Charlie Kirk Would Have Run For U.S. President, Widow Says At White House
Adedokun Waliyu
2 min read
Slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk probably would have run for president, his widow, Erika Kirk, revealed Tuesday at a White House ceremony awarding him the country’s highest civilian honour on what would have been his 32nd birthday.
“Not out of ambition,” she said. “He would only have done it if that was something that he believed that his country needed, from a servant’s-heart standpoint.”
And Kirk prayed for his enemies, she said, drawing a chuckle from President Donald Trump during a Rose Garden ceremony to posthumously award her husband the Medal of Freedom. Trump has expressed skepticism about the notion of Kirk following the biblical principle of loving one’s enemies — a nod not only to the president’s own proclivity for revenge but also to Kirk’s passionate conservative views that critics described as extreme and intolerant.
Trump said Kirk’s name would go on the “eternal roster of true American heroes” and issued a proclamation of a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.”
In between remarks about decreased crime and increased restaurant traffic in D.C., about the upcoming Olympics and World Cup events being held in the United States, Trump described Kirk as a “martyr for truth and for freedom,” likening him to Socrates, Saint Peter, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. He said Kirk “became the leader of historic movements all over the country.”
After Kirk’s killing Sept. 10 — when he was fatally shot while holding a campus debate event at Utah Valley University — Trump told Erika Kirk that he would issue the award on his birthday. That ultimately involved the president hurrying back from a trip to the Middle East, where a historic Gaza Strip peace plan was signed.
“He literally moved world events in order to race back to D.C. to make good on that promise to Erika,” said Andrew Kolvet, Kirk’s longtime spokesman and producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” earlier in the day.
Trump joked that he considered asking Erika Kirk to reschedule the ceremony because of the Middle East trip but decided against it. “I said, we’re going to have to forget about some of those very big, very rich countries that expected me to be there,” Trump recalled as he spoke Tuesday.
While accepting the award on her late husband’s behalf, Erika Kirk said the ceremony attendees were gathered “to honour a truth that he gave his entire life to defend, and that’s freedom.” The word “freedom” was printed on the T-shirt Kirk was wearing at the time he was killed.
