Trump Is Picking the ‘Avenger Squad’ for Cabinet, Charlie Kirk Says

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk praised President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees so far as the “Avengers Squad” that he’s “thrilled” to see take on Washington, D.C.

Trump announced over a dozen of the top posts for his second administration’s Cabinet, such as former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, former Representative and Representative-elect Matt Gaetz of Florida for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, among others.

Some of the nominees have been met with backlash due to a perceived lack of qualification or controversies that have come to light since Trump’s announcements. However, Kirk, who played a critical role in securing the youth vote for the MAGA campaign, can barely contain his enthusiasm for their potential impact.

Newsweek contacted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and the Trump transition team via email on Sunday for comment.

“He was up on stage with all these people three weeks ago,” Kirk said during an appearance on Saturday’s episode of Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin. “These people were next to him. It’s not as if there was some sort of secret agenda, and he ran on one thing and did another. These people were pals with him. He brought them up and spoke at his major rallies.”

“The American people saw it, they weighed their options, and now we are going to see the Avengers squad, the greatest team of change makers and actors that we’ve ever seen,” Kirk said. “Elon Musk, Ramaswamy – I could go through the entire roster.”

“I’m thrilled how President Trump is delivering on these promises, and a next generation is going to infuse this energy in that ossified town of Washington, DC, and praise God that we’re here to witness it,” he added.

Kirk played a key role in getting Trump elected, helping drive out the most conservative youth vote in decades. He told host Mark Levin that Trump gave young voters “hope” and “optimism” after the Biden administration.

Kirk called the 2024 election an “existential” crisis that motivated him to set up an unprecedented ground campaign on college campuses to convert an unlikely voter bloc for Trump.

“I dedicated my entire life, over the last year and a half, to getting Donald Trump back in the White House, and we did it by building an unprecedented ground game in Arizona and Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, especially with younger voters,” Kirk said.

“I’m happy to report, thanks to the relentless work that we did on the ground of registering voters, of our viral videos, of our on-campus events, we won the youth vote in Michigan. We nearly won it in Wisconsin. We won it in Pennsylvania. We almost won center County, the home of Penn State University,” Kirk continued.

He added: “We chased their ballot all the way through the process, embracing early voting where it was legal, ballot harvesting where it was legal, and we said, ‘Why are we going to give Democrats 12 hours of voting when we have 30 days to be able to compete?’ So, changing that approach, and the President deserves a ton of credit for embracing that approach was one of the reasons that we were successful.”

Kirk reiterated his view that Trump has assembled a Right-Wing “Avengers” in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he shared video taken at UFC 309 in Madison Square Garden, where Trump and some of his picks gathered and led the crowd in a chant of “U-S-A.”

In addition to Kennedy Jr. and Gabbard, the video showed Elon Musk, the new co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) accompanying the president-elect.

Trump also had his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, in attendance, and rounded out the entourage with friend and supporter Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White.

Kirk’s characterization, however, indicates that Trump may have made up his mind prior to even winning the election, which would run counter to what Trump Jr. said Sunday during an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, during which he insisted that Trump chose the candidates from “lists of 10 to 12 people” after much consideration.

The scrutiny on Trump’s nominees has grown more intense as the moral character of his nominees has come into question following allegations of criminal conduct came to light.

Hegseth, who served for 20 years in the Army National Guard, admitted to being the subject of a police investigation in 2017 while attending a convention in California after one of the staffers accused him of sexual assault. He has vigorously denied the allegations even as his lawyer admitted that the former TV host had paid the woman over fears the allegation could get him fired.

Reports indicate that the Trump team was caught off-guard by the allegations but remain firm in their commitment to seeing Hegseth confirmed as defense secretary.