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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
How Charlie Kirk came to earn Trump’s admiration
By Jeff Zeleny, Kristen Holmes, Fredreka Schouten, Betsy Klein, CNN
Updated:
7:32 PM EDT, Wed September 10, 2025
Source: CNN
was a proud college dropout with a direct line to like few others.
A frequent visitor to the White House, Kirk was far more than of the
president; he had a finger on the pulse of the MAGA base and made
certain his views were known – even on rare instances when he
disagreed, like with Trump’s June decision to strike nuclear sites in
Iran.
At the time, Kirk said he warned of potential fallout with younger
supporters, many of whom were drawn to Trump because of his campaign
pledge to end foreign wars.
The mere notion that Kirk delivered criticism – and Trump accepted it
without attacking back – underscores how much the president admired
the conservative activist and respected the strength of his Turning
Point USA organization. Kirk saw himself as a true believer in
conservative values and in Trump, people close to him said, who was
intent on strengthening his movement in the president’s second term.
“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States
of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote on social media
Wednesday in a post announcing Kirk’s death, underscoring their close
ties. “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me.”
Kirk’s killing stunned the White House and sent ripples across the
Republican Party – and it marks a personal loss for America’s first
family.
Trump had credited Kirk, 31, with galvanizing and mobilizing the youth
vote that propelled him to victory in 2024. But before that, he had
become a valued and trusted friend and adviser to the president and his
family.
Trump considered Kirk to be a part of his extended family, a source
familiar with the relationship told CNN, and his death has been met
with horror, shock and grief in Trump’s inner circle. The
president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was particularly close with
Kirk, with whom he had traveled and appeared publicly alongside many
times as the MAGA movement spread, most recently at the Turning Point
USA summit in Florida in July.
“I love you brother. You gave so many people the courage to speak up
and we will not ever be silenced,” Trump Jr., on X.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior adviser during
his first term, highlighted Kirk’s role in the 2016 campaign and the
development of the MAGA movement.
“When I was in the White House, established organizations often
complained that we kept doing events with Charlie, to which I would
reply ‘he comes with big ideas, is easy to work with and always
overdelivers,’” Kushner posted on X, calling Kirk “the best of
MAGA.”
Donald Trump was only the fourth president of Kirk’s life. Born in
1993, he grew up in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago. He often
talked about his first signs of political awareness and activism at the
age of 15, when his home state senator, Barack Obama, won the
presidency.
Kirk did not celebrate Obama’s historic victory in 2008. His own
political rise followed the growth of the Tea Party movement. He
briefly attended Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, but dropped out
to follow his conservative activism — a decision that later became a
point of pride.
“If you want to stand out, don’t go to college,” Kirk said at
rallies. “It worked for me.”
A little more than a decade later, Kirk was already a conservative star
— first a close confidant of Trump Jr. who ultimately gained trust of
his father. Kirk was exceptionally close to JD Vance, playing a key
role in his Ohio Senate race in 2022 and pushing Trump to select him as
vice president in 2024.
“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk,” Vance wrote Wednesday, “a
genuinely good guy and a young father.”
Kirk and his affiliated political organization, Turning Point Action,
were instrumental in securing Trump’s return to the White House.
For instance, the group plowed millions of dollars into a
get-out-the-vote program in Arizona, a key battleground state that
Trump flipped back from President Joe Biden.
As part of its “Chase the Vote” initiative, the group’s staffers
cultivated relationships with specific voters over the course of the
campaign to help ensure they would vote in the election. Those efforts
included encouraging early voting, driving voters to the polls and
assisting them with mailing in ballots – all with the goal of
ensuring that infrequent voters who were inclined to support Trump
actually followed through with casting a ballot.
CNN reported last year that Turning Point’s effort helped it bank
votes from more than 125,000 irregular voters it had targeted in
Arizona, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s
operation. Trump won the state by roughly 187,000 votes.
Trump has boasted about his showing with young voters in 2024 — he
narrowed his loss among 18-29-year-olds to from in 2020 — and
credited Kirk, in part, with his appeal to those voters.
“And Charlie Kirk will tell you, TikTok helped, but Charlie Kirk
helped also,” Trump said during an Oval Office swearing-in ceremony
for Judge Jeanine Pirro that Kirk attended in May.
After the election, there was discussion about a role for Kirk inside
the administration, multiple sources told CNN at the time. The decision
was ultimately made that he could be more influential and have more
power outside of the federal government. However, he was enormously
influential with those who did end up in Trump’s Cabinet, helping vet
and interview the candidates.
Kirk temporarily relocated to Palm Beach during the presidential
transition and later spent significant time in Washington after the
president returned to office, attending swearings-in of numerous
officials with whom he was close. Sources described Kirk as having a
unique ability to build and maintain friendships, including with
officials that were at odds with one another.
Kirk’s relationship with Trump had grown throughout the second term,
but the president’s gratitude had long been clear.
“Charlie is fantastic. I mean, this guy, don’t believe the stuff
when you hear the kids are liberal,” Trump said on the eve of his
inauguration. “They’re not. Maybe they used to be, but they’re
not anymore.”
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
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