HIS white T-shirt drenched in blood, US conservative activist Charlie Kirk slumped from his chair as the shot rang out.
A “youth whisperer” who harnessed Gen Z votes for close friend Donald Trump, Kirk had been debating transgender mass shootings with a student crowd.
Charlie Kirk, 31, the Gen Z ‘youth whisperer’ and Trump ally, was shot dead during a campus debate, with close friend Donald Trump calling it a ‘dark moment’ for America[/caption]
Kirk leaves behind widow Erika, 36, a businesswoman and former Miss Arizona USA, plus a daughter, three, and a one-year-old son – who were all at the event[/caption]
In the land of free speech, the assassin’s bullet then silenced the MAGA stalwart where the words of his liberal critics had so often failed.
News of his murder sent shockwaves through a traumatised White House where activist Kirk, 31, was a frequent visitor.
Trump — the survivor of two assassination attempts himself — regarded the father-of-two as part of his extended family.
The grieving president solemnly declared the slaying of his political ally a “dark moment” for America.
In an Oval Office address, Trump said it was time for America “to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree”.
While less well known in the UK, Kirk had rock-star status on America’s college campuses.
With more than eight million followers on TikTok and nine million on Instagram, he was credited with making it cool for young people to be right-wing.
A natural showman, the devout Christian believed in closed borders, fought against wokeism, and was anti-abortion and pro-gun ownership.
He leaves behind widow Erika, 36, a businesswoman and former Miss Arizona USA, plus a daughter, three, and a one-year-old son.
It is unclear if they were among the 3,000-strong crowd at Utah Valley University when the rooftop assassin struck on Wednesday.
Afterwards the gunman fled the scene and is still on the loose, and yesterday the FBI released images of a “person of interest” in the shooting.
As he escaped, the assassin dropped a “high-powered bolt-action rifle” — including ammunition engraved with transgender and anti-fascist ideology — in nearby woodland.
Kirk’s final moments had seen him locked in the verbal political cut and thrust which he relished.
At 12.20pm — around 20 minutes after he’d begun speaking — a student asked: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?”
We heard a big loud shot. I saw a bunch of blood come out of Charlie. I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp, and everybody dropped to the ground.
Justin Hickens, witness
“Too many,” Kirk replied as the crowd clapped.
The audience member said the total was five before adding: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?”
Lone black-clad figure
Kirk then replied: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Moments later a lone black-clad figure pulled a rifle trigger from a vantage point on top of the Losee Center, a building 130 metres from where Kirk was speaking.
A single bullet then lodged in Kirk’s throat and the gunman was then seen in a video dashing along the roof as pandemonium broke out among the terrified crowd.
Witness Justin Hickens said: “We heard a big loud shot. I saw a bunch of blood come out of Charlie.
“I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp, and everybody dropped to the ground.”
Kirk’s final exchanges were characteristic of how the Illinois native liked to pursue his politics.
His brand — and his movement Turning Point USA — was built on old-fashioned debate.
Touring campuses during the height of cancel culture, he liked to take questions from those with opposing views and try to persuade them of their folly.
Emblazoned on the canopy beneath which he was speaking in Utah on Wednesday was his catchphrase, “Prove me wrong”.
In a deeply polarised, tinderbox America, there are now fears the assassination could tip the nation into a wave of tit-for-tat political violence.
For Charlie Kirk, a college dropout who went on to become one of Trump’s closest confidants, was a cornerstone of the Make America Great Again movement.
Raised in a politically moderate household in the affluent Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights, Kirk’s dad was an architect while his mum worked as a mental health counsellor.
He told how his school went from one where white students were the majority to classes where they were the minority, while he was a pupil.
Kirk credited his conservative awakening to Barack Obama’s presidency, citing bank bailouts amid the 2008 financial crisis.
Still in his teens, Kirk clashed with teachers who he accused of “neo-Marxist” bias.
While his assertion that text books were promoting liberal indoctrination saw him make his first waves in national media aged 17.
Kirk with political commentator Candace Owens in 2018 — his assassination now raises fears of tit-for-tat political violence in a divided America[/caption]
Fans gather for a vigil after Kirk’s killing[/caption]
Dropping out of university after one semester, Kirk was then rejected by the US military academy West Point in New York.
Instead, he fully immersed himself in conservative political activism.
“If you want to stand out, don’t go to college,” Kirk said at rallies. “It worked for me.”
At just 18, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA to counter left-wing student groups.
Admitting he had “no money, no connections and no idea what I was doing”, the organisation nevertheless spread like wildfire.
Soon it boasted more than 3,000 chapters on campuses across America.
In 2016, aged 23, Kirk was the youngest speaker at the Republican National Convention, telling an interviewer he “was not the world’s biggest Donald Trump fan”.
That was to change rapidly.
US Vice President JD Vance wrote of Kirk after his death: “Like me, he was sceptical of Donald Trump in 2016.
“Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives.”
During Trump’s successful run for president in 2016 Kirk became an assistant to his son Donald Trump Jr, arranging travel and media interviews.
In 2019 Kirk formed Students For Trump to bolster the president’s ultimately unsuccessful re-election bid the following year.
Kirk then threw his organisation’s weight behind the so-called Stop The Steal campaign that wrongly suggested Trump was cheated out of victory.
Rise in political violence
A day before the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2016 by Trump supporters, he tweeted that his groups were sending “buses of patriots to DC to fight for this president”.
A gifted orator, some of Kirk’s pronouncements enraged opponents.
Kirk called civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr “awful” and “not a good person”.
He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions. If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he’d encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak.
Vice President JD Vance
While he described mandatory vaccines as “medical apartheid”.
During a visit to Britain in May, he clashed with Cambridge students, telling them that marriage should be “between one man and one woman,” as based in “scripture”.
At the Oxford Union, he said that immigrants were “importing insidious values into the West”.
Afterwards, he wrote of meeting blue collar workers in the UK who were “angry at Britain’s net-zero-driven energy stagnation.
“They’re furious at the Biden-esque levels of immigration inflicted on them by their ‘Conservative’ government in the past decade.
“Over and over, they told me they were ready to smash the British party system to bits and elect a Reform prime minister.”
Trump credited Kirk with having his finger on the pulse of the MAGA base and of helping secure Gen Z votes for his 2024 re-election.
The pair were able to disagree amicably — as when Kirk opposed Trump’s June decision to strike nuclear sites in Iran.
“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote on social media after his friend’s assassination.
“He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me.”
On Wednesday baseball team the New York Yankees held a minute’s silence while flashing, “Remembering Charlie Kirk” on a giant screen.
Vice President JD Vance paid tribute to Kirk as one of his closest political associates.
“Someone else pointed out that Charlie died doing what he loved: discussing ideas,” he tweeted.
“He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions. If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he’d encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak.
“He exemplified a foundational virtue of our Republic: the willingness to speak openly and debate ideas.”
President Trump was quick to blame “the radical left” for his friend’s death.
“For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today — and it must stop right now.”
Both sides of the political divide have been the target of recent political violence.
Earlier this year two Democrat lawmakers in Minnesota were shot in their homes — with one dying from her wounds.
Last year Trump was twice the target of assassination attempts. In 2022 a hammer-wielding maniac broke into the home of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a leading Democrat.
While in 2017, a left wing activist opened fire on a Republican congressmen practising on a Virginia baseball field.
The graphic video images of Charlie Kirk’s assassination will be hard for his young disciples to forget.
Now a MAGA martyr, Kirk’s political methods were to debate and cajole those who disagreed with him.
Those maxims should be held dear by all.
