By Nathan Layne, Nandita Bose and Joseph Ax
GLENDALE, Arizona (Reuters) -Thousands of mourners dressed in red, white and blue slowly made their way through security to attend a memorial service for Charlie Kirk at a football stadium in Arizona on Sunday, where President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other prominent Republicans will pay tribute to the assassinated right-wing activist.
Christian rock music blared through loudspeakers and pictures of Kirk were set on easels throughout the walkways of the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, which has a capacity of more than 63,000.
Crowds of people, many dressed in their Sunday best, had arrived before dawn to get inside to mourn Kirk, who was killed onstage in Utah on September 10 as he debated with college students. Traffic jammed the surrounding roads, and overflow space was set up at another arena nearby.
Trump, speaking to reporters before flying to Arizona, said he hoped the service would be “a time of healing” and spoke of his young political ally’s influence, crediting him for building support for Republicans through his conservative student activist group, Turning Point USA.
“He did a tremendous job, and he had a hold on youth because they loved him,” Trump said. “If you go back 10 years, those colleges were dangerous places for conservatives and now they’re hot. They’re very hot, just like this country is hot.”
Security was extremely tight, given attendance by Trump and several members of his cabinet, as well as the ongoing political turmoil in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said the service had been given the agency’s highest-level security rating, reserved for “events of the highest national significance” such as the Super Bowl.
Large American flags hung on both sides of the main stage, which was decorated in maroon and gold. Giant screens showed photographs of Kirk, including one in which he is leaning in to kiss his wife, Erika, who was elected as Turning Point’s chief executive last week.
Kirk, 31, was killed with a single bullet as he answered an audience member’s question at a campus event in Utah organized by Turning Point. A 22-year-old technical college student has been charged with Kirk’s murder, and investigators say he told his romantic partner in text messages that he had killed Kirk because he had “enough of his hate.”
The killing has raised fears about the growing frequency of U.S. political violence across the ideological spectrum, while also deepening partisan divides. Trump has cited the murder in escalating his calls for a crackdown on his political opponents, including left-wing organizations that he has blamed for the shooting even though authorities have said the gunman acted alone.
The firestorm over Kirk’s assassination only intensified last week, when Disney’s ABC network abruptly pulled late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after conservatives expressed outrage over remarks he made about the killing on Monday. Hours earlier, Trump’s head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, threatened to use his agency to punish the network over Kimmel’s comments.
Kimmel’s suspension has drawn objections from civil rights groups, Democrats and television and film writers, who say the Trump administration is using Kirk’s death as a pretext to stifle critical media in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech protections.
The roster of speakers at Sunday’s service, titled “Building a Legacy: Remembering Charlie Kirk,” demonstrates Kirk’s influence as the leader of the country’s biggest conservative youth organization.
In addition to Trump and Vance, who was friends with Kirk, senior administration officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will address the crowd.
In his remarks, Trump was expected to cast Kirk as a martyr for the conservative movement and highlight his legacy as a cultural and political force. He was also expected to use the moment to again draw a line between Kirk’s death and what he calls left-wing extremism.
Kirk built a massive following through his savvy use of social media, radio shows and campus tours, when he often invited skeptical students to debate him, and was credited with mobilizing young voters to Trump’s cause in 2024.
Braxton Mitchell, a 25-year-old Republican state legislator in Montana, jumped in his friend’s Ford F-150 pickup truck on Tuesday and began the 17-hour drive toward Phoenix to attend Sunday’s memorial.
Mitchell said it was Kirk who inspired him to speak out as a young conservative. He organized a pro-gun rights walkout at his high school in 2018 in response to other students protesting gun violence following the Parkland school shooting in Florida.
“He’s the guy that set the tone, set the stage for what I’ve done in my life in politics,” said Mitchell, who joined Turning Point’s ambassador program in 2019 and met Kirk in person several times.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Nandita Bose in Glendale, Arizona; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Writing by Joseph Ax and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Matthew Lewis)
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