Is Michael Knowles an actor? All we know about the political commentator hosting the Charlie Kirk University of Minnesota event

On Monday night, conservative commentator and writer Michael Knowles stepped in for the late Charlie Kirk. He spoke at The American Comeback Tour at Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota. The event is organized by Kirk’s conservative youth group, Turning Point USA.

Over the weekend, Knowles, who is also an occasional actor who has appeared in the 2023 show Lady Ballers, wrote on X:

“The event is on. What was going to be a conversation between me and Charlie will now be a tribute to Charlie and an open forum for Q&A. The enemies of civilization will not succeed in killing his mission. They will not even succeed at killing his tour.”

According to Voz, Knowles reiterated similar sentiments at the event. He said in the introduction, “They thought that they could stop Charlie Kirk’s movement. In reality, they have not even stopped his lecture tour.” He also urged people to attend church, read the Bible, and pray in honor of Kirk.

During the event, Michael Knowles debated students and gave a shoutout to Charlie’s widow, Erika, praising her speech at his memorial on Sunday.

"Erika Kirk forgave her husband's killer. The state of Utah will inject poison into that killer's veins until he's dead. There is no contradiction between those two things. Christian forgiveness does not demand that we allow the cruel to ravage the whole earth. It demands that we love our enemies, and sometimes love is tough," he stated.

The commentator shared that “love means praying for those who persecute us.” However, in politics, it meant “punishing the guilty, both for the protection of the innocent as well as for the good of the criminals.”

“No one benefits from crime, decay, and disorder, not the rest of us and not the criminals themselves. We cherish what we call the marketplace of ideas in America," Michael added.

Turning Point USA will continue with The American Comeback Tour under the leadership of Erika Kirk. Its next stop is at Virginia Tech on September 24 with Megyn Kelly and Governor Glenn Youngkin, as per Voz reports.

Exploring the life and career of Michael Knowles

According to IMDb and the Star Tribune, Michael John Knowles is an American political commentator, author, media host, actor, and writer. He was born in March 1990 into an Irish-Italian immigrant family in Bedford Hills, New York.

In 2016, the 35-year-old joined The Daily Wire as a guest and cultural correspondent on The Andrew Klavan Show. Since 2017, he has hosted a daily political podcast, The Michael Knowles Show. He is also the host of The Book Club on PragerU, as per his website bio.

That same year, Knowles and Klavan collaborated on another project and released a narrative podcast and audiobook titled Another Kingdom.

Michael Knowles also the co-hosts Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s Verdict podcast. He also appears on other right-wing media outlets, including Fox News, EWTN, OANN, American Conservative, American Mind, and Claremont Review of Books.

Knowles attended Fox Lane High School before enrolling at Yale University in 2008, where he was a Yale Daily News contributor. He graduated with history and Italian in 2012.

Michael Knowles is a published author. In 2017, he wrote a 200-plus-page, mostly blank Amazon bestselling book titled Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide. The book was lauded by Donald Trump as “a great book for your reading enjoyment.” In 2021, he released his second book, Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.

As an actor, Michael Knowles began training at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. He was also an inaugural student fellow of the William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale University, and produced the first-ever English rendition of Machiavelli’s play Andria called The Girl From Andros.

He was part of the school’s theater group and appeared in two indie web series: Never Do Business with Friends and Survive. He attended Wynn Handman’s acting school in New York and was featured in the student film House of Shades. Michael also acted in other TV and movie projects, including I’m Back, Life Coach, Blend In, and Hollyweird.

Michael Knowles was the co-founder of Students for Daniels, which drafted Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels during the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. Over the years, he has spoken at several events, including the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023.

Michael Knowles has been married to Alissa Mahler for the last seven years, and the couple shares three sons. He is an entrepreneur who founded Mayflower Cigars, according to his website.

Earlier this year, Michael was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Ave Maria University and also became the first podcaster to attend a White House Cabinet meeting.

Charlie Kirk, 31, was fatally shot in the neck by a sniper’s bullet while speaking at The American Comeback Tour at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on September 10. It was the first stop for the ongoing tour.

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His suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, 22, has been taken into custody. On September 21, a public memorial service for Charlie Kirk was held in Arizona, where President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and tech magnate Elon Musk delivered speeches in his honor.

Kirk is survived by his widow, Erika, and their two children.

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