RFK Jr. Calls Charlie Kirk His ‘Soulmate’ at Massive Kennedy Center Vigil

NEED TO KNOW

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. paid tribute to Charlie Kirk after the conservative media pundit was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while speaking at an engagement in Utah

• While at the Kennedy Center on Sept. 14, RFK Jr. described Kirk as his “spiritual brother” and “soulmate,” adding that he was central to his “unification” with President Donald Trump

• Kirk’s funeral will take place on Sept. 21, and Trump is expected to attend

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. felt a special bond with Charlie Kirk.

The 71-year-old health secretary commemorated the 31-year-old conservative media pundit — who was fatally shot on Wednesday, Sept. 10 — during a Sunday, Sept. 14, ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

RFK Jr. opened his speech with an anecdote about his 17-year-old niece getting ready to attend college in Europe. He said that she packed a Bible and told her mom that she wanted “to live like Charlie Kirk.”

“There are millions and millions of kids around the country who he inspired who now want to live with Charlie Kirk. And that’s a great thing for our country,” RFK Jr. told the cheering audience.

He continued, recalling meeting Kirk in 2001 and saying that they rapidly became “soulmates.”

“I think we approached each other with a lot of trepidation at that time,” he admitted, adding that it didn’t last long. “We were spiritual brothers, and we were friends.”

After crediting Kirk for being “the primary architect of my unification with President Trump,” the politician shared a serious conversation that they had about death and the risks of living in the public eye.

He said that they “were talking about the danger that we both faced from challenging entrenched interests.”

“And he asked me if I was scared to die. I said to him, ‘There’s a lot worse things than dying,’ ” adding that “chief among them is losing our constitutional rights and having our children raised in slavery. And I said to him at that time, I said, ‘Sometimes our only consolation is that we can die with our boots on. We can die fighting for these things.’ “

RFK Jr. highlighted Kirk’s dedication to “free speech,” saying that he viewed it as “intertwined” with his faith.

“He thought conversation was the only way we were going to heal our country, that we had to learn to talk to each other without vitriol, without poison, without anger. We had to be able to listen to ideas. We had to be able to say what we mean without being mean and to talk to each other across this divide. It’s the only way to end the polarization that’s driven now by these algorithms and by all these other forces in our society,” he said.

On the topic of loss, he said that he spoke to his mom, Ethel Kennedy, about the 1984 death of his brother David, sharing wisdom that he learned from her.

“I asked her, I said, ‘Does the hole that they leave in you when they die, does it ever get any smaller?’ And she said, ‘No. It never gets any smaller, but our job is to build ourselves bigger around the hole.’ We do that by taking the best virtues and character traits of the person that we lost and using discipline and restraint and practice integrating those character traits into our own character. And in doing that, we make ourselves larger, and the hole gets proportionally smaller. And we also give the person a kind of immortality because the best parts of them are now living on us.”

Concluding, RFK Jr. said, “Charlie gave his life so that the rest of us would not have to suffer those fates worse than death. Now it’s our job. He’s no longer [here] to lead us, to rush in and fill the breach and win this battle for our country, for God and for our families.”

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Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, when he was shot in the neck.

After an extended manhunt, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was arrested as a suspect in the case on Friday, Sept. 12.

According to reporting by celebrity.land, Kirk’s funeral will take place on Sunday, Sept. 21 at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. President Donald Trump is expected to attend.

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