Scenes From Charlie Kirk's Spontaneous Memorial in Utah

At around 8 pm on Wednesday, the motorcade with Charlie Kirk’s body left the Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, Utah. Along the road, the 100 or so people who showed up for an impromptu memorial for Kirk stopped what they were doing, lined the sidewalk, and stared as it sped away from the mountains and into the dark. One pack of young “Elders” from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints punctuated the air with a rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Kirk had been at nearby Utah Valley University for the kickoff stop of his planned “American Comeback Tour” when a sniper allegedly stood on the roof of a building 200 or so yards away, and took aim, killing him with one shot.

My presence at the makeshift gathering was as unplanned as the mourners: WIRED had sent me and photographer Sinna Nasseri to Utah to report on an unrelated story. We drove over to Orem to try and make sense of the moment.

Young people dominated the hospital crowd, which makes sense, since Kirk’s major accomplishment was to promote his brand of rightwing politics to a cohort that has historically been uninterested in it. Kirk was many things: charismatic, politically canny, polemical, ruthless. His organization, Turning Point USA—with its mission to “win America’s culture war”—was arguably the right's most successful new political group. A talented demagogue, he attacked trans people, LGBTQ people, Black people, Muslims, and women, and his arguments were often misleading, ahistorical, or rankly hypocritical. But because his public appearances so often took the shape of a seemingly fair debate—two citizens squaring off at microphones—they could feel honest and democratic to his fans.

“I really have to thank my Instagram algorithm for introducing me to him,” said Elder Joseph Trunnel, an 18-year-old donning the starched white-shirt and tie typical of the Latter-Day Saints. “Part of me wanted to be like him, because of how much of a genius he was.” Trunnel added that Kirk inspired him to go to trade school instead of college. “I got my barber license, and it’s been working out really good,” he told me. “It’s really made a difference in my life.” His friend and fellow LDS Elder Bryce Harding, 19, agreed: “He spoke the truth, he never tried to cause contention.”

That, of course, is untrue. Kirk’s career was built on contention. He went toe-to-toe with college students in public debates, and also against older opponents, like California Governor Gavin Newsom and the sharp liberal commentator Sam Seder. On his podcast, he called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor,” and endorsed the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. His social media clips helped Kirk dominate the political sphere, and positioned him as a crusader for far-right values—particularly among a rising conservative youth movement.

When I first arrived at the hospital, I bumped into a shell-shocked young boy in a green polo who couldn’t have been older than 12. His mother Whitney Williamson, 36, tightly held his hand as she told me that her son had liked watching Kirk’s videos on TikTok, and that he’d sheepishly asked her if they could visit the hospital and drop some flowers once he’d heard of his killing. “I can step back and say I don’t have the same political beliefs as him,” Williamson said. “But no one deserves to be shot no matter what your political beliefs are. And to be killed on so many livestreams like that? It's horrific. He was someone’s entire world. He’s someone’s baby.”

At the vigil, a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln called for peace and national healing, tearing up while giving a short speech that he simultaneously live-steamed on his iPhone. “When Abraham Lincoln was killed, they took his body for almost three weeks on a train ride throughout America to help people’s hearts to turn to god instead of to anger,” he said. In other corners of the hospital lawn, grief quickly veered into conspiratorial musings about the Deep State.

People stood huddled in groups, or alone, quietly crying. One of the speakers at the vigil captured the process of local grief metastasizing into internet anger. “This one shot,” he said, “will be heard across the world faster and farther than any one shot has ever been heard—I assure you.”

Utah is a state generally known for its politeness and decorum, led by Mormon political figures like former senator and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Yet even here, strains of political radicalism have been percolating. Shortly before a 2023 visit to the state from then-President Joe Biden, FBI agents killed Craig Deleeuw Robertson a few miles away from where Kirk was shot. He’d posted online that he’d heard of Biden’s travel plans, and was planning to dig out his ghillie suit and “clean the dust off the m24 sniper rifle.” He was armed when agents showed up to serve him a warrant. Then, at a June “No Kings Rally” in Salt Lake City, the fashion designer Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, an innocent bystander, died after being accidentally shot by a band of so-called “peacekeepers.”

As WIRED has reported, right-wing figures including President Donald Trump immediately seized on Kirk’s killing, in part by casting his death as irrefutable evidence that the left is intolerant of open debate. Perhaps the most worrying comments came from Stewart Rhodes, who pledged to reactivate his militia group, the Oath Keepers, and urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress the American left. At least two Proud Boys showed up to the hospital. One, a 35-year-old Proud Boy with a braided beard who goes by “Viking” even expressed shock at the unhinged state of political discourse, and violence, in America. “Charlie Kirk was the most middle-ground person out of all of them,” Viking reasoned. It didn’t square to him that Kirk would be the target of an assassination. In some confounding way, Viking had appreciated his patina of fair debate. “Charlie could take a heated debate,” he alleged, “and turn it into a civil discussion.”

Thirty-seven-year-old Adam Calhoun, who, alongside his wife, was 10 feet away from Kirk when he was shot, stood on the grass dazed, clutching a MAGA hat he’d recovered from the scene that had been stained with dirt. He’d been driving around the region all afternoon with his wife, the two of them trying to process the violence they’d just encountered.

As the couple listened to the radio, Calhoun became irate at what he deemed the “left’s intolerance,” specifically the irresponsible speculation from an MSNBC commentator that Kirk could have been killed by a supporter firing a gun “in celebration.” He told me that he’d never purchased a MAGA hat before, in part because he didn’t like all the acrimony it spawned, but pledged that he would keep this one forever. The killing, Calhoun concluded, “has emboldened me, for sure.” Another woman at the vigil echoed Calhoun’s sentiments to a local reporter: “When it’s your own home, it just kind of ignites something in you even more. It just makes me want to stand up even more and, I don’t know, be even more vocal.”

Ethan Mendenhall, 20, was holding the hands of Emma Hasson, 19, who described herself as politically “in the middle” and said she had come to the vigil to express her opposition to violence. “When things like this happen it kind of sets you back,” she told me. “Even just standing here when they were saying the prayer, I felt vulnerable with my back to the cars. It just makes you feel unsafe.” Kirk’s body made its final journey to his homestate of Arizona on the vice president’s plane this evening. As of this writing, the killer remains at large.

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