Donald Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, to the assassinated far-right commentator Charlie Kirk at the White House on Tuesday.
Kirk, who was shot at an event at Utah Valley University in September, was among the most significant rightwing activists in the modern political era, galvanizing a younger generation of conservatives to engage in politics and support Trump’s candidacy ahead of the 2024 election.
But Kirk was also a polarizing figure, who often criticized gay and transgender rights and once suggested that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake”. Some critics have argued tributes to him elevated extremist views that stoked division.
The Trump administration and Kirk’s supporters have targeted people for their comments about Kirk. Late on Tuesday, the administration revoked visas of six foreign nationals deemed to have made negative comments or made light of Kirk’s assassination, giving rise to free speech concerns.
“So one month after Charlie’s death, we still feel the terrible shock and the pain of his loss like just about nobody I can think of. Charlie Kirk was one of a kind, and he was unstoppable,“ Trump said from the Rose Garden, where Kirk’s widow, Erika, accepted the award on her late husband’s behalf.
The ceremony for Kirk was held on what would have been his 32nd birthday. Trump returned to the US early Tuesday morning in time for the event after an impromptu trip to Israel and Egypt to take a victory lap after Israel and Hamas agreed to an initial ceasefire deal last week.
In emotional and at times tearful remarks, Erika Kirk praised her late husband’s deep faith, saying: “Now he wears the crown of a righteous martyr.”
She also suggested that he might have run for president one day had he not been killed just weeks before his 32nd birthday.
“If the moment had come, he probably would have run for president, but not out of ambition,” Erika Kirk said. “He would only have done it if that was something that he believed that his country needed.”
While repeatedly thanking Trump for his support, she also gently pushed back on his assertion earlier in the ceremony that her husband was someone who loved his political enemies.
“I heard he loved his enemies. And I said: ‘Wait a minute, is that the same Charlie that I know?’” Trump said. When it was her turn to speak, Erika Kirk smiled at Trump and shared that her late husband had prayed for his enemies in private. “Surprisingly enough, he did pray for his enemies, which is very hard, but he did,” she said, drawing laughs from the attenders. “I saw him do it.”
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was first awarded in 1963. Previous recipients have included Audrey Hepburn, Milton Friedman, Walter Cronkite and Edward Kennedy. Trump has often conferred it to his supporters, such as Rush Limbaugh, and last month said he would award it to Rudy Giuliani, his former personal lawyer.
Trump also used Kirk’s murder as an opportunity to justify the deployment of national guard troops to major Democratic-run cities over their objections. At one point, Trump digressed to speak about the “beautiful” sounds of sirens that could be heard from the Rose Garden.
“We’ve watched legions of far-left radicals resort to desperate acts of violence and terror because they know that their ideas and arguments are persuading no one. They know that they’re failing. They have the devil’s ideology and they’re failing. And they know it. They feel it, and they become violent,” Trump said.
Kirk became a key ally to Trump through his organization Turning Point USA and its various offshoots, including Turning Point Action, which in effect ran the ground game operation for the Trump campaign in the key battleground state of Arizona, which Trump won.
In recognition of Kirk’s close ties to Trump’s orbit, guests included JD Vance, the treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, attorney general, Pam Bondi, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, while Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, sat in one of the front rows.
Also in attendance were some of Kirk’s closest political associates, including the lobbyists Arthur Schwartz and Jeff Miller, former Trump deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, Trump strategist Alex Bruesewitz, Turning Point adviser Andrew Kolvet and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Kirk’s introduction to Trumpworld came about a decade earlier. In the early days of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Kirk scored a meeting at Trump Tower and offered advice to Don Jr on how to attract young voters.
That meeting got Kirk hired on the spot as Don Jr’s personal campaign assistant, but Kirk’s closeness with Trump grew in the wake of the 2020 election when he became a leading voice in pushing baseless claims that the election had been stolen.
Kirk was also one of the few political operatives who stuck by Trump when he was in exile at Mar-a-Lago after the January 6 Capitol riot, which Trump remembered as a notable display of personal loyalty at one of the lowest points for the president.
During the 2022 midterms cycle, Kirk encouraged Trump to endorse Vance’s Senate campaign – and then two years later urged Trump and Don Jr to select Vance as running mate before the 2024 Republican national convention. After his death, Vance accompanied Kirk’s casket to Arizona on Air Force Two.
