Kirk definitely isn't relevant enough to warrant international attention like this. This is deliberate, to fan the fire against the left and to strengthen trump and the right, since he's doing pretty abysmally right now in many factors.
I always feel like there's a strong survivorship bias at work in these things. Some people get lucky and fall through the cracks, so that's what people focus on. But ignore all the hundreds of thousands that did everything right but still didn't make it.
Big if true.