Moments From Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service

Tens of thousands of supporters from across the nation gathered on Sunday to honor the life and legacy of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated at the age of 31.

The program, called “Building a Legacy—Remembering Charlie Kirk," began at 11 a.m. MT on Sunday.

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Donald Trump Jr., and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson were among the scheduled speakers.

“What you’ve done is incredible,” the president said.

“God bless Erika and the children. God bless the United States of America.”

He then asked Erika Kirk to join him on stage before thanking the crowd for attending the service.

“God be with you,” Trump told the crowd before leaving the stage.

“We have to bring back religion to America, because without borders, law and order, and religion, you really don't have a country anymore,” Trump said.

“We want religion brought back to America. We want to bring God back into our beautiful U.S.A. like never before.

“We want God back.”

He recounted the millions of Americans who began praying immediately after hearing the news of the shooting

“He always felt that when they actually made the threat, they were not the ones to worry about,” Trump said. “The ones to worry about were the ones that don't make the threats.”

Trump said Kirk knew the risk, but shared a motto with him: “Never back down, and never, ever surrender.”

“Several years ago, a fourth grader asked Charlie to appear on his podcast, which was probably only watched by the parents of that fourth grader and Charlie, who was actually pretty hot at the time, to be honest, he agreed,” Trump said.

The fourth grader asked for advice, and Kirk told him, Trump recalled, that “the left may have all the world, but they can never outwork me.”

Trump recalled Kirk saying that he would wake up and stay up as early as he needed to be and never stop fighting for the country.

“He did this until his dying breath,” Trump said. “That's what he was doing.”

“It was Charlie who first started organizing young black conservatives hungry for support and leadership,” Trump said, recounting Kirk’s help during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“That day, Charlie talked to every student who approached him, most of whom were probably quite a bit older than he was,” Trump said.

After that, Kirk founded his first chapter of Turning Point USA, Trump said, and then traveled for 300 days “raising money and taking his message to campuses all over the country.”

Trump said that Kirk spent years floating between his parents’ basement and the couches of friends and supporters before his political movement exploded.

“He did what was right for our nation,” Trump said. “And so on that terrible day, September 10, 2025, our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal.

“He's a martyr now for American freedom. I know I speak for everyone here today when I say that none of us will ever forget Charlie Kirk, and neither now will history.

“Because while Charlie has been reunited with his creator in heaven, his voice on Earth will echo through the generations, and his name will live forever in the eternal chronicle of America's greatest patriots. He will live forever.”

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate.

“The answer we know from the Gospel is love, and always love, love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

She said that Kirk’s mission above all was to reach unmarried men.

“Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West, the young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live,” she said. “The men wasting their lives on distractions, and the men consumed with resentment, anger, and hate, Charlie wanted to help them.

“He would always end it with asking the most beautiful question … ‘Please let me know how I can better serve you as a husband,’” Kirk said.

“Charlie perfectly understood God's role for a Christian husband, a man who leads so that they can serve,” she said.

“To all the men watching around the world, accept Charlie's challenge and embrace true manhood.

“Be strong and courageous for your families. Love your wives and lead them. Love your children and protect them. Be the spiritual head of your home, but please be a leader worth following your wife.”

Kirk said a wife is not a servant, employee, or slave.

“We didn't see rioting,” she said. “We didn't see revolution. Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country. We saw revival.

“This past week, we saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade,” she said. “We saw people pray for the first time since they were children. We saw people go to a church for the first time in their entire lives.”

She quoted an entry from Kirk’s journal, which said that every decision puts a mark on one’s soul, and encouraged those who took their first steps in their spiritual life to keep going.

“The enemy will tempt you the most in a time like this one,” she said. “God will always be there for you, but you must choose to mark your soul again and again in the direction of Christ.

“So, 11 days ago, God accepted that total surrender from my husband, and then called him to his side,” she said. “More than anything, Charlie wanted to do, not his will, but God's will.

“And over these past 11 days, through all the pain, never before have I found as much comfort as I now do in the words of our Lord's Prayer, ‘Thy will be done.’”

The day after her husband’s assassination, Kirk said she arrived at a “Utah hospital to do the unthinkable, to look directly at my husband's murdered body.”

“I saw the wound that ended his life. I felt everything he would expect to feel. I felt shock … and a level of heartache that I didn't even know existed,” she said.

Kirk added that “even in death, I could see the man that I love.” She said that she saw the “faintest smile” on his lips while looking at his body.

But knowing him, Vance said that he believed Kirk would want him to focus on the good and to continue to fight for the truth.

“He would encourage me, he would encourage all of us to focus on the good,” the vice president said. “He would encourage us to remember that for every hateful voice celebrating his murder, there are 1,000 people mourning it and fighting for his legacy every single day.

“He would tell me to pray. I'm certain of it,” Vance added. “He would tell me to pray for my friends, but also for my enemies, he would tell me to put on the full armor of God and get back to work.”

Vance went on to say that Kirk would want everyone in attendance to commit to telling the truth and fighting for it every single day, as well as talk about God’s love for the whole human family.

“Charlie suffered a terrible fate, my friends, we all know it. We all saw it,” he said. “But I think it is not the worst fate.

“It demanded building, and it demanded leaders,” Vance said. “In Charlie Kirk, we found a great American leader.”

