The Daily - Charlie Kirk’s Politically Charged Memorial

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Conservatives from around the country flocked to Arizona on Sunday to memorialize the activist Charlie Kirk. The service included leaders from the highest levels of the U.S. government, including Vice President JD Vance and President Trump.Two clear strands emerged during the memorial addresses: a message of Christian unity, and a vow to fight political enemies on the left.Robert Draper, who covers domestic politics for The Times, explains how the collision of those two messages makes this a crucial moment for the MAGA movement.Guest: Robert Draper, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist for The New York Times, who writes about domestic politics.Background reading: Thousands flocked to Phoenix for Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.President Trump remembered Mr. Kirk as a martyr while attacking political opponents.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This is daily producer Caitlin O'Keefe, and I'm here with my colleague, Anna Foley. Anna, what time is it and where are we? It's currently 608 in the morning. We are walking up to the State Farm Stadium. There's a huge parking lot that is just like mazes full of people waiting in line. And they're all here for Charlie Kirk's memorial service in Glendale, Arizona. And that's why we're here to talk to them. Back in the line, down there.

It's not over here. Down there. What time did you get here this morning? We woke up at 3.30 and then left at 4. We got up at 2.30 this morning and showed up here around 4.10. Me and my friend drove 16 hours straight from East Texas and have not slept one wink. If you could say in one or two words how you're feeling right now, What would you say?

Heartbroken, shocked. I'm feeling moved by the movement. Probably empowered, definitely. I think everybody here feels like we lost a leader and truly, honestly, one of God's soldiers. It really feels like they killed one of ours. What made you decide to come out today? This is a historical moment. This was a Martin Luther King, Jr. in our day that was essentially assassinated for his free speech.

and this is our training point as well. I think this is igniting a fire in America. There is a sense of good and evil. There is a sense of right and wrong. And this is kind of the time people are waking up to realize which side am I going to be on. They wanted to silence him, and they turned him into a martyr.

What do you hope to hear in there? I want to hear true leadership say that they will no longer tolerate this. Not with words. But with policies, with laws, no longer being tolerant to the left, it's now clear that the one person that was willing to reach across the aisle and have conversations with them, they shot him. So at this point, there is no changing their minds.

There is no kumbaya anymore. You're over there, we're over here, you stand for that, we stand for this. Why is it always our side being attacked? From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. On Sunday, conservatives from all around the country flocked to Arizona to memorialize the slain political leader Charlie Kirk. The service included leaders from the highest levels of the U.S. government, including Vice President Vance and President Trump. During the memorial, two clear messages emerged, one of Christian unity, the other a vow to fight political enemies. on the left.

Today, my colleague Robert Draper explains how the collision of those two messages makes this a crucial moment for the MAGA movement. It's Monday, September 22nd. Robert, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a long day for you.

I can't even imagine what time you had to wake up this morning to cover the funeral. I think it was 3.20 a.m., but in any event, I'm happy to be speaking to you. So you were out reporting in the crowd all day today at Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service, and I wonder if you could just start by describing what the scene was like. Well, it certainly met if not exceeded Turning Point USA's expectations. I mean, they got a football stadium for this with a seating capacity of 63,000, and an overflow stadium, I think, that holds another tournament.

12,000 or so. And both were definitely filled. People were turned away. And of course, it was Republican royalty who attended not only the people on Air Force 1 and Air Force 2, but a number of members of Congress and senators as well as cabinet members. That's actually the reason why we wanted to talk to you about what happened today, because yes, on its face, this was a memorial, of course, but it wasn't just a memorial, right? Because it seemed to actually be these two things at once, this service for Charlie Kirk, but also a major political event. You had some of the most influential leaders of the MAGA movement at this ceremony. You had the president of the United States, you had right-wing influencers, all of these people got up and spoke about Charlie Kirk, and

