President Trump on Tuesday posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowing the nation’s highest civilian honor on a political ally who was assassinated last month.
“We’re here to honor and remember a fearless warrior for liberty, beloved leader who galvanized the next generation like nobody I’ve ever seen before, and an American patriot of the deepest conviction,” Mr. Trump said during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, which was attended by most of the cabinet.
The president presented the medal to Mr. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, on what would have been Mr. Kirk’s 32nd birthday, a tribute that Mr. Trump joked had stopped him from asking Mrs. Kirk to reschedule the event.
“I raced back halfway around the globe,” Mr. Trump said, referring to his trip to Israel and Egypt that he returned from early Tuesday morning. “I was going to call Erika and say, ‘Erika, could you maybe move it to Friday?’ And I didn’t have the courage to call. But you know why I didn’t call? Because I heard today was Charlie’s birthday.”
In tearful remarks, Mrs. Kirk said that her late husband “probably would have run for president, but not out of ambition.”
She added: “He would only have done it if that was something that he believed that his country needed.”
Mrs. Kirk thanked Mr. Trump for bestowing the honor on her husband, and promised to carry out his legacy.
“You have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have,” she said.
Mr. Kirk, the founder of the right-wing political organization Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Mr. Kirk, from the time he was 18, built Turning Point into a sprawling organization, with hundreds of chapters on college campuses. Mr. Trump and other top Republicans have credited Mr. Kirk for their electoral victories because of his work mobilizing young voters.
“Charlie Kirk was a martyr for truth and for freedom,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “From Socrates and St. Peter, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, those who change history the most — and he really did — have always risked their lives for causes they were put on earth to defend.”
But Mr. Kirk’s rhetoric was divisive, with critics arguing that his views on gay and transgender rights, as well as on race, were offensive. Mr. Kirk also may not have approved of the president comparing him to Dr. King, whom Mr. Kirk assailed as an “awful” person. He once said that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake.”
The citation for the medal lauded Mr. Kirk for his work building Turning Point into the largest conservative youth organization in the nation, and for his commitment to the nation’s founding principles.
Mr. Kirk is the first person to receive the honor in Mr. Trump’s second term. The president has announced plans to also award it to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and an adviser to Mr. Trump, and Ben Carson, who served as the housing secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term.
Through his work with Turning Point, Mr. Kirk developed close relationships with many of the president’s top aides and other prominent Republicans, many of whom were in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. Among those in attendance were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, who was especially close with Mr. Kirk, also attended the ceremony, as did Javier Milei, the leader of Argentina, who met with Mr. Trump earlier in the day.
Mr. Kirk’s death, which was captured on video, was part of a wave of political violence that has targeted people across the political spectrum.
Mr. Trump survived two assassination attempts while running for president last year; Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota state lawmaker, was killed in June; Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was the victim of an arson attack on his home in April while he and his family slept; and in 2017, Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was nearly killed during a shooting at a congressional baseball team practice that targeted Republicans.
But Mr. Trump has acknowledged only “radical left” political violence, and he said Tuesday that his administration was working to “confront it.” Since Mr. Kirk’s death, Mr. Trump and his allies have escalated attacks on their political opponents, and have vowed a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning institutions.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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