Trump Awards Charlie Kirk Highest Civilian Honor

President Trump on Tuesday posthumously awarded America's highest civilian honor to Charlie Kirk, the assassinated activist who inspired a generation of young conservatives and helped push the nation's politics further to the right. The ceremony coincided with what would have been Kirk's 32nd birthday, the AP reports. It came just over a month after the Turning Point USA founder was fatally shot while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University.

• In a sign of Kirk's close ties to the administration, he was the first recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Trump's second term. The president also spoke at at Kirk's funeral in September, calling him a "great American hero" and "martyr" for freedom, while Vice President JD Vance accompanied his body home to Arizona on Air Force Two along with Kirk's widow, Erika. She accepted the medal on his behalf Tuesday, the Guardian reports.

• "We're here to honor and remember a fearless warrior for liberty, beloved leader who galvanized the next generation like nobody I've ever seen before, and an American patriot of the deepest conviction, the finest quality and the highest caliber," Trump said Tuesday afternoon.
• Of Kirk's killing, Trump said: "He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith and relentless fighting for a better and stronger America."
• Trump said "far-left radicals" are committing "acts of violence and terror because they know their ideas and arguments are persuading no one," the Hill reports. "They know that they are failing," he said. "They have the devil's ideology."
• The president joked that he almost requested to move the ceremony because of his Mideast trip. "I raced back halfway around the globe," he said. "I was going to call Erika and say, 'Erika, could you maybe move it to Friday? And I didn't have the courage to call. But you know why I didn't call? Because I heard today was Charlie's birthday."

• In her remarks, Erika Kirk said, "Today we're gathered not only to celebrate Charlie's birthday, but to honor a truth that he gave his entire life to defend. And that's freedom." She said that if Kirk had lived, he probably would have run for president, but "not out of ambition," the Hill reports. "He would only have done it if that was something he believed that his country needed," she said.
• Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012. Trump has praised Kirk as one of the key reasons he was reelected. But Kirk's politics were also often divisive. He sharply criticized gay and transgender rights while inflaming racial tensions, the AP reports. Kirk also repeated Trump's false claims that former Vice President Kamala Harris was responsible for policies that encouraged immigrants to come to the US illegally.
• Trump wrote in a Truth Social post hours before the event that he was moving the ceremony from the White House's East Room to the Rose Garden to accommodate a crowd he said would be "so big and enthusiastic."