Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster, culture warrior, and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31.
A manhunt for the shooter is still ongoing. “This shooting is still an active investigation,” Utah’s Department of Public Safety, which covers law enforcement in the state, said.
The incident was a “targeted attack,” the department says, with the suspect believed to have fired the fatal shot from the roof of a building to the courtyard where Kirk was addressing a large crowd.
About 3,000 people were at the event, which was held in the university quad, an outdoor bowl courtyard. The university had provided six security officers for the talk, in addition to Kirk’s private security detail.
Charlie Kirk “personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism in the age of Trump”
Kirk died doing what made him a potent political force—rallying the right on a college campus, this time Utah Valley University. His shooting is one of an escalating number of attacks on political figures, from the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota to last summer’s shooting of Trump, that have roiled the nation.
Trump announced Kirk’s death on his social media site, Truth Social: “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote.
According to the Associated Press, Kirk “personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party in the age of Trump.” He launched his organization, Turning Point USA, in 2012, targeting younger people and venturing onto liberal-leaning college campuses where many GOP activists were nervous to tread.
Trump on Wednesday praised Kirk, who started as an unofficial adviser during Trump’s 2016 campaign and more recently became a confidant. “He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person,” Trump told the New York Post.
Kirk showed off an apocalyptic style in his popular podcast, radio show, and on the campaign trail. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said that Democrats “stand for everything God hates.” Kirk called the Trump vs. Kamala Harris choice “a spiritual battle.”
“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way,” Kirk told the 10,000 or so Georgians, who at one point joined Kirk in a deafening chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
