Learn English with Donald Trump. President Donald J. Trump delivers a somber and somber tribute to slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at a memorial service in Arlington National Cemetary on September 10th, 2019. President Trump delivers an emotional tribute to the late Charlie Kirk and offers condolences to his family and friends.
00:02:16.000And so on that terrible day, September 10, 2025, our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal.
00:02:27.000He's a martyr now for American freedom.
00:02:32.000I know I speak for everyone here today when I say that none of us will ever forget Charlie Kirk, and neither now will history.
00:02:52.000Because 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.
00:03:12.000To Charlie's incredible and beautiful widow, Erica, we know the weight of this monumental loss is almost unbearable.
00:03:23.000But even in the midst of heartache and pain too great to even fathom, you have somehow found the strength and deep faith to be a comfort to millions and millions of people.
00:03:49.000Today, an entire nation wraps its loving arms around you and your beautiful children.
00:03:54.000We share in your immense and overwhelming sorrow and we vow that we will do everything we can to ensure that your children grow up in a land where their father is honored and revered as a great American hero.
00:04:09.000That's what he is to Charlie's parents who lost their beloved son and to the entire Kirk family.
00:04:23.000We know that no words could ever be enough to fill the void he leaves behind.
00:04:28.000That's a void that just can't be filled.
00:04:31.000But I hope the extraordinary outpouring of emotion over these past 11 days has comforted you with the knowledge that your son brought more good and love into this world in his 31 short years than most people, even very, very successful people, can bring in a lifetime.
00:04:56.000Charlie Kirk loved America with everything he had.
00:05:00.000And as we can see so clearly today, America loved Charlie Kirk.
00:05:57.000Our great cabinet and this stadium packed with rafters of people, not to mention the one across the street that also has tens of thousands of people.
00:06:12.000And they're watching us on screen right now.
00:06:38.000For millions of Americans, especially young people, it is agonizing and unthinkable to say goodbye to a patriot whose heart still had so much to give.
00:06:51.000Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Charlie was filled with the patriotic spirit from his youth, and he was an all-American in everything he did.
00:07:01.000And one of the last things he said to me is, please, sir, save Chicago.
00:07:24.000A lot of people don't know that about Charlie.
00:07:27.000He was an Eagle Scout who spent his school lunch breaks listening to another champion for liberty, somebody that he greatly admired, Rush Limbaugh.
00:07:45.000But what was even more important to Charlie than politics and service was the choice he made in the fifth grade, which he called the most important decision of his life to become a Christian and a follower of his Savior, Jesus Christ.
00:08:09.000Inspired by faith and his love of freedom, Charlie did something remarkable when he was just 18 years old on the advice of a mentor who told him to put off going to college because he was doing so well.
00:08:24.000He devoted his life to converting young people to the conservative cause.
00:08:37.000In 2012, two days after graduating high school, and with just $1,800 in his pocket, the young man from Illinois, who no one had ever heard of, started an organization whose grand ambitions were captured in its name.
00:10:11.000And on the couches of friends and supporters, he lived off couches for two years, three years, then life started getting a little bit different.
00:12:33.000We're going to be talking in the Oval Office in the White House about autism, how it happens, so we won't let it happen anymore, and how to get at least somewhat better when you have it, so that parents can help their child, their beautiful child.
00:14:42.000But Charlie would often call me sometimes the night before a big event, the other side of the country, and he'd ask me, he'd say, do you think you could come and speak at the event the following day, right?
00:16:04.000Several years ago, a fourth grader asked Charlie to appear on his podcast, which was probably only watched by the parents of that fourth grader.
00:16:14.000And Charlie, who was actually pretty hot at the time, to be honest, he agreed and the boy asked for advice.
00:16:23.000Charlie replied, the left, the left, I call it the radical left.
00:16:28.000I call it sometimes the radical left lunatics.
00:17:49.000By his own determination and skill, Charlie Kirk built turning point from his humble beginnings, the beginnings that nobody believed could ever end up something like this, into a great movement and a juggernaut of American politics.
