Hasan Piker Speaks out After Charlie Kirk Is Shot and Killed at Utah Valley University

Left-wing political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker was set to debate right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at Dartmouth College on Sept. 25, 2025, and he has spoken out on Kirk's death. The two men were on opposite sides of the political spectrum but knew each other personally.

According to Politico, Piker has gotten death threats in the aftermath of his rival's murder. The Turning Point USA founder was murdered on Sept. 10, 2025, as he spoke about gun violence at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Kirk, who was a staunch Trump supporter, was shot in the neck with a Mauser .30-06 caliber bolt-action rifle as he sat in front of a crowd. He was rushed to the hospital but succumbed to the fatal injury.

Piker told Politico he was shocked to learn about Kirk's shooting and eventual death. His reaction "was pure horror" after learning his political rival had been shot, and he was in disbelief at first.

"It was pure horror," he said. "I had a couple people say while I was streaming that there was a guy on Twitter being like, 'Charlie Kirk just got shot in the neck at the event I’m at.' And I was like, 'There’s no way.'"

"I investigated a little bit further," he added. "I knew these kinds of events are filmed by many different points of view, because there’s a lot of people. Charlie Kirk’s whole team is there, they’re filming. I was like, “There’s no way that this is happening and no one knows about it, or no one is showing footage. ... And then I saw the actual close-up footage of it, and it was truly horrifying."

Piker added that Kirk was "someone that I’ve known for years" whom he was to debate in a few weeks.

"That is the one fear that’s always in the back of your mind when you engage in any sort of political advocacy when you do these events," he continued. "As a recipient of millions of death threats at this point over the years, watching that unfold in real time was devastating," he said of the murder.

Piker also said that he was "going to wait for the temperature to lower a little bit," before he speaks again at a public event and revealed people online are saying "We’re going to go kill Hasan in retaliation."

"I’ve never advocated for such a thing, and I never would," he added of killing a political foe.

Before it was announced that Kirk had died from his neck wound, Piker said, "This is a terrifying incident. ... The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome," per The Guardian. Piker noted in a passionate speech on TikTok that Kirk was shot in the neck, and a bulletproof vest would not have prevented his death; only gun control could have.

"The only thing that could have potentially saved Charlie Kirk from getting shot in the neck was if our Administrations — prior to this one and this one as well — actually had reasonable gun control as a policy provision in the immediate aftermath of, I don't know, a hundred other school shootings that took place."

In the immediate aftermath the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., back in 2018, where 17 students and staff were shot and killed, Kirk defended the NRA.

"It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment," he said. Kirk also provoked people when he claimed that Black people were "better" off during slavery and called transgender people "garbage."

A manhunt is currently underway for Kirk's murderer.