Senior Trump administration figures including Karoline Leavitt and Robert F Kennedy Jr were among those leading tributes at the vigil held for Charlie Kirk in Washington on Sunday.
Leavitt, the White House press secretary, Kennedy, the health secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, addressed crowds gathered at the Kennedy Center to pay their respects to the conservative US activist.
The vigil for Kirk, who was killed by a single shot while speaking at a university event in Utah on Wednesday, drew a large crowd of Trump administration officials, members of congress, and the wider public in DC.
Some wore all black. Others carried flowers, were draped in the American flag, Make America Great Again t-shirts or hats. And though Kirk was renowned for his work mobilising young voters to support President Trump via his youth organisation Turning Point USA, the crowd present on Sunday spanned all ages.
Trump administration figures speak at Charlie Kirk’s vigil
REUTERS/ELIZABETH FRANTZ
DAVE DECKER/ZUMA
In an address to the audience, Leavitt praised Kirk’s support for her previous congressional campaign, launched when she was just 23, and his strong faith. “When so many influential voices in our society are brainwashing young people to abandon our faith, to stay single, not to have children, and to bash our country,” she said, “Charlie Kirk offered us an alternative path.”
“President Trump loved you, Charlie, so much too,” she said.
At times the event resembled a church service, with prayer, scripture and reflection; at other times it was explicitly political, its speakers attesting to Kirk’s activism and vowing his mission would continue.
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“Charlie Kirk recruited and trained and educated a generation of happy warriors,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, told those present. “And we do well to be reminded that the best way to honour his memory and to honour his unmatched legacy is to live as Charlie did.”
Sean Feucht performs at the Kennedy Center
THE KENNEDY CENTER/REUTERS
Kennedy, arriving to cheers of “USA” from the audience, called Kirk his “spiritual brother” and spoke of his own previous personal losses. “When my brother David died, I had a conversation with my mother, who had been through more than her share of loss and tragedy,” he said.
Kennedy’s mother, Ethel, died in October. She had suffered the assassination of her brother-in-law, John F Kennedy, and her husband, Robert F Kennedy, and lost her two sons David, who died in 1984 after a drug overdose at the age of 28, and Michael, who died in a ski accident in 1997.
“I asked her, I said, ‘does the hole they leave in you when they die, does it ever get any smaller?’ And she said, ‘no, it never gets any smaller, but our job is to build ourselves bigger around the hole.’”
Many of those present had known Kirk personally. Some cited even the most fleeting of meetings or messages as having left a lasting mark. Erik Finman, 26, said he met Kirk in Idaho in 2018 when they were supporting the same political candidate.
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“No one has built a political movement like him, and especially for the youth in this country, and I’m not sure anyone will ever again,” he said.
“I think he’s just an inspiration to young people across the country,” one young woman, speaking anonymously, said. “And meant a lot to people of faith and people who wanted to raise families and be a part of a conservative movement. I think he speaks to things a lot of young people want as a country.”
In the days after Kirk’s assassination, Trump has criticised left-wing “radicals”, labelling them “vicious” and “horrible” but maintaining he would like to see supporters respond to Kirk’s assassination non-violently. On Sunday some allies of Kirk spoke of yearning for a politics more civil, and more conciliatory, than that in present America.
“He thought conversation was the only way we were going to heal our country,” Kennedy said of Kirk. “We had to learn to talk to each other without vitriol, without poison, without anger. We had to be able to listen to ideas. We had to be able to say what we mean without being mean, and to talk to each other across this divide.”
Outside Jason Schultz, who came to pay his respects, said he hoped for the same. “I hope that his people just learn to talk to each other,” he said. “Not fight or argue. You can have disagreements with friends and family and still be friends and family. You don’t have to agree.”
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