For Trump, Charlie Kirk Is a Deeply Personal Loss

 

For Trump, Charlie Kirk Is a Deeply Personal Loss

 

The president’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination shows how much the 31-year-old conservative activist had become a part of the Trump family.

 

Robert Draper

By Robert Draper

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/politics/trump-kirk.html

Sept. 11, 2025

 

When President Trump spoke of his “grief and anger” from the Oval Office only hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it was a striking moment that showed how important the 31-year-old conservative activist had been to the president personally, and how seamlessly he had woven himself into the Trump family fabric.

 

“I love you brother,” the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote on Wednesday on X.

 

It was the president himself — not local law enforcement, Mr. Kirk’s spokesman or his family — who announced Mr. Kirk’s death on Wednesday in what was, for him, a rare show of lament. “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

 

Mr. Kirk was particularly tight with Donald Trump Jr., a close friend drawn in by Mr. Kirk’s charisma but also his business and fund-raising skills.

 

“I couldn’t have thought more highly of him,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview earlier this year. “He wasn’t just some young guy who knew how to be brash online. Charlie got things done, from organizing on campuses to building relationships with donors.”

 

It was the eldest Trump son who ushered the Turning Point USA founder into the family orbit in the summer of 2016. After Mr. Kirk, then 22, managed to score a meeting with the son at Trump Tower and offer advice about how his father the candidate could attract young voters, Donald Trump Jr. hired Mr. Kirk on the spot as his personal campaign assistant.

 

A year later, Mr. Kirk was attending Donald Trump Jr.’s birthday party at Mar-a-Lago when the president motioned for him to have a seat nearby. The two spoke privately for 40 minutes.

 

After that conversation, Mr. Kirk became a frequent presence in the White House, but was always careful not to abuse his privileges. “He was a professional, easy to deal with,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and former senior adviser, said in an interview earlier this year. “Nothing ever leaked to the press. He just got stuff done.”

 

Mr. Kirk’s closeness to Mr. Trump grew after the president was defeated in 2020. Mr. Kirk became a prominent voice spreading baseless claims that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, an assertion he never disavowed.

 

In February 2021, just weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, Mr. Kirk visited the former president in exile at Mar-a-Lago. Afterward, Mr. Kirk showed a photo of them together at a donor presentation, saying, “That was the easiest meeting I ever scheduled with President Trump. Because, you know, all these wiseguys who now act like they’re his best friend didn’t want to be anywhere near him in early 2021.”

 

As one measure of Mr. Trump’s affection for his young outside adviser, Mr. Kirk became the rare associate not to incur the president’s ire while profiting off their relationship. If anything, it was a point of pride to Mr. Trump that as the top draw at Turning Point USA events, he was helping to enrich Mr. Kirk, several people familiar with the dynamics said.

 

When it came to advising the president, Mr. Kirk was careful to pick his spots. As an early supporter of JD Vance’s Senate candidacy, he encouraged Mr. Trump to endorse Mr. Vance in 2022 — and then, two years later, to select the Ohio senator as his running mate. During the 2024 transition, Mr. Kirk also sat in on high-level personnel discussions, including for secretary of state, but did not push strenuously for any personal favorites.

 

He did, however, help ensure that one of his organization’s top donors, Stacey Feinberg, became Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg.

 

Occasionally, Mr. Kirk disagreed with Mr. Trump. When he did, Mr. Kirk’s posture was that of a faithful custodian of the MAGA base who feared that its leader was inadvertently straying from his own principles. Though he publicly supported the president’s decision in June to bomb nuclear sites in Iran, he spoke fretfully to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office that same month about the prospect of igniting another intractable war in the Middle East.

 

A month later on his podcast, Mr. Kirk pushed for the Trump administration to release its files on the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had once been a friend of Mr. Trump’s. But then, after receiving a call from a plainly irritated president, he reversed himself, saying, “I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being.”

 

The flip-flop created a stir among Mr. Kirk’s followers, compelling his communications director, Andrew Kolvet, to issue a clarification: “Charlie is not done talking about it. The ball is in the administration’s court to find a solution.”

 

As a close ally of the vice president who spoke with relish to friends of an eventual Vance presidency, Mr. Kirk remained mindful of who the boss was. In one of his last posts on X, the day before he was killed at a university outside Salt Lake City, he applauded Mr. Trump’s decision to assume control over law enforcement in Washington.

 

“We’re taking our country back,” Mr. Kirk wrote, adding two fire emojis.

 

Less than 24 hours later, he was dead. On Thursday, Mr. Vance arrived in Salt Lake City to take his body home to Phoenix on Air Force Two.

 

Robert Draper is based in Washington and writes about domestic politics. He is the author of several books and has been a journalist for three decades.