Just a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking during an event at Utah Valley University hosted by his nonprofit political organization, President Donald Trump announced he would be posthumously awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Kirk, the co-founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, was fatally struck in the neck by an assassin’s bullet on Wednesday. He was discussing mass shootings in the United States at the moment he was shot.
Trump made the remarks at the start of a 9/11 commemoration service at the Pentagon, marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people,” said Trump. “We miss him greatly, yet I have no doubt that Charlie’s voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on.”
Trump had announced Kirk’s death on social media, praising the 31-year-old as “great, and even legendary,” adding, “No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”
In a Wednesday night video address from the Oval Office where he paid tribute to Kirk, the president took aim at the “radical left,” stating, “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie Kirk to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This type of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
The person who fired the gunshot that killed Kirk remains at large at the time of this story’s publication, after two separate people were taken into custody and then released. The Associated Press on Thursday reported that authorities recovered a high-powered rifle, and that the shooter appeared to be of “college age” and is believed to have blended in on the university campus.
“I can tell you this was a targeted event,” Robert Bohls, the top FBI agent in Salt Lake City, told the outlet.