underlying all their speeches was the sort of existential message about what his death means for the MAGA movement, where it goes from here, and what kind of rallying cry, frankly, different people were hearing in this moment, in Charlie Kirk's name. And that's what feels like it's important to unpack with you now. No, I think that's right, Rachel. I mean, for one thing, start with the fact that Charlie Kirk was the head of this very powerful political organizing force called Turning Point USA. And so to attend a funeral celebrating the life of Charlie Kirk was going to inescapably be a political event. And so it was. And not only in terms of the fact that a lot of politicians spoke, but because Kirk himself and his death have a lot of portent

for the conservative movement. And I think that on the heels of his death, we're likely to see a lot of jostling for how to reshape the MAGA movement and in whose image it will be shaped. And in fact, you could see at the event these two forces of a celebration in the evangelical Christian way of a Christian leader's life collide with the sort of hard-knuckled politics of the conservative movement. Well, let's talk about how those two forces really revealed themselves throughout the course of what was an hours-long ceremony. How did the memorial actually begin?

It really bore the stamp of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA events. which really had become, over the years, practically rock concerts. This was more toned down, but still, there was this procession of bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. There were two or three famous Christian rock bands playing. And so it very much began with all the tonality of what you'd expected of a funeral at an evangelical megachurch. That was the atmosphere set by turning point, and that's how this funeral began,

with speaker after speaker talking about Charlie Kirk's faith. Charlie Kirk called me as pastor. I called him, my friend. He loved God more than he loved safety or applause or even his own life. The legacy he built, his values, his love of God, and true joy he found in his Savior, Jesus Christ. and how that not only anchored him, but inspired so many people. And so there was a period composed purely of speeches given by people who had worked with Kirk. It was the honor of my life to serve you as you serve Jesus.

There was no discussion of partisan politics. And I would say this to all of you, the Lord loves you. And it's notable that in that first hour, there were no elected officials on stage. You see, Charlie looked at politics as an on-ramp to Jesus. He knew if he could get all of you rowing in the streams of liberty, you'd come to its source, and that's the Lord. Robert, you alluded to the fact that that wasn't the case all day.

So can you just help describe when does the tone start to change? Sure, roughly around midway, the biographical picture of Charlie Kirk as a father, a husband, a leader and an inspiration, begins to move and replacing it is the notion of Charlie Kirk martyr. Eleven days ago, my friend was martyred for using his voice to engage in peaceful dialogue. Charlie Kirk, a Christian warrior who was felled by the left. And it's easy to note that the more political figures take the stage, the more political figures take the stage,

the more you see that language get ratcheted up. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Benny Johnson. The first that really stood out to me was by the right-wing podcaster, Benny Johnson. Fight for Charlie Kirk! Who feels the Holy Spirit in the house tonight? Who had done a lot of Turning Point USA events was really a lieutenant in a way of Kirk's.

They were very close. And his speech was the first one, I believe, that talked about the mission against evil. And so we want to thank the administration for being here and carrying out that godly mission of wielding the sword against evil. And that's an exact phrase that he used about wielding the sword in that godly mission against evil. Please welcome to the stage, Jack Posobic. Shortly after him came Jack Posobic. Charlie Kirk was my friend. Charlie was my brother.

And Charlie was my commanding officer. Another close friend of Charlie Kirk's and another podcaster who compared Kirk to Moses at the top of the mountain. The Bible tells us that on his last day, Moses looked across the river Jordan and he saw the promised land. He led the people there, but he did not cross himself. And said that, though Charlie Kirk may not have gotten to the promised land, he has brought us all there to the promised land. On his last day, Charlie Kirk led us there, and Charlie Kirk has brought us to the promised land.

But he was saying that... And the question of our time, will Western civilization... endure. You know, that the sacrifice of Charles James Kirk will be seen a century from now as the turning point of civilization. That a century from now, when they write of the two or three pivotal moments that led to the saving of Western civilization, they will write that the sacrifice of Charles James Kirk was the turning point. And the Western civilization was saved by Charlie Kirk.

