamble that more people could recognize Charlie Kirk on sight than any of the last three Vice Presidents.