(RNS) — Charlie Kirk, an evangelical Christian activist and social media personality who rallied young Americans to Donald Trump’s MAGA cause, died Wednesday (Sept. 10) after being shot while addressing a crowd at a Utah university.
The founder of Turning Point USA and Turning Point Faith and host of the streaming “Charlie Kirk Show,” Kirk was shot while speaking in a courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem, a city of 96,000 adjacent to Provo. He was 31.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” President Trump announced on Truth Social, his social media platform. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”
The White House later said Trump had ordered that the U.S. flag fly at half-staff through Sunday in Kirk’s honor.
A native of Arlington Heights, Illinois, near Chicago, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA as an 18-year-old in 2012 with a tea party conservative, William Montgomery, who died in 2020. The nonprofit sought to educate students about “the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets and capitalism.”
With the help of Montgomery, a retired businessman who encouraged Kirk to get involved in politics after hearing him speak at a high school event, the organization grew into a conservative powerhouse. Within three years it had 800 chapters on college and high school campuses around the country.
“There are young conservatives out there, and there have been for decad …