“At Michigan State University, five minutes before we were supposed to go on stage, the State Police told us, and I quote, ‘We can no longer guarantee your safety,’ because the left-wing activists, they were going crazy,” he said.

“It was rough. That sounded like a great reason to pack it up and head out, but it was one of the many times that I would agree with Charlie, who said, ‘No way, we're going out there anyway.’”

Trump Jr. also recalled one of the last events of the 2024 presidential campaign at Arizona State University. Someone called in a threat in an attempt to keep them off the stage, but they "went out there anyway without fear."

“Charlie led the way,” he said. “His message was clear then, and his message is clear now. We won't back down. We won’t be intimidated.”

“This was important, particularly important during a technological age when we are all hooked into social rhythms, social algorithms that are hacked into other reptilian cores of our brain and amplify our impulses for tribalism, and for he felt that the only way to overcome that biological impulse was with a spiritual fire and with developing community,” Kennedy said.

He added that Kirk believed “the only way to develop community was through conversation.”

“I just came from overseas, and in every country I stopped, they gave us their condolences for his passing,” he said. “Impactful in just 31 years of life, he made a difference. He mattered, and he will matter now more than he ever has before.”

Rubio also shared the last message Kirk sent to him, and it was about his work in South Korea.

“But over time, he realized, like so many of us have, that this is not a political war. It's not even a cultural war. It's a spiritual war: faith and family first,” Hegseth said.

The defense secretary added that his pastor had texted him the day after Kirk was assassinated, writing, “The devil overplayed his hand.”

“He knows that they are meant to teach, to train our young people to think critically, to debate ideas, to test their strength through a clash of reason,” she said.

"But too often, these schools silence debate, saying words are violence, dissenting voices are hushed. And those who speak of God—those who speak the truth, simple, objective truths, like there are only two genders in these schools—they are told, 'You have no voice.'”

Charlie chose to take those people and those institutions head-on and encourage them to speak honestly, debate, and think critically, Gabbard said.

He was winning so much, she said, that the forces of darkness, hate, and evil tried to silence him.

“The main thing about Charlie and his message, he was bringing the Gospel to the country, he was doing the thing that the people in charge hate most, which is calling for them to repent,” Carlson said.

“The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened,” Miller said.

“And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing.”

“He loved life and he loved the people in his life,” he said. “Charlie led with his faith and thought with his heart.

Turek, a Christian author and public speaker, was at Kirk’s event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 when Kirk was shot.

He recalled that Kirk’s security team did all they could to save the Turning Point USA co-founder. Kirk’s security team quickly carried Kirk to an SUV to take him to the hospital. Turek then got on the back of the SUV.

“I want you to know that we did everything we could to save Charlie. But Charlie was already gone. His face was looking at mine, but he wasn't looking at me,” he said.

Written by W. Cleon Skousen in the 1950s, the book, according to Carson, “exposed the things that were being done by the Marxists to gain control of our country.”

Carson said this included “gaining control of the public education system and the teacher unions so that you could infiltrate and indoctrinate our young people” and attempts to steer Hollywood and the media.

The former housing and urban development secretary has compared mid-20th-century Marxism to modern progressivism, alleging that the latter belief system is an extension of the former.

During his memorial speech, Carson said the left is trying to push “God out of our society.” He added that a revival is coming with Turning Point USA in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.

“Just want to start off by saying there would be no Congresswoman Luna without Charlie Kirk,” she said at the beginning of her eulogy.

“At one point, he had critical medication and an oxygen machine sent to my doorstep without my knowledge,” she said. “I still, to this day, have no idea how he made that happen, but that was Charlie.”

“Courage does not require talent. It does not require natural ability. Courage requires a personal decision,” Streiff said.

He met Charlie Kirk in 2014 and the two shared “a vision of what the conservative movement should be.”

He described Kirk as a “grown, 21-year-old man,” who had mail delivered to a detached garage off his parents’ house to assure donors he was not a kid still living with his parents. His organization had its own address: 217 and a half Illinois Street.

“We worked 24/7, he would tell every supporter of ours,” Bowyer said. “Between me and him, we were a team that was never off the clock. Full coverage. I would usually stay until two or three in the morning working on the next big Turning Point USA project, and text Charlie reports of what our team that day had accomplished.”

Kirk’s job was to dream up the ideas, and Bowyer’s job was to turn them into proposals and presentations. Together they would work to execute the plans.

“Charlie would take red-eyes from coast to coast, going all over the country like a crazy man on any and every possible donor, meeting with every possible donor who would take a meeting so our ideas and fixes for the conservative movement could help young people once and for all,” he said. “I oftentimes would go with him and marvel at the deranged, 22-year-old lifestyle.”

“Charlie has suffered enough. He’s gone to the Lord. He deserves this award,” Arnn said.

To start a Florida chapter, she recalled, Kirk needed $50,000. Dunn said Kirk challenged her and her husband to give him $25,000 if he raised that same amount. He did so in two days.

“He was supporting the persecuted Christians over there as they were raiding churches and imprisoning pastors, and he spoke to the youth that are now chanting on the streets, ‘I am Charlie Kirk,’ standing for freedom across the country,” McCoy said.

The weekend following Kirk’s assassination, streets in South Korea were filled with supporters waving American and South Korean flags. Footage showed them chanting “We are Charlie Kirk,” and holding signs saying “Chinese No-Visa Entry = Security Threat.”