President Donald Trump told rally attendees in Arizona on Wednesday to vote Republican in honor of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The president’s remarks came while stumping for Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and other downballot Republicans alongside the Arizona-Nevada border on Wednesday — the second stop of his three-legged 2026 campaign tour across western states.
Kirk, a close ally of Trump and Vice President JD Vance, was assassinated while speaking with college students in Utah during the president’s first year back in office. Turning Point USA, the grassroots organization Kirk founded in 2012, is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Wednesday would have been his 33rd birthday.
“I also want to say a happy birthday to a great, great person, a great man, and a great friend of mine — a friend that helped me with our elections all the time,” the president stated near the end of his speech. “Thirty-three years old, he would be today, Charlie Kirk, the great Charlie Kirk.”
Trump additionally told Kirk’s widow, Erika, that “We love you, Erika and the family.”
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“But in Charlie’s honor. We want you to go out and vote and have a big — let’s have a big victory,” the president said. “He’d be out there fighting like nobody else. So let’s have a big victory in honor of Charlie Kirk.”