He talked about fighting evil in the highest of places. For Charlie, we will end the evil disease that split us and took Charlie from us. And for Charlie, Turning Point, USA will last forever. So those two really, I think, set the tone for the political speeches that were to have followed. We were also, by the way, I should say, we were watching along here in the New York Times office. And that's what really struck me was that part of the messaging seemed to be this positioning of Kirk as part of this larger divine plan. And in so doing that, the point was also to position the larger MAGA movement within that same divine plan to basically say this is something that is like handed down by the will of God in a way that was a little bit, frankly, reminiscent of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, where we saw just days later at the Republican National Convention, there was this really revealing. statement that basically Trump was saved by God to save the country.

So it all felt of a peace in a way. Yes. And I think that this was reminiscent because in both cases, the third person, plural, was frequently invoked by the right. They tried to do this to President Trump. They did this to Charlie Kirk. They also had a goal of gaining control of the media and Hollywood so they could change It's a culture in America.

They kill and terrorize their opponents, hoping to silence them. Who do you think they were talking about when they said that evil they? It's pretty vague, though those individuals who were saying they had in the past meant the left when they were referring to they. But it ceases to be an inference and becomes abundantly clear who they is once Donald Trump Jr. took the stage. The true extremists are those who would justify it. and celebrate taking an innocent life over nothing more than disagreement. That is the real radicalism.

Junior was the first person on the stage to use the phrase fake news and media or even to talk about liberals on campus going crazy. Because the left-wing activist, they were going crazy. And actually was also the first person to mention any Democrat at all when... To say Charlie knew more about the Bible than me is an understatement, folks.

Don Jr., trying to kind of crack a joke about how little he knows about the Bible said, obviously, that's an understatement. It's like saying Donald Trump knows more about being president than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris. No kidding.

Right. That was the moment where it seemed like it went from a memorial to an overtly political moment. I think that's right. And especially, when we hear Don Jr. close his remarks the way he did, because he kind of did this repetition of saying, you know, if you believe in God and country.

If you believe in God and family and country, you are one of us. You are one of us, of course, implying that if you don't believe in God and country, you're not one of us. If you reject the propaganda of the fake news media, welcome. So he establishes kind of the maga set of grievances or the, the, you know, maga set of virtues and then basically says use charlie kirk's death to come closer into our movement charlie loved this country it's people and the work of persuading others to believe in something greater than themselves at this point in the memorial it really sort of felt as though the messaging

that was coming through was charlie kirk was a prophet he died for you in the audience for this movement and therefore you should join us in our fight against the evil them, whatever that fight might look like. I think that's right, and I think that the next speaker, Vice President J.D. Vance, made that message even more explicit when he said to the audience, to use Vance's words, that Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking the truth. Because he was murdered for speaking the truth.

And that evil is among us. I think he would encourage me to be honest that evil still walks up. among us. Not to ignore it for the sake of a fake kumbaya moment, but to address it head on and honestly as the sickness that it is. This is not going to be a kumbaya moment, you know, one where we all just kind of come together. So the movement there is not just one of carrying on bigger and better than before, but to defeat the evil that indeed tried to defeat Charlie Kirk. Which if you just pause for a second, seems like a really stunning thing to hear from the vice president of the United States. I mean, one way to look at what he is saying here

from a more cynical viewpoint, if you're thinking that this is really being seized on as a political moment, is that by saying basically join us in our fight against them, in a way, it's like laying the groundwork for justification of whatever actions might be taken to strike back against this enemy on the left, right? Even if those actions aren't super clear in this moment? Sure. I think that's been a subtext of the MAGA movement, at least since 2020 when Trump ran for re-election for the first time,

that the left is incorrigible. The left cannot be persuaded. It's not anything new, but it has become much more intense and the language, I think, much more stark. And, of course, it's one thing to hear, you know, a broadcaster say. say it. Another thing entirely, to hear the vice president of the United States say it from his position of stature. As I was watching throughout the night, it really felt like there was a kind of wavering between these two messages that you have described to us.

