Posts falsely claim Charlie Kirk lied about ASU speaking ban to gain notoriety

In September 2025, after the fatal shooting of conservative commentator and Turning Point USA co-founder and CEO Charlie Kirk, a rumor spread that, in 2019, he falsely claimed to have been banned from speaking at Arizona State University in an effort to gain notoriety. 

The claim stemmed from an animated video that circulated on social media. For example, it appeared on Instagram (archived) on Sept. 17, where it had amassed more than 12,000 likes as of this writing.

The narrator claimed Kirk “built his entire career on a completely fake story,” adding:

In 2019, Charlie Kirk claimed Arizona State University banned him from speaking on campus. He said radical leftist students and administrators conspired to silence conservative voices. The story went viral, launching Kirk into national prominence and raising millions in donations. But here’s the truth, Kirk was never invited to speak at ASU in the first place. University officials had zero record of any ban or controversy involving him. When investigators dug deeper, they found something shocking — Kirk had fabricated email exchanges with university staff and hired actors to pose as angry protesters in staged videos.

The footage also claimed the university’s legal team threatened to sue him for defamation unless he retracted his story.

The animated clip also appeared on TikTok, X and Facebook, and Snopes readers searched our website and emailed us seeking to verify the rumor. None of the posts that shared the video included reliable sources to back their claim.

There was no evidence that the story was true, nor that Kirk had ever made such a claim about a speaking ban at ASU, so we’ve rated this claim false. In fact, the university’s student-run newspaper, The State Press, reported that Kirk had spoken on campus in March 2019. A Turning Point USA social media post from that month, which included a photo of Kirk surrounded by posters with “Arizona State University” written on them, confirmed Kirk had spoken on the ASU campus at that time (archived).

Searches on Google, Google News, Bing and DuckDuckGo for other scheduled events at ASU in 2019 from which Kirk may have been banned revealed nothing to corroborate the animated video’s claim.

A spokesperson for ASU confirmed in an email Kirk had spoken there in March 2019. “We are unable to find information related to other Kirk visits in 2019,” he added. He said Kirk had spoken at another event at ASU in February 2023. 

Further, the spokesperson explained, in order to speak on campus, those who organize the event must adhere to certain rules of security, and they may be rejected if they don’t. “Sponsoring student organizations or other campus sponsors must follow university protocols for hosting events,” he said. “Plans can be disrupted if sponsors fail to adhere to the required process to address logistical or security matters.”

Snopes contacted Turning Point USA and Kirk’s team at “The Charlie Kirk Show” (which launched in 2019, according to IMDB) seeking more clarification. None of them were immediately available for comment. We will update this story if we receive a response. 

Additionally, there was no proof Kirk made such claims at the time. In fact, a Sept. 17, 2025, article by AZCentral, a local news outlet in Arizona, credited ASU for being “the birthplace” for Turning Point USA.

In other words, the claim that Kirk faked being banned from the university was entirely fabricated. It seemed to originate (archived) from a TikTok account that published its first video in August 2025. Its most-watched clip was the one in question about Kirk, which had amassed more than 155,000 views as of this writing. 

Since its launch, the account had published more than 50 videos in just over a month. The pace of creation, along with the narration and the images used in its videos, suggested the animated clips were not human-made, but generated with artificial intelligence. For example, the first frame of the Kirk video featured text written on signs and posters that was nonsensical.

The stories the account shared were sensationalistic, sometimes emotional, and the scripts were bland and sometimes awkward, further adding to the feeling a human had not written them. It had all the hallmarks of so-called AI slop.

Snopes has covered many claims about Kirk since his death on Sept. 10, 2025, including the rumor that rapper Eminem wrote him a tribute after his death.