Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.
Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.
Erika Kirk delivered an emotional speech, at times dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, as Trump stood to her right.
She said: “I have spent seven and a half years trying to find the perfect birthday gift for Charlie… But now I can say with confidence, Mr President, that you have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have.”
The pair then spoke quietly for some moments as a band began to play Amazing Grace.
The White House ceremony in honor of Charlie Kirk has now concluded.
At a campaign event last year, Donald Trump said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom for civilians, which he bestowed on Kirk on Tuesday, was “much better” than the top military award for those killed or wounded in action: the Medal of Honor.
Trump was widely criticized for that comment, made as he addressed Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Trump had awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom in 2018.
The civilian medal, Trump told supporters then, is “actually much better because everyone [who] gets the congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers.”
“They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”
Charlie Kirk is not the first to receive the medal from Trump posthumously. During his first term, he gave it to Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley and Antonin Scalia.
In 2020, Trump also presented the medal to the rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh during a State of the Union address.
In his speech at the memorial for Kirk in Arizona last month, Trump revealed that Limbaugh was one of Kirk’s role models. “He was an Eagle scout who spent his school lunch breaks listening to another champion for liberty, somebody that he greatly admired, Rush Limbaugh,” Trump said.
“Charlie Kirk was one of a kind. He was unstoppable… He’s irreplaceable. Nobody can replace him,” Donald Trump said in his remarks.
“In Charlie’s honour we will continue to fight, fight, fight and win, win, win.”
A military officer then read Kirk’s citation for the presidential medal of freedom.
Kirk’s widow Erika thanked Trump and said: “Charlie always admired your commitment to freedom.”
In remarks at the White House, Charlie Kirk’s widow praised her late husband in explicitly Christian terms and said that he would likely have run for president one day had he not been killed before his 32nd birthday.
“If the moment had come, he probably would’ve run for president, but not out of ambition,” Erika Kirk said.
In paying tribute to Kirk, Trump railed against “radical left extremism, violence and terror.”
He asserted: “They have the devil’s ideology… They seem to become very violent on the left.”
Trump claimed these attacks included the attempt on his own life at a campaign rally last year, even though the would-be assassin had no apparent political motive.
The president went on tout his law and order crackdown on US cities. “We’ve done a great job.”
He said of Washington: “We’re done with the angry mobs.” He claimed the city is now safe.
But then police car sirens wailed near the White House. Trump, however, insisted: “That’s a beautiful sound. They’re stopping crime. That’s what they’re doing.”
Donald Trump just presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.
Erika Kirk then made remarks from the podium, telling Turning Point USA members that her husband’s mission lives on through them.
As Donald Trump boasted about the impact of his federal takeover of policing in the District of Columbia, blaring sirens could be heard in the distance, undermining his claim that there is no longer any crime in the capital city.
Trump then claimed, falsely, that sirens were previously not heard in Washington DC because the city’s police force did not respond to crime.
“You hear those sirens going off? That’s good, that’s a good sound,” the president said. “That means they either got the bad guy, or are gonna stop the bad guy. You didn’t hear that sound, because nobody wanted to do anything.”
“Charlie Kirk was a martyr for truth and freedom,” Donald Trump just said in the Rose Garden. “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.”
In the course of praising Charlie Kirk for his efforts to turn out conservative voters, Donald Trump boasted at length about his victory in the 2024 presidential election, repeating his familiar exaggerated claims that his popular vote victory “was massive”.
Trump in fact got about 77.3 million votes, or 49.81%, to Kamala Harris’ 75 million votes, or 48.33% — a 1.48-point margin.
From my vantage point at the back, I saw Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity greet each other warmly. Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Spicer and Jesse Watters are also present.
Reflecting on Kirk’s death, Trump said: “It’s a horrible, heinous, demonic act of murder.”
The president, who just returned from the Middle East, noted the inconvenient timing of today’s event but insisted: “I would not have missed this moment for anything in the world.”
Guests are sitting or standing in warm sunshine and a gentle breeze as Trump speaks from a lectern with four US flags behind him.
Recent additions to the rose garden and surrounding area include a statue of George Washington, bust of Abraham Lincoln and gold framed portraits of every president except Joe Biden, replaced by an auto pen.
Trump referred to the government shutdown and commented: “We’re dealing with some radical left lunatics.”
He suggested that Kirk would have responded by organising a young people’s march on the US Capitol.
Trump said: “Charles James Kirk was a visionary and one of the greatest leaders of his generation.”
The president seemed to be telling Kirk’s life story but veered off into talking about his past election campaigns. “Too big to rig.”
