President Donald Trump posthumously awarded Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday — and vowed to eviscerate left-wing ”radical” groups and expose those that back them financially.
“He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith and relentlessly fighting for a better and stronger America,” Trump said.
Kirk was killed in September by a gunman while speaking to a crowd in Utah. Prosecutors signaled their intent to seek the death penalty against his killer, who is believed to have acted alone.
“We’ve watched legions of far left radicals resort to desperate acts of violence and terror because they know that their ideas and arguments are persuading no one,” Trump said. “They have the devil’s ideology and they’re failing. And they know it, they feel it, and they become violent.”
Republicans quickly vowed to crack down on liberal and left-wing groups in the wake of Kirk’s killing. Trump similarly vowed to root out those on the “far left” who engaged in “terror” but declined to name specific groups.
“Especially in the wake of Charlie’s assassination, our country must have absolutely no tolerance for this radical left violence, extremism and terror,” Trump said. “We’re done with the angry mobs.”
Trump suggested his administration had already made some progress toward identifying donors backing some of the groups that had drawn his ire.
“You have to see them fold,” Trump said. “You have to see them crying. They fold. But it includes dismantling the networks that fund them and finance them, and we’re finding out who those networks are, we already know quite a few of them.”
Trump has named a handful of prominent Democratic donors, including Reid Hoffman and George Soros — as well as his Open Society Foundations — as potential targets. In the weeks after Kirk’s murder, Trump designated antifa a terrorist organization, and some GOP lawmakers pointed broadly towards universities and other institutions in their fight against left-wing values.
The White House event on Tuesday, in which Trump bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honor on Kirk, coincided with what would have been the late conservative activist’s 32nd birthday.
“It’s become bigger in the last few weeks than Charlie ever thought,” Trump said of the Turning Point USA movement. “I think his end vision in many years from now would have been just a fraction of what it turned out to be in a couple of weeks.”
TPUSA membership across high schools and college campuses had grown by over 113,000 since Kirk’s death, a TPUSA representative told NOTUS.
“He is going to make heaven,” Trump said of Kirk. “I said, ‘I’m not sure I can make it, but he’s going to make it.’ He’s there. He’s looking down on us right now, so incredible.”