Claim:
Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'”
Rating:
Rating: Correct Attribution
Following the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, quotes allegedly attributed to the late conservative commentator flooded the internet.
One such quote shared on social media sites such as Instagram (archived) and Facebook (archived) was: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'”
The quote was correctly attributed to Kirk.
Kirk said those words during a conversation on “Thoughtcrime,” a panel discussion segment he hosted with Jack Posobiec as part of “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast, on Jan. 18, 2024. In the episode, viewable on Rumble (archived), Kirk, Posobiec and their guests, Andrew Kolvet and Blake Neff, discussed diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for airline pilots.
The full context of the quote was as follows (beginning at 50:19):
KOLVET: We’ve all been in the back of a plane when the turbulence hits or when you’re flying through a storm and you’re like, “I’m so glad I saw the guy with the right stuff and the square jaw get into the cockpit before we took off. And I feel better now, thinking about that.”
KIRK: You wanna go thought crime? I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
KOLVET: But you wouldn’t have done that before!
KIRK: That’s not an immediate … that’s not who I am. That’s not what I believe.
NEFF: It is the reality the left has created.
KIRK: I want to be as blunt as possible because now I’m connecting two dots. Wait a second, this CEO just said that he’s forcing that a white qualified guy is not gonna get the job. So I see this guy, he might be a nice person and I say, “Boy, I hope he’s not a Harvard-style affirmative-action student that … landed half of his flight-simulator trials.”
KOLVET: Such a good point. That’s so fair.
KIRK: It also … creates unhealthy thinking patterns. I don’t wanna think that way. And no one should, right? … And by the way, then you couple it with the FAA, air-traffic control, they got a bunch of morons and affirmative-action people.
The topic came up after a 2021 Axios interview with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby talking about diversity in United’s pilot training program recirculated in conservative circles following revelations of a December 2022 midflight incident in which a jet lost altitude shortly after departure before the crew recovered, according to Reuters.
Kirk’s comments received media coverage at the time from prominent outlets such as Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Business Insider and NBC News. On Jan. 26, 2024, Kirk responded to criticism on conservative pundit Megyn Kelly’s podcast (at 3:00):
The essence of that clip that was missed by almost everybody — Jordan Peterson, to his credit, really picked up on it — which was I was trying to be, you know, very vulnerable with the audience is that DEI invites unwholesome thinking. … I was saying in the clip, “That’s not who I am, that’s not what I believe.” But what it does is it makes us worse versions of ourselves, Megyn. That’s the whole point of what I was saying is that I now look at everything through a hyper-racialized diversity-quota lens because of their massive insistence to try to hit these ridiculous racial hiring quotas. Of course I believe anybody of any skin color can become a qualified pilot.
Further, Kirk’s YouTube channel posted a video on June 3, 2025, that featured Kirk answering a question at an event about the statement in question, posed by a Black attendee who asked if he felt his earlier comments about DEI pilots were irresponsible.
In Kirk’s response, beginning at the 40-second mark, he rejected the notion it was irresponsible and said:
When it comes to pilots or surgeons, if I see somebody who is Black, as I said on the show, I’m going to hope that that person is qualified. That’s what I said, which of course is legitimate because they’re begging the question, we’re not hiring based on merit anymore. We’re hiring based on race.
Snopes previously reported on a number of quotes attributed to Kirk, including that he once said some prominent Black women didn’t have “brain processing power” to be taken seriously, that he claimed Jewish money was ruining U.S. culture and that he called passing the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake.”
Sources:
– YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl3UwsNZ544. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
– YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4y4d9QV45E. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
– YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zho8qpM382k. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
“Charlie Kirk’s ‘Black Pilot’ Remark Sparks Fury.” Newsweek, 24 Jan. 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-black-pilots-racism-accusations-1863546.
“How Right-Wing Influencers Turned Airplanes and Airports into Culture War Battlegrounds.” NBC News, 28 Jan. 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/airline-airport-united-delta-dei-migration-spirit-rcna135098.
Klee, Miles. “Conservatives Are So Scared of Diversity They’re Starting to Boycott ‘Woke’ Airlines.” Rolling Stone, 25 Jan. 2024, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/conservatives-blame-diversity-dei-airlines-boycott-1234953756/.
“Right-Wing Influencers Going Full Racist in Anti-DEI Rants.” The Daily Beast, 25 Jan. 2024, https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-influencers-are-going-full-racist-in-anti-dei-rants/.
Shepardson, David. “US NTSB Cites United Crew Failure in Boeing 777 Altitude Loss Incident.” Reuters, 10 Aug. 2023. Aerospace & Defense. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-ntsb-cites-united-crew-failure-boeing-777-altitude-loss-incident-2023-08-10/.
Shoaib, Alia. “Right-Wing Commentators Have a Theory about Plane Safety Concerns — and They Say Diversity Is to Blame.” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-commentators-baselessly-blame-diversity-for-plane-safety-incidents-2024-1. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
There Is No Place For DEI in the Cockpit. rumble.com, https://rumble.com/v6fhgjs-there-is-no-place-for-dei-in-the-cockpit.html. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 29 — DEI or DIE? DeSantis’s Bus Seat? The Drowning Gap? 2024. rumble.com, https://rumble.com/v47veqc-thoughtcrime-ep.-29-dei-or-die-desantiss-bus-seat-the-drowning-gap.html.
