Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead on Wednesday during a college campus event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
Kirk, who co-founded Turning Point USA when he was 18, was a married father of two young children. He was 31.
President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death on Truth Social.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump said on social media. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”
Kirk’s death came in an atmosphere of growing threats and violence against political figures on both sides of the aisle, from Trump to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to state lawmakers in Minnesota.
Kirk’s rise to fame began with an opinion piece he wrote while he was a teenager for the conservative news site Breitbart, where discussed liberalism in textbooks.
Then at 18, he and activist Bill Montgomery founded Turning Point USA to reach college-age Republicans. Kirk, who briefly attended Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, but dropped out to focus on the group full time.
Kirk became a key voice for conservative media and a forceful voice against what he felt were key issues, including Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and urging Republicans in the Arizona Legislature to send fake electors to Washington, D.C.
His organization also bused supporters to go to Washington before a rally that turned it into a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kirk was a close friend of Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
Kirk spoke on the first night of the Republican National Convention in July 2024, which took place just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
