Conservative activist Charlie Kirk helped oust Ronna McDaniel at the RNC. Now the knives are out for him.

Charlie Kirk's antics — including attacks on Martin Luther King Jr., Black pilots and Taylor Swift — have caused a rift in Trump world.

For more than a year, Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and MAGA influencer, was aimed like a heat-seeking missile toward one goal — ousting Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

It’s a battle he won. Just this week, former President Donald Trump endorsed a new slate of leaders to head the party apparatus and signaled that McDaniel’s four terms would soon come to an end.

Few Republican groups have had as meteoric a rise as Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which launched in 2012. It sought to activate young conservatives and saw its fortunes grow as it attached itself to the Trump movement in 2016. The organization has raised roughly a quarter-billion dollars since, as The Associated Press reported last fall, with its fundraising exploding during the Covid pandemic.

But the RNC effort has Kirk increasingly under the microscope in Trump world. In recent weeks, at least three people, including McDaniel herself, have privately warned Trump about Kirk’s conduct, seven sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News.

Kirk came up during her conversation with the former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort this month in which her future at the helm of the RNC was discussed. It’s disputed who first brought up Kirk, but McDaniel blamed him for some of the RNC’s fundraising woes, saying his organization is collecting from donors who would otherwise fund a more robust party effort.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/charlie-kirk-ronna-mcdaniel-rnc-trump-rcna139288

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