U.S. President Donald Trump called the murder of Charlie Kirk “an attack on the U.S.” at a crowded ceremony held on Sunday, September 21, to honor the memory of the activist, whom he defined as “one of the greatest patriots” of the country.
Trump said at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, the activist’s murder “was an attack on our entire nation” and called him “a giant of his generation” and a “great evangelist for freedom.”
Trump leads funeral for Charlie Kirk
🇺🇸 | NOW: President Trump: “Charlie didn’t hate his opponents. He wanted what was best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want what’s best for him. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Erika [Charlie’s wife]. But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group;… pic.twitter.com/iYTYZNgLyS
– Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) September 21, 2025
“It was a terrible attack on the United States of America. It was an attack on our most sacred freedoms and our fundamental, God-given rights. The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us, at every one of us,” Trump cried out.
Before the approximately 73,000 people who packed Arizona’s Farm State Stadium, the Republican, in an event that ended up certifying the total coupling between Christian conservatism and Trumpism, said that the activist’s name “will forever be immortalized in the history of America’s greatest patriots.”
“Charles James Kirk was brutally murdered by a radicalized and ruthless individual, simply for expressing the truth that was in his heart,” Trump explained about what happened last September 10, when he was fatally shot during an event at a Utah university.
Trump said that on Sept. 10 the “greatest evangelist for American freedom became immortal.”
The president praised Kirk and how he founded Turning Point at the age of 18, an organization through which he organized debates and events at universities and which made him a recognized spokesman for ultra-conservative Christian conservatism in the United States.
He also recalled how he was one of the people who put him in touch with his now vice president, JD Vance.
Political rally or memorial?
If anything, Trump’s speech, like many of the speeches offered at the memorial, came closer to a political rally than a funeral event.
The president assured that Kirk fully understood his administration’s program, from its health care policies to the tariff war to the need to bring back “borders, law and order and religion” to the United States.
Trump also highlighted the fact that numerous members of his administration spoke at the event on Sunday.
In addition to Kirk’s personal friend Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also spoke.
All of them praised Kirk and many called him someone who “changed the history” of the U.S. or a “Christian martyr”.
One of the most rousing speeches of the evening came from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, also a personal friend of Kirk’s, who called the activist’s work “saving the West.”
Miller asserted that conservative forces constitute the side of good in a culture war in which his faction is “an army” that “stands for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble” and will “prevail over the forces of evil.”
“You guys are nothing,” he said of the liberal opposition.
“They think they could kill Charlie Kirk? They’ve immortalized him,” he finished off, cementing the idea that the slain activist is now the great martyr of ultra-conservative American nationalism.
With information from EFE
