(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday is expected to posthumously award conservative activist Charlie Kirk the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Kirk was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University on the first stop of his The American Comeback Tour, which invited college students to debate hot-button issues.
Trump was the first to announce later that day that Kirk had died, and the next day said he would be be awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom as he hailed the Turning Point USA founder “a giant of his generation.”
The ceremony comes after Trump returned back to Washington in the early hours of Tuesday morning from a trip to the Middle East to celebrate a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that he helped broker.
Oct. 14 is Kirk’s birthday. He would have turned 32. The House and Senate previously approved a resolution to mark the date as a “National Day of Remembrance.”
Trump said last Friday that he was coming back from overseas for Kirk, who called “a friend of mine, a friend of all of us.”
“It’s the greatest honor,” Trump said of the award. “And Erika, his beautiful wife, is going to be here, and a lot of people are gonna be here.”
The president and Erika Kirk shared a heartfelt moment on stage at Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, where tens of thousands of people gathered to pay tribute to Kirk, a key ally to Trump and a friend to many inside his administration.
The two hugged after Trump’s closing remarks and after Erika Kirk said she’d forgiven her husband’s killer.
Kirk was influential in building Trump’s movement and was particularly influential among young conservatives. But some of his comments on gun violence, LGBTQ issues, race and more drew criticism from liberals and others.
At his memorial service, Trump and other leading conservative figures embraced Kirk as a “martyr.”
“I know I speak for everyone here today when I say that none of us will ever forget Charlie Kirk, and neither now will history,” Trump said at the time. “Because while Charlie has been reunited with his creator in heaven, his voice on earth will let go through the generations, and his name will live forever in the eternal chronicle of America’s greatest patriots.”
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