This religious message and then a more political and pugilistic message. And at times, these really seem to be overlapping with some of these speakers. Yes. And as it turned out, and I think this was entirely unintentional. but completely remarkable to see, the final two speakers of the evening would represent, in diametric opposition to each other, those two very viewpoints. So, Robert, take us to the end of the memorial and the final two speakers. Tell us who they were and what they said. Please give a warm welcome to Mrs. Erica Kirk. The penultimate speaker was Erica Kirk, the wife of Charlie Kirk, and now the CEO and chair of Turning Port.

U.S.A. Hello. God bless all of you for coming here from all over the world to honor and celebrate my Charlie. It was in many ways the representation of the spiritual side, not only of Turning Point USA

and not only of Charlie Kirk, but of how those closest to Kirk wanted to view his death. Eleven days ago, God accepted that total surrender from my husband and then called him to his side. She spoke very declaratively about not only her husband and what their marriage was like.

Charlie perfectly understood God's role for a Christian husband. Love your wives and lead them. But also, it was an interesting evocation of what she believed a conservative Christian marriage should look like and what it should not look like. But please be a leader worth following. Your wife is not your servant. There was a point where she said, your wife is not your servant. Your wife is not your employee. Your wife is not your slave.

But your wife is your helper, I believe she said. She is your helper. Is your helper, exactly. You are one flesh working together. for the glory of God. And so what she was describing was, in a much, much softer way, what a conservative Christian union would look like. Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West.

The young men who feel like they have no direction. But I'd say that easily the most memorable thing that Erica Kirk said, He wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life, were three words. I forgive him. I forgive him, referring to the alleged murderer. And she got a standing ovation and wept as everyone clapped. I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do. She was speaking the language of nonviolent politics, where others were talking about how her husband had been silenced.

Her framing of that was, when you stop the dialogue, then violence comes into the scene. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the God. gospel is love and always love, love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us. Had the program concluded after Erica Kirk, it would have felt like an entirely different thing. That's not, of course, what took place. Well, I want to thank you very much, Lee. The other main event was the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and maybe 10 to 15 minutes into his speech, Donald Trump, as he is, want to do.

said the quiet part out loud. The left. The left. I call it the radical left. I call it sometimes the radical left lunatics. It gave a name to who the they was, who it was that was silencing Charlie Kirk, who was the enemy. He called them the radical left lunatics. And then Trump interrupted himself and said... But Charlie didn't say that. He called it the left. But Charlie didn't say that. He just called them the left. And then, as an aside, He was probably right, but I can't help it.

I can't help. The president went on and said, he was probably right, but I couldn't help myself. And so by Trump comparing himself to Charlie Kirk there, he was in this interesting way making Charlie kind of the diplomatic political type and making himself the outsider and truth teller. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.

That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. And I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erica. He was establishing permission for everyone in the audience to basically hate your enemy, to want the words for them, to really want to smite them. And then Trump took it a step further and basically said that he had warned Charlie Kirk

about going to these campus events. There were bomb threats, pulled fire alarms, and countless rage-filled radicals who tried to shout him down. It was nasty. I used to say, Charlie, this is nasty stuff you're doing. He thought it was great on the one hand, but he also said, Charlie, this is nasty stuff you're doing. And so he certainly wasn't blaming Kirk for his own assassination. But he was saying, I warned you this kind of thing would happen. These are the kind of people we're dealing with.

And the violence comes largely from the left. You don't hear that from too many people, do you? In the end, these people can't be reasoned with. You just have to kind of steamroller them. God bless the United States of America. And could I ask Erica, please come out. Erica, please come out. Thank you.

