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Vice President JD Vance on Thursday will travel to Salt Lake City to pay his respects to the family of Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed a day earlier, a source familiar told The Hill.
Second lady Usha Vance will join him.
Kirk, a conservative activist and leading voice in the MAGA movement, was shot in the neck Wednesday at Utah Valley University while speaking to a large crowd during an event billed as “The American Comeback Tour.”
The Vances were originally slated to visit New York City to attend the 24th anniversary commemoration ceremony of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He joined President Trump last year at Ground Zero, standing close to former President Biden and then-Vice President Harris, who was at the time the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump will observe Sept. 11 at the Pentagon on Thursday morning and attend the Yankees game in New York in the evening.
Vance on Wednesday night wrote a candid and emotional post on social platform X about his relationship with Kirk, starting when the Turning Point USA co-founder reached out to him in 2017 after an appearance on Fox News. The vice president said he was one of the first people he called about running for his Ohio Senate seat in 2021 and said Kirk advocated for him to be Trump’s running mate.
“He wasn’t just a thinker, he was a doer, turning big ideas into bigger events with thousands of activists,” Vance wrote. “And after every event, he would give me a big hug, tell me he was praying for me, and ask me what he could do. ‘You focus on Wisconsin,’ he’d tell me. ‘Arizona is in the bag.’ And it was.”
The vice president noted that he spoke with Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday and the president acknowledged that the two were “very good friends.”
“Charlie Kirk was a true friend. The kind of guy you could say something to and know it would always stay with him,” Vance said. “I am on more than a few group chats with Charlie and people he introduced me to over the years.”
“We celebrate weddings and babies, bust each other’s chops, and mourn the loss of loved ones. We talk about politics and policy and sports and life,” he added.
Trump late Wednesday called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom” after the public assassination.
As of Thursday morning, a manhunt was still underway for the shooter.
