Kari Lake on “Indoctrination Camps”: Is College Really That Bad?

Kari Lake at Charlie Kirk Memorial Service, Kennedy Center, 9/14/25

Speaking at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Kari Lake, Senior Advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media, honored and memorialized the late founder of Turning Point USA. She also begged moms not to send kids to college “indoctrination camps.”

“Charlie Kirk didn’t go to college. My daughter didn’t go to college. Instead, she went to work for Charlie Kirk. … I am making a plea to mothers out there. Do not send your children into these indoctrination camps. Don’t do it, do not do it…. We have lived through the most horrific brainwashing campaign in the history of mankind… Our children’s minds and futures are nonnegotiable.”

What was it that made Kari Lake have such strong words to say about going to college?

Well, there seems to have been a notable political and ideological shift in the temperament of Charlie Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, related to his time in college. In the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting, Robinson’s family members and friends have been left trying to understand his alarming fall from grace.

• How did the once promising student whose educational achievements filled his mom’s social media pages become a college dropout?
• How did the conservative, Trump-supporting teen become a political extremist and alleged assassin of a prominent right-wing figure?
• How did a boy from a seemingly tight-knit family end up allegedly gloating about his crimes to his online gaming group?

Theirs was a staunchly Republican, Donald Trump-supporting household, Robinson’s paternal grandmother Debbie Robinson said.

“My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump,” she told the Daily Mail.

“Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”

Growing up in a conservative household, Robinson seemed to align with his parents’ views for some time.

A former classmate told CNN that both Tyler and his family were “diehard Trump” fans when he was in high school and the teen supported Trump in the 2020 election.

“When I knew him and his family, they were like diehard Trump,” the unnamed classmate said.

But at some point, Robinson’s politics and beliefs broke away from his parents.

These are good people who tried their best to raise their son correctly, but apparently they made one fatal flaw—they let him attend college!

College Conundrum

Based on Amber Robinson’s social media, his parents had long held great pride in their eldest son, particularly for his academic achievements.

A promising, bright high school student with a 4.0 GPA, Tyler was awarded a presidential scholarship to the sum of $32,000 to attend Utah State University.

Amber filmed her son reading out the scholarship letter as she cheered him on in the background.

She then proudly posted the video on her Facebook for her followers to see.

“His options are endless,” Amber gushed of her eldest son in another post.

For reasons only he knows, Robinson allegedly picked an option his mother likely never imagined: away from academia toward violence and notoriety.

Amber’s hopes for her son initially appeared to come true.

Tyler enrolled at Utah State in 2021, with a photo showing him smiling in his dorm room.

But, it was around this time that something else appears to have changed.

Tyler lasted only one semester before dropping out of the school and moving back home.

That’s when he embarked on an electrical apprenticeship at Dixie Technical College in Saint George, Utah.

Not long before Kirk’s shooting, the family noticed a shift that collided with his parents’ conservatism.

There was a change in his political affiliation to become more left-leaning and in support of LGBT rights.

And there was the relationship with his transgender roommate, Lance Twiggs.

It would appear that life appeared to be normal for this kid until he went to college, only to be completely radicalized in no time.

It may not have been the college classes per se, but rather the people he met and hung out with while he was there.

At some point, Tyler also appears to have become increasingly entrenched in the world of online gaming and memes, with family and friends telling investigators he spent large amounts of time scrolling the “dark corners of the internet.”

At any rate, he did a 180 change in life direction in record time.

It just goes to show that even those who were raised properly can be brainwashed with leftist progressive ideology.

This is all speculation, of course, but it seems like this young man was trying to prove to his new friends that was one of them, instead of the conservative he was raised.

Outcome: Death

On Wednesday, September 10, during Charlie Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour” event at Utah Valley University, Kirk was shot in the neck. According to the Associated Press, the shot came from the Losee Student Success Center, approximately 350 feet from where Kirk was speaking. Utah State University Affairs released a statement on September 12 confirming the arrested suspect, Tyler Robinson, had been a student at USU for one semester in 2021.

Charlie Kirk himself was a vocal critic of the higher education system in America. Since founding Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk was the leading voice on college campuses standing up for conservative students. In 2022, he published The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth.

Why do we send our kids to college? Why do we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a useless degree? Why do we let our children get indoctrinated by those who fundamentally disagree with America’s greatness? In The College Scam, Charlie Kirk answers all of these questions and more. We all know that colleges are filled with far-left professors, but the truth is much worse. Anti-American ideals are thriving, progressives repress speech, and brainwashing is the norm. In The College Scam, Charlie Kirk puts the college industry on trial with a ten-count indictment of why academia has lost all credibility. A must-read for every student, parent, and concerned American citizen!