It felt like compared to Erica Kirk's speech, ultimately, these are two very different views of where this movement that Kirk started is supposed to go from here. And you're getting these two different views from arguably the two most important speakers at this event. That's right. And Erica has not spoken much at all

about her own political views beyond the fact that she supports Donald Trump. She's not as politically explicit as her husband is. But, you know, while I was listening to Trump, give his tribute to Charlie Kirk, I did find myself thinking from time to time, you know, this is not, it may be cognitively dissonant with Erica Kirk, who we just heard, but it's not necessarily cognitively dissonant with Charlie Kirk. And I began thinking about that, particularly when Trump talked about his beautiful victories,

and then he actually talked about 2020. And he said, we really did great that night, too. He said, but they cheated like dogs, but we got them back, didn't we? And the reason I was thinking of that was that Charlie Kirk was one of the most prominent voices in saying that the election was rigged, and he never took back those words. So it was interesting then to listen to this speech and hear how he framed Charlie Kirk as the kind of more diplomatic between himself and Kirk, that in fact, Kirk's belief system did not depart that greatly from Trump's. He also believed that the border should be sealed. In fact, Kirk in his final year or so was really talking about how even legal immigration must cease. He has talked about transgender individuals as being mentally ill, Kirk has, which is very much consonant with what Trump has said.

You're saying that there wasn't a lot of daylight between these two men. No, there was a great deal of daylight and how they couch things. But in terms of hardcore policy beliefs, these guys were pretty much in lockstep. But obviously now his wife has taken over the institution that he started, and her message was just so starkly different than some of the political rallying cries that we heard. And so I just wonder which one of these messages you think is going to win out at the end of the day, because in some ways they seem to be in tension or in conflict. I agree with you, because I think that Erica Kirk views herself, if she views herself in any kind of large capacity, as a spiritual leader. where Charlie Kirk was a spiritual person who was a political leader. Turning Point USA was a fusion of those two.

So will the new CEO, the new chair, Erica Kirk, become more politically overt? When she goes to visit campuses, as her husband did, and as she pledged to do in her speech, will she go just to meet and give speeches, or is she going to engage in the kind of rigorous give and take debate that Charlie Kirk did? Will she be giving campaign speeches? It's really hard to know, like, just how this changes. And what, if any, role, a person named Kirk will play in American politics now that Charlie Kirk has left the stage for good? Just to step back for a minute, because we just heard a lot of people today say on stage and even some attendees that Kirk's death is the turning point. And I wonder what you make of that.

I'm so glad you asked that because the phrase turning point now is so fraught with significance, but no one seems to be able to articulate just what that means. There are many people who feel like his assassination marks a kind of turning point that it has to have changed something. I mean, we heard over and over one thing that really won't change is Turning Point USA, except it'll be bigger and better than before. But basically, we'll continue Charlie's work. But then what does? We seem at least, you know, and this is not nothing in the 11 days since Kirk's assassination, there has not been this roiling violence from the right.

But is there going to be an agreement that that is not the way? Everyone seems to feel like this was a moment, but what the moment signifies in terms of how it turns our way. our nation, no one's been able to say. Robert, thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Here's what else you need to know today. Britain, Canada, and Australia confirmed on Sunday that they now formally recognize Palestinian statehood,

piling pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and putting three major allies at odds with the Trump administration. The news will almost certainly deepen the diplomatic isolation of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But so far, moves to recognize a Palestinian state, have not curbed Israel's military campaign against Tamas in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left much of the enclave in ruins. And President Trump said in an interview on Sunday that the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan,

the chief executive of Fox Corporation, could be among the investors involved in a deal to bring the popular video app TikTok under U.S. ownership. The interest comes as bite dance, TikTok's Chinese owner, races to line up investors for a deal that would separate the app's U.S. business from that of its Chinese parent. That move is required under a federal law passed last year amid national security concerns about TikTok's ties to China. Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Mary Wilson, Anna Foley, and Caitlin O'Keefe.

It was edited by Rachel Quester, Lexi Diao, and Ben Calhoun, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.