LOGAN – In a sad reminder of the times that we live in, security was tight as a drum at Turning Point USA event held Sept. 30 at Utah State University.
That was a stark contrast to the casual precautions taken on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University, where an open-air exchange of ideas gave alleged sniper Tyler Robinson an opportunity to kill conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Prior to the Turning Point event, university officials acknowledged that some more liberal USU faculty members questioned the wisdom of holding the Sept. 30 free speech event on the university campus in the wake of Kirk’s death.
But more than 5,000 students and northern Utah residents, attired in a sea of red (MAGA) and white (Turning Point) ball caps and Tee-shirts bearing Kirk’s slogan “Freedom,” greeted the event with repeated chants of “USA, USA” and “Charlie.”
Rather than merely replacing Kirk as the featured speaker at the USU event, conservative commentator and podcast host Alex Clark turned out to be a firebrand in her own right.
“If you were expecting a funeral,” she told the audience defiantly, “if you came to mourn the death of America, of masculinity, of femininity, of faith and the truth, you’ve come to the wrong event. It’s not over; it’s not even close.”
Instead, Clark called the USU gathering a passing of Kirk’s torch to every member of the audience.
“Tonight, each of us certainly feels the weight of Charlie’s loss, but what we don’t do, what we refuse to do is bow to despair,” she said, to wild cheers and sustained applause.
A member of Kirk’s organization and a friend for six years, she freely admitted that the slain Turning Point founder was mocked and ridiculed by leftists before finally being murdered.
“Now Charlie is a martyr,” Clark said. “But the left forgot one thing: martyrs don’t disappear, they multiply.”
Clark also took great pains to dispel myths about Kirk, particularly that he was a misogynist. Charlie Kirk loved women, she argued, so much that he wouldn’t lie to them about biology and woke issues.
Clark ended her remarks with a rousing call for all members of the audience to follow Kirk’s example of refusing to waste a moment of the rest of their lives.
Clark was followed by a panel discussion and a question and answer session with audience members.
Originally scheduled as one of the Turning Point panelists, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a video clip in lieu of his presence due to pressing business in Washington, where Senate Democrats rejected a stopgap funding measure that would have averted a government shutdown on Oct. 1.
In his taped remarks, Lee predicted that Kirk could have become president of the United States if his promising life had not been senselessly snuffed out.
When Gov. Spencer Cox stepped on stage, he was greeted with boos and catcalls from the highly partisan crowd, fueled by recent online rumors that Kirk once suggested that the Republican Party should expel Cox.
Those jeers turn to cheers, however, when the governor recalled that, when he was informed of Kirk’s death, his first thought was that at least Utahns would react by turning to prayer, rather than violence and rioting.
Cox went on to emphasize that Utahns have followed Kirk’s example in the face of tragedy, “choosing dialogue over division, prayer over violence.”
“That’s a legacy worth carrying forward.”
One facet of that legacy was the