Brent Hamachek, a New York Times bestselling author, reflected on his 12-year relationship with Charlie Kirk and the development of his new book, The Intellect of Charlie Kirk, during an exclusive interview Thursday on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, one year after Kirk was assassinated in Utah.
Hamachek serves as Chief Communications Officer for the Freedom Chamber and previously served as vice president and associate publisher for Human Events Media Group. He first met Kirk in September 2013 at a dinner in the Chicago suburbs, when Kirk was 19 and had launched Turning Point about a year earlier.
“My first impression of [Kirk] was simply that he was extraordinarily bright and very intense, but not in what I would call an intense way,” Hamachek said.
Hamachek said he believed the intellectual connection between the two was what ultimately brought them together and shaped their work over the following years.
“I think one of the reasons Charlie and I got along so well from the moment we met until, right until the very end, is that I think in his mind, whether it was right or wrong, he felt that when he talked to me, I could keep up with him intellectually,” Hamachek said.
The relationship eventually led to Hamachek helping Kirk with written content, including opinion pieces and books. Hamachek said he initially had no professional writing background beyond business correspondence.
After Kirk sent him an opinion piece for editing, Hamachek began working with him on communications. He later wrote Capitalism Cures, a booklet for Turning Point, and eventually co-wrote Kirk’s 2016 book, Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course Toward Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations.
Hamachek said the two ultimately produced approximately 370,000 words of written content and radio-show monologues together.
He said the idea for his new book, The Intellect of Charlie Kirk, came from Just the News founder John Solomon and CEO Mark Meckler during a conversation on April Fools’ Day.
Hamachek curated material from the years of work he and Kirk produced, adding stories and commentary about the circumstances surrounding the writings.
“The title is mine, because that is the piece of Charlie where I had knowledge, where I did my work, where we spent our time, and where I got to make observations and watch growth and change in a way that other people simply didn’t get the opportunity to do,” Hamachek said.
“[The book] is a collection of writings, ideas, and stories from someone who was a transformative American, I think, in so many ways,” he added.
Hamachek said the book offers a perspective on Kirk that he believes is distinct from other accounts of the late activist’s life and work because of the unique nature of their long-running intellectual collaboration.
“Lots of people can write different books about their experience or an angle with Charlie. Nobody else could write this one. There is nobody else that had this. Doesn’t make me good or bad, it just is what it is,” he noted.
Hamachek said early reactions to the book have been favorable, with one comment standing out to him: “This is a piece of history.”
He said the material collected for the book could eventually be preserved and made available more broadly through Turning Point.
The Intellect of Charlie Kirk: A Collection of Writings, Ideas, and Stories from a Transformative American is out now.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Brent Hamachek” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.
