Kyle Kashuv

He resigned from Turning Point in May 2019, hours after former classmates threatened to make public screenshots of racist remarks Kashuv had made. Kashuv denied that his resignation was related to his controversial remarks.

Kashuv said he agrees with fellow student activists David Hogg, Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez that gun deaths and school shootings need to be stopped, "and that shouldn’t be delegitimized, ever". Kashuv's stated solutions to improve the situation differ from Hogg and Kasky's, but he has called for a debate with them to find "common middle ground." Kashuv has also said he felt frustrated that he was not invited to speak at the March for Our Lives event, suggesting it was because of his political views. Kashuv has described himself as speaking "calmly and logically" in contrast to "inflammatory language" used by other student activists. Kashuv believed that the "initial movement, in its purest form" coming out of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting "was amazing." He said that "It got corrupted because now it's represented as anti-gun and anti-NRA." He described March for Our Lives as being "anti-Republican" and said that the NRA does not have as much "evil power" over politicians as their critics believe. Kashuv himself was criticized by the students in Never Again MSD for his views on gun rights.

In September 2019, Kashuv was hired by BlazeTV as the digital director of The Rubin Report, a program hosted by YouTuber Dave Rubin.

Several of Kashuv's classmates complained on social media and to the press regarding Kashuv's use of inflammatory and racist comments, including racial slurs against African-Americans. Kashuv was accused by his classmates of hypocrisy when he criticized Bill Nye for using vulgarities in a skit regarding climate change on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Nye had declared: "The planet’s on fucking fire!"), stating that Nye "looked like a joke."

On May 22, 2019, Kashuv released a statement about the screenshots and the comments within, admitting to writing the comments when he was 16 years old before the mass shooting occurred. Kashuv called his comments "offensive", "idiotic" and "inflammatory". He also said that the mass shooting changed him as a person, which Harvard decided not to accept. In an interview with The New York Times, Kashuv said that the comments on the Google Doc were made late at night, and that he had "said a bunch of anti-Semitic stuff." On June 17, 2019, Kashuv stated that the comments were made "months before the shooting," and also said that Harvard University had rescinded its offer of admission as a result of the remarks. Kashuv published a letter by Harvard, which stated that they had considered "the qualities of maturity and moral character" in their decision. Kashuv has accused unidentified political opponents of having urged Harvard not to accept him.

On February 14, 2018, Kashiuv hid in a closet near the building where the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting occurred. He was 16 years old, attending his junior year. He later petitioned President Donald Trump to award Peter Wang, a student who had helped several others escape before he was killed, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In April 2018, Kashuv said he was questioned and intimidated by a Broward County officer and a school security officer after he posted a photo of himself posing at a shooting range with an AR-15 rifle, on his Twitter account. Kashuv explained that he wanted to learn the "physical mechanics" of guns and how to defend himself, as well as to "show people it’s people that are the issue, not guns." Marjory Stoneman Douglas High history teacher Greg Pittman said the gesture was in poor taste, which Kashuv denied. He said other students told him that Pittman called him the "next Hitler" while discussing the photo.

The Miami Herald in July 2018 wrote that the conservative Second Amendment supporter Kashuv had "gained a national following as a counterweight to the March For Our Lives" movement. Associated Press in February 2019 described Kashuv as "the most prominent conservative voice among the students" who had survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. As of June 2019, Kashuv has amassed over 300,000 followers on Twitter.

Kashuv became director of high school outreach of the conservative group Turning Point USA and gave speeches about gun rights, including at Princeton University. Kashuv invited Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk to address Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, but the school did not permit the activity. Kashuv helped to plan the organization's 2018 High School Leadership Summit for over 800 students, and was lauded by Fox News in July 2018 as "a role model for young conservatives across the country." That month, Kirk described Kashuv as a "a national spokesperson for one of the most controversial and divisive issues of our time," and as "probably the most hated pro-gun advocate at the time besides Dana Loesch," a spokesperson of the NRA.

Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Michael Gruen, a 19-year old "influencer marketer," noticed Kashuv's posts on Twitter and approached him offering to help him get his message out. With the help of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, meetings on Capitol Hill were set up for Kashuv in March 2018. The trip was mostly planned on short notice, with Kashuv reacting: "I never really wanted to get into politics." During his visit, Kashuv met with President Trump and his wife Melania Trump, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, two Democratic senators (Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer), three Republican senators (Orrin Hatch, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, and CNN's Jim Acosta.

In April 2018, Kashuv met with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and discussed their support for the Second Amendment.

In late March 2018, Kashuv was criticized online by Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald. In response, Kashuv called for a boycott of MSNBC, since Eichenwald had stated that he was an MSNBC contributor on his Twitter biography, although Eichenwald had actually not been an MSNBC contributor since a month prior. One of MSNBC's sponsors, Proactiv, removed its advertisements from the network in response.

In April 2018, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro published emails Eichenwald sent to him which included a statement that Kashuv was "in desperate need of psychiatric help." In those emails, Eichenwald stated that he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, but Vanity Fair issued a statement saying that Eichenwald was not a contributor at the time.

In April 2018, a student at Lincoln Southeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, who admired Kashuv's for expressing views about gun rights contrary to so many of his classmates, asked Kashuv to her prom. Kashuv turned her down until she received more than 5,000 re-tweets of her posting with the help of Ben Shapiro. Kashuv did not have a tuxedo or airplane fare to get to Nebraska, so she set up a GoFundMe account, which raised the necessary money in two hours. Kashuv accompanied her to her prom, and met with Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts.

Kashuv is a supporter of the Republican Party. He supported Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election, endorsing Trump's ideas about immigration, the Trump wall, and Trump's "America First" approach. Kashuv was initially guided by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Guy Benson. Kashuv has also worked for Ron DeSantis' campaign for the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election. By March 2018, Kashuv was in the process of producing a mobile phone application, ReachOut, which aims to let students who have emotional struggles to ask for help. In April 2018, Kashuv criticized CNN for being biased because one of their contributors, Joan Walsh, had a liked a tweet by Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter died in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. In July 2018, Kashuv gave a speech at the 2018 National Western Conservative Summit. Kashuv also gave a speech in April 2019 at the yearly meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Kyle Kashuv (born May 20, 2001) is an American conservative activist. He survived the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting uninjured and subsequently advocated for gun rights, notably in opposition to his fellow survivors' March for Our Lives movement. Kashuv's admission to Harvard University was rescinded in 2019 because of his past use of racial slurs and inflammatory language, for which he apologized.

Kashuv's parents emigrated to the United States from Israel in the 1990s before he was born. He grew up in Parkland, Florida. Kashuv considers himself to be politically conservative. He and his parents are Jewish. According to Kashuv, his high school GPA (grade point average) is 5.4 and his SAT score is 1550. In 2019, he said he pays weekly visits to the synagogue.