By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday is posthumously awarding America’s highest civilian honor to Charlie Kirk, the assassinated activist who inspired a generation of young conservatives and helped push the nation’s politics further to the right.
The ceremony coincides with what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. It comes just over a month after the Turning Point USA founder was fatally shot while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University.
In a sign of Kirk’s close ties to the administration, he will be the first recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Trump’s second term. The president also spoke at at Kirk’s funeral in September, calling him a “great American hero” and “martyr” for freedom, while Vice President JD Vance and Kirk’s wife, Erica, accompanied his body home to Arizona on Air Force Two.
Trump wrote in a social media post hours before the event that he was moving the ceremony from the White House’s East Room to the Rose Garden to accommodate a crowd he said would be “so big and enthusiastic.”
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 for individuals making exceptional contributions to the country’s security or national interests or to world peace, or being responsible for significant cultural endeavors or public and private initiatives.
Tuesday’s event follows Trump returning to the U.S. in the pre-dawn hours — after a whirlwind trip to Israel and Egypt to celebrate a ceasefire agreement in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza that his administration was instrumental in brokering.
Trump has awarded a string of presidential medals going back to his first term, including to golf legend Tiger Woods, ex-football coach Lou Holtz and conservative economist Arthur Laffer as well as to Yankees Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, the latter of which came during the 2020 State of the Union. He awarded posthumous medals to Babe Ruth and Elvis.
This term, Trump has also announced his intentions to award the medals to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and a close former adviser, and to Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s first-term secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012. Trump has praised Kirk as one of the key reasons he was reelected.
But Kirk’s politics were also often divisive. He sharply criticized gay and transgender rights while inflaming racial tensions. Kirk also repeated Trump’s false claims that former Vice President Kamala Harris was directly responsible for all immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally and called George Floyd, a Black man whose killing by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national debate over racial injustice, a “scumbag.”