Charlie Kirk's secret 'worry' about Trump unearthed in blockbuster new book

Charlie Kirk, the late right-wing activist and ally of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, privately expressed concerns about how the president was handling Middle East affairs amid fractures in the MAGA base, according to a highly anticipated book released Tuesday.In “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed how Kirk privately questioned Trump’s handling of relations with Israel during ongoing conflict in Gaza, prior to his assassination at a college event in Utah in September.Kirk publicly complimented Trump by saying, “Thank God we have a president who is working every day, and sometimes in the middle of the night, fighting to keep America out of yet another Middle East quagmire,” the authors wrote.Behind the scenes, Kirk was singing a different tune.“Privately, Kirk would tell associates that he was far more worried about what Trump might do than he was letting on in public, but recognized that airing those concerns could only backfire, reducing his ability to influence the President,” Haberman and Swan wrote.As co-founder and executive director of the national conservative student group, Turning Point USA, Kirk was “constantly in touch with college-aged Republicans, and he could see that many of them were turning against Israel,” the authors wrote.“A rift was opening up inside MAGA,” the authors said. “While older Republicans still overwhelmingly supported Israel, a sizable cohort of younger MAGA adherents were asking questions at Turning Point events that sounded remarkably similar to the types of questions floating at gatherings of young leftists.”These young voters were questioning “why America was supporting Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza,” and in some extremes, factions of the party were becoming overtly “antisemitic and conspiratorial” about Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, according to the book.“Regime Change” presents a variety of other revelations about Trump and his associates, from Republican lawmakers proposing “lavish” tributes to the president to how Cabinet members and advisers acted at Trump’s extravagant Mar-a-Lago New Year’s bash.