00:18:04.000And you know, we have a massive stadium loaded up with people, but he got tremendous crowds before he had this kind of horrible news and before we had to hear what happened so terribly.
00:18:17.000He delivered more than 250 speeches a year at over 200 colleges and universities.
00:18:25.000And that was at a time when it was not really vogue to go to colleges and universities if you were a conservative.
00:18:38.000And we used to talk, and I said, you know, I think they're much more conservative than we know.
00:18:42.000And he agreed, but it just wasn't something that was happening because the radical left would do very bad things, very dangerous things.
00:18:50.000But Charlie set up chapters on 2,200 campuses and spoke at more than 1,000 churches.
00:19:00.000He launched a podcast and radio show that grew to an audience of 1 million Americans a day, one of the bigger shows on radio.
00:19:11.000And Charlie didn't just bring young people into the movement.
00:19:16.000All of a sudden it started to grow by leaps and bounds by 2024.
00:19:20.000We won more young people than any Republican candidate in the history of our country, including for the first time a majority of males under 30.
00:20:25.000At every campus event, Charlie asked the people who disagreed with him to come forward, and instead of silencing them, he handed them a microphone and let them speak.
00:20:38.000It was a pretty amazing thing to watch, actually.
00:20:41.000Shortly before Charlie arrived on campus, the day he was assassinated, a staff member texted him that there were many critics and students who were opposed to his views and rather strenuously in the crowd.
00:20:54.000And that actually made him feel good because he wanted to convince them.
00:23:23.000When you see they all have the same beautifully printed sign, every sign is identical, comes out of a top-level print shop.
00:23:32.000That's not the signs that are made in somebody's basement.
00:23:35.000Those are paid for by very bad people, and hopefully we're going to be finding out through the DOJ who those people are at another college.
00:23:50.000Antifa terrorists shattered windows, threw rocks, and tried to storm the building where Charlie was speaking.
00:24:51.000The radicals and their allies in the media, sometimes referred to, as my son said, the fake news media, tried to silence Charlie for a simple reason.
00:25:05.000Because he was winning and he was winning big.
00:25:36.000They lied about him because they did not want you to listen to him or to learn from him because what he was talking about and even preaching made so much sense.
00:25:46.000Everywhere he went, he won the debates.
00:26:50.000But we owe Charlie a profound and eternal debt of gratitude now.
00:26:56.000Just like Charlie and Erica made Turning Point Hot.
00:27:00.000We are looking at a country that has the chance to attain a level like never before.
00:27:08.000Tariffs are making us rich again, richer than anybody ever thought was possible.
00:27:15.000And the only one challenging them are people that hate our country or foreign countries that are paying a price because they did the same thing to us for years.
00:27:24.000They took advantage of us, but we're making money.
00:29:42.000Every single American should take a long, hard look at the twisted soul and dark spirit of anyone who would want to kill a young man as good as Charlie, to kill anybody, but to kill a man like this.
00:30:00.000And anyone who would make excuses for it are just out of their mind.
00:30:08.000Charlie's murder was not just an attack on one man or one movement.
00:30:13.000It was an attack on our entire nation.
00:30:17.000That was a horrible attack on the United States of America.
00:30:22.000It was an assault on our most sacred liberties and God-given rights.
00:30:26.000The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us.
00:30:30.000That bullet was aimed at every one of us.
00:30:33.000Indeed, Charlie was killed for expressing the very ideas that virtually everyone in this arena and most other places throughout our country deeply believed in.
00:30:44.000But the assassin failed in his quest because Charlie's message has not been silenced.
00:30:49.000It now is bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and it's not even close.
00:31:01.000And it's rare that such a thing happens, but Charlie is bigger today than he was.
00:33:08.000We got rid of, you know, we took out 1,500 career criminals, 1,500.
00:33:13.000If you have three career criminals, that can make a big difference.
00:33:18.000But I'm so proud of Washington, D.C., and now we're going into Memphis, and we'll get that one straightened out fast.
00:33:24.000And then we're going into some others, but we're going to go to Chicago, and we're going to have Charlie very much in mind when we go into Chicago.
00:33:33.000And we'll get that one straightened out.
00:33:34.000You have an incompetent governor who he thinks it's okay when 11 people get murdered over the weekend.
00:33:42.000He thinks you don't have any crime when 11 people get murdered and 28 people get shot.
00:34:00.000He's so proud of what happened in Washington, D.C. As you know, the depraved assassin who planned and executed Charlie's killing has been arrested and charged with capital murder.
00:34:14.000God willing, he will receive the full and ultimate punishment for his horrific crime.
00:34:30.000The Department of Justice is also investigating networks of radical left maniacs who fund organized fuel and perpetrate political violence.
00:34:40.000And we think we know who many of them are.
00:34:44.000But law enforcement can only be the beginning of our response to Charlie's murder.
00:34:51.000Over the last 11 days, we have heard stories of commentators, influencers, and others in our society who greeted his assassination with sick approval, excuses, or even jubilation.
00:35:08.000Some of the very same people who spent the last eight years trying to sit in moral judgment of anyone who disagreed with them about politics suddenly started cheering for a murder.
00:35:27.000That will be proven out in a short period of time.
00:35:31.000Some of the very people who call you a hater for using the wrong pronoun were filled with glee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children.
00:35:42.000And the same commentators who this week are screaming fascism over a canceled late-night TV show where the anchor had no talent and no ratings, last week were implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what happened to him.
00:36:02.000No side in American politics has a monopoly undisturbed or misguided people.
00:36:08.000But there's one part of our political community which believes they have a monopoly on truth, goodness, and virtue and concludes they have also a monopoly on power, thought, and speech.
00:36:21.000We've turned that corner very quickly.
00:36:23.000Tragically, atrocities of this kind, and the kind that we saw in Utah of all places, are the eventual consequence of that kind of thinking.
00:36:34.000If speech is violence, then some are bound to conclude that violence is justified to stop speech.
00:36:41.000And we're not going to let that be justified.
00:36:43.000The tradition of reason and open debate that Charlie practiced is not a pillar of our democracy.
00:36:50.000In many ways, it's the basis of our entire society.
00:36:56.000It's the right and inheritance of every free American, the greatest legacy of the Enlightenment, and among the most treasured achievements of civilization.
00:37:07.000We will defend it at all costs, and we will carry forward the torch of liberty that Charlie Kirk held so proud and so high.
00:37:14.000He was so proud, and he did hold that torch high.
00:37:24.000But we're going to raise it higher than ever before.
00:37:28.000It's going to be raised, and this is the beginning.
00:37:30.000Perhaps it should be no surprise that Charlie, who spent his life speaking with the critics of these traditions, ultimately became convinced that we needed not just a political realignment, but also a spiritual reawakening.
00:37:45.000And we have to bring back religion to America because without borders, law and order, and religion, you really don't have a country anymore.
00:37:54.000We want religion brought back to America.
00:37:58.000We want to bring God back into our beautiful USA like never before.
00:38:09.000Charlie would have been so pleased to hear his friends and colleagues today giving testimony and giving glory to God.
00:38:18.000Within minutes of the gunshot in Utah, millions of Americans, young and old, heard the news and dropped to their knees and started praying.
00:38:28.000Even many who rarely prayed ask God for a miracle.
00:39:45.000The lesson of Charlie's life is that you should never underestimate what one person can do with a good heart, a righteous cause, a cheerful spirit, and the will to fight, fight, fight.
00:40:24.000Today, Charlie Kirk rests in glory in heaven for all eternity.
00:40:30.000He has gone from speaking on campuses in Wisconsin to kneeling at the throne of God where he is right now.
00:40:42.000We grieve for the friend and leader that we have lost, but we go forward strengthened by his faith and bolstered by his courage and inspired by his example to defend the country he lived for, for the freedoms he died for and the values in which he so deeply believed.
00:41:03.000He believed in values that we should all believe in.
00:41:08.000Charlie created something very special.