Donald Trump has arrived for Charlie Kirk’s posthumous presidential medal of freedom ceremony, which is taking place in the Rose Garden at the White House.
Trump walked out of the Oval Office with Charlie Kirk’s widow Erica.
The guests here include JD Vance, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, attorney general Pam Bondi and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
Also here are top Trumpworld operatives who were close to Kirk, including lobbyist Arthur Schwartz, former Trump deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and Alex Bruesewitz.
Donald Trump just began his remarks by praising his own renovation of what he called “the new and improved Rose Garden, and people are loving it”. He also drew attention to the new “presidential walk of fame”, which is a gallery of portraits of 44 of the 45 men to have served as president, with an image of an automatic pen in place of Joe Biden.
Trump said that they were gathered to honor “the late, great Charlie Kirk”, the founder of the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.
The president took issue with the characterization of Kirk at his memorial in Arizona as someone who loved his enemies. “He didn’t necessarily love those enemies”, Trump said.
Trump also suggested that he would have asked to push back the ceremony so that he could stay longer in the Middle East with the wealthy leaders of Gulf nations, but “October 14 is Charlie’s birthday, and he should have been turning 32 years old”.
The president went on to give a largely familiar political speech, attacking Democrats as “radical left lunatics” and making jokes about the ABC host George Stephanopoulos, whose name he intentionally mispronounced.
Trump also suggested that the current government shutdown would have been ended by Kirk, had he not been killed last month in Utah, who would have led “a march on the Capitol.”
Guests have assembled in the new Mar-a-Lago style patio in the White House Rose Garden for the Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor Charlie Kirk, the murdered conservative activist and podcaster.
The guests include Kirk’s widow, Erika, and current or former Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and Jesse Watters.
Also there is Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist who hosts a show on the far-right Real America’s Voice network sponsored by Turning Point USA, the advocacy group founded by Kirk.
The are currently listening to a rendition of Ave Maria as they await the president, Donald Trump.
Donald Trump said that a list of ‘Democrat programs’ that White House plans to cut will be released on Friday. He noted that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear, but doesn’t plan to touch Republican programs, “because we think they work”. While hosting Javier Milei, president of Argentina, Trump took questions from reporters, in what became a far-ranging, impromptu press conference.
Trump warned that Hamas must disarm ‘or we will disarm them’. Trump added that could happen “quickly and perhaps violently”. When he was asked about a timeline for disarmament, the president said that it would be “a reasonable period of time … pretty quickly”. So far, Trump has been taking a victory lap, complete with bipartisan praise, for brokering the hostage-prisoner exchange on Monday, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza.
Earlier, Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuala, killing six people aboard. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”
Back in Washington, the government shutdown enters its 14th day, with no end in sight. House Republicans continued to criticize the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, who they accuse of holding out on the House-passed funding bill to appease the left-wing base of his party. “We’re certainly not going to allow the American people to be taken hostage for his political gain,” House speaker Mike Johnson said today. Meanwhile Democrats, claim their colleagues across the aisle have abandoned good faith negotiations. House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries said that Republicans have gone “radio silent” since congressional leadership met with Trump at the White House days before the shutdown began. The Senate will hold its eighth vote, in the hopes of passing a funding bill to reopen the government. Spoiler alert: it’s unlikely to happen.
The supreme court declined to hear Alex Jones’s challenge to a $1.4bn judgment awarded to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012. Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, made several false statements that the shooting – which killed 20 children – was a hoax.
On the campaign trail, Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has officially announced that she’s running for US Senate, challenging the incumbent, Republican Susan Collins. Mills, 77, will face a primary challenge from Graham Platner, the progressive oyster farmer entering politics for the first time and backed by Independent senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont.
Speaking to reporters while hosting Argentina’s president, Donald Trump said that he plans to cut “egregious, semi-communist” programs that, he claims, Democrats hold dear.
“They’re never going to come back,” Trump said. “The Democrats are getting killed, and we’re going to have a list of them on Friday.”
“We’re not closing up Republican programs because we think they work. So the Democrats are getting killed, but they’re not telling the people about that,” he added.
Donald Trump floated taking away Boston’s ability to host several 2026 World Cup matches, calling out mayor Michelle Wu. “She’s intelligent, but she’s radical left,” Trump said, while offering to send federal law enforcement to the city. “All she has to do is call us. We’ll go in and take them back. But she’s afraid to, because she thinks it’s bad politically.”
Trump added that if he feels that the city is “unsafe” he will “call up Gianni” and tell him to move the games to another location. Gianni Infantino, the head of Fifa, has emerged as an ally of the president as the games inch closer.
“Boston better clean up their act, that’s all I can say,” Trump said.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
