On September 10, 2026, the official Facebook page of Minocqua Brewing Company published a post about the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It was exactly the type of repugnant, offensive drivel you’ve come to expect from Bangstad.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while taking questions from students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He was 31. He left a wife and children. Tyler Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder and other felonies. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty. Utah Governor Spencer Cox declared September 10 “Charlie Kirk Day.” Turning Point USA is holding a memorial on the same campus where Kirk was killed. The White House issued a statement of mourning.
Minocqua Brewing Company, owned and operated by Kirk Bangstad, used that date to write this:
That is the type of lowbrow behavior Wisconsinites have come to expect from the progressive troll.
The comments under that post are worse. Readers on Bangstad’s own page wrote “COME ON, FREE BEER DAY,” “Still looking forward to Free Beer Day,” “I am so exhausted and sooooo ready for free bear day,” and “I for one am glad he’s six feet under.” One comment used a sexual slur about the dead man. Bangstad’s page celebrated that rhetoric.
When the left tells you who they are, believe them. And Bangstad is no stranger to illegal activity and deplorable behavior.
In January 2026, his brewery promised “free beer, all day long the day he dies,” a reference to President Donald Trump, and told customers to show the post “when it happens in a few months.” After a security incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, the page posted: “Well, we almost got #freebeerday.” It added that “a brother or sister in the Resistance needs to work on their marksmanship” or that the president “faked another assassination.” It said the brewery stood “ready to pour free beer the day it happens.” The FBI and the United States Secret Service investigated those posts. Bangstad later posted what he said was an agent’s phone number and invited the public to call it.
He sold “8647” merchandise, a slogan that means “eliminate the 47th president.” He promoted a non-alcoholic “8647” beer. He announced half-price beer the day Sen. Mitch McConnell dies. He released a beer called “Antifa Octoberfist.” He marketed death as a sales event.
That is the ethical record. The legal and financial record is not cleaner.
Gregg Walker, publisher of The Lakeland Times, and Heather Holmes, the paper’s general manager, sued Bangstad in Oneida County Circuit Court, alleging Bangstad used the Super PAC to pay himself through two unregistered entities, Effervescent Blue and NCPS. Federal records show the Super PAC sent about $460,549.74 to both entities. Neither is registered as a business in Wisconsin. The listed addresses include a jewelry store mailbox in Madison and a UPS Store in Milwaukee. The suit also accuses Bangstad of using manipulated images of Walker and Holmes on brewery products. Those claims remain in court. They have not been proven at trial. They have also not gone away.
In April 2026, Bangstad pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in a June 2025 incident involving Walker.
In July 2026, Wisconsin Department of Revenue agents seized Minocqua Brewing Company’s canned beer. The state said the product was brewed in Illinois and stored and sold in Wisconsin without the required permits and without the taxes due. The department moved to revoke the company’s alcohol permits. Bangstad filed an administrative appeal. The permits remain in place only while that appeal is pending. Bangstad called the case political. The filing is about alcohol law and unpaid tax, not about a Facebook caption.
He founded a Super PAC, raised more than $2 million, then dissolved the committee in June 2026 after years of questions about where the money went. He tried to run for governor as a Democrat in 2026.The Wisconsin Elections Commission kept him off the ballot because he did not collect enough valid signatures. Wisconsin Democrats had already distanced themselves from him after the “free beer day” posts.
Bangstad presents all of this as courage. The September 10 post claims liquor stores and restaurants dropped him because of “AI bots” and “paid MAGA influencers.” He claims the beer business is larger now because “truth and justice” sell. He is selling contempt for a murdered 31-year-old on the date of the murder, and he is calling that commerce.
Charlie Kirk was a political opponent of everything Bangstad claims to believe. Kirk argued in public, on campuses, without a weapon. A gunman ended that argument. One year later, a licensed Wisconsin alcohol seller used the brewery’s official page to call the victim “shit,” insult his widow, and collect applause from people waiting for the next death so they can drink for free.
That is a pathetic man who has turned the funerals of his political opponents into a brand. Wisconsin should treat him for what he is: a public disgrace attached to a business that already faces a tax case, a pending permit fight, a civil fraud allegation, and a disorderly-conduct conviction.
