President Donald Trump delivered remarks Sunday at Charlie Kirk’s tribute service in Glendale, Arizona, recalling the Turning Point USA founder’s influence on college campuses and his role in shaping national politics. Trump spoke of Kirk’s determination to take his message to universities long dominated by non-conservative students and faculty, describing how those campuses shifted as Kirk built chapters and engaged students directly.
“He was taking over college campuses, colleges that had, in theory, only very liberal or, as they like to say, ‘progressive.’ I call them liberal, but they like to call themselves such a beautiful word, ‘progressive.’ They’re the opposite of progressive, if you think about it. But they were really nasty,” Trump stated.
“And he would go into these colleges, all of a sudden, within two years, three years, they turned into bastions of conservatism. It was really quite amazing to see. They lied about him because they did not want you to listen to him or to learn from him, because what he was talking about and even preaching made so much sense.”
“Everywhere he went. He won the debates. He won the hearts, he won the minds, and yes, he won the elections for people. He helped us. He helped other people. We won the biggest election in the history of our country, I believe. Charlie Kirk was, without a doubt, among the most influential figures in the most important election in the history of our country.”
Earlier in his speech, Trump described Kirk’s beginnings as an activist. “Twelve years ago, Charlie walked onto his first college campus, the very liberal University of Wisconsin at Madison. He set up a card table and put up a sign with three words: ‘big government sucks.’ Can you believe that? That’s Charlie,” Trump explained, adding that Kirk lived on friends’ couches and in his parents’ basement in the early years, working from morning until late at night without pay. “It wasn’t easy, but Charlie wasn’t in it for money at all. Never has been. Money was never his thing. He was always in it for the mission, as he liked to say.”
Trump highlighted Kirk’s commitment to open dialogue and his willingness to engage opponents directly. “But through it all, the core of Charlie’s message and his basic method never change. It never really changed. He stayed the same person. Also, at every campus event, Charlie asked the people who disagreed with him to come forward, and instead of silencing them, he handed them a microphone and let them speak. And he convinced so many of them. It was a pretty amazing thing to watch, actually,” Trump said.
He also pointed to Kirk’s defense of faith. “It was Charlie who stood up for persecuted Christians and Jews on college campuses,” Trump remarked, noting that Kirk ultimately established chapters on 2,200 campuses and spoke at more than 1,000 churches.
Trump looked back on Kirk’s final day as an example of his character. “Shortly before Charlie arrived on campus the day he was assassinated, a staff member texted him that there were many critics and students who were opposed to his views and rather strenuously in the crowd, and that actually made him feel good because he wanted to convince them. Charlie wrote back to the staff member saying, ‘I’m not here to fight them. I want to know them and love them, and I want to reach them and try and lead them into a great way of life in our country,’” Trump observed. “In that private moment, on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was. He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.”
“The more success Charlie had, and he was getting more and more successful,” Trump continued, “the more dangerous his mission became on campuses all over the country. His quest for open dialogue was met with menacing hate.”
Trump’s remarks came during the “Building a Legacy: Remembering Charlie Kirk” service at State Farm Stadium, where he was greeted with cheers and chants of “USA” from attendees as he was shown on the jumbotron. Before departing Washington earlier in the day, Trump told reporters, “We’re going to celebrate the life of a great man. He’s a young man, but a great man. And we look forward to it. … We want to look at it as a time of healing … That something like this could have happened is not even believable. So … we’ll have a very interesting day, very tough day.”
Kirk’s widow, Erika, has pledged to continue her husband’s work, declaring in her first public speech after his death that “the movement my husband built will not die. It won’t. I refuse to let that happen.” Turning Point USA has since reportedly received tens of thousands of new chapter requests across the country, with spokesman Andrew Kolvet telling Breitbart News that Kirk’s vision of having chapters in every high school in America “will come true much, much faster than he could have ever possibly imagined.”
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