“I forgive him.” They had been three little phrases, and but, they had been big.
In a stadium packed to capability, Erika Kirk’s deal with to an murderer was delivered in tears and obtained with silence till the group grew into applause.
“The answer to hate is not hate,” she added. It’s, maybe, the message America wants to listen to most and the one it has heard least.
Because it occurred: Trump delivers speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial
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President Donald Trump embraces Erika Kirk. Pic: AP
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Erika Kirk wipes tears from her eyes throughout her speech. Pic: AP
The memorial to Charlie Kirk felt like a Republican state funeral in all however title.
This was MAGA in mourning, an event that laid naked the affect of Charlie Kirk and his politics.
That they had travelled of their tens of hundreds to the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
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Charlie Kirk’s supporters pay tribute at memorial
They saluted a conservative icon and the gown code crafted a patriotic spectacle in pink, white and blue.
It was an act of remembrance on a stadium scale, big in measurement and sentiment. It was additionally large on politics.
From the president down, the Trump administration’s high tier spoke of politics after 10 September, the day Charlie Kirk was killed.
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Attendees pay attention as President Donald Trump speaks. Pic: AP
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A girl is overcome with emotion whereas watching a Charlie Kirk tribute video. Pic: AP
This was a Republican motion in a single place, with one microphone, after an assassination that accelerated the tectonic shift in US politics.
Per week and a half because the assassination, political response has distilled right into a conflict over freedom of speech and that was revisited by the president, even when he reserved most of his speech to pay homage to Charlie Kirk.
The White Home decanted a full workforce from Washington DC to Arizona.
They got here for causes of sympathy and bereavement, after all. It was additionally an event laced with politics.
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‘We converse for Charlie louder than ever’ – Vance
This was Washington’s travelling roadshow swinging by the help that Charlie constructed.
The identical help was vital in serving to Donald Trump again into energy on the final election, and the problem confronting the White Home is in harnessing that vote in his absence and carrying it ahead.
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Musk and Trump greet one another at Kirk memorial
Politically, it was a full-court press to fashion the horses amongst the youth vote and Christian nationalists.
Charlie Kirk introduced them onside, and Workforce Trump needs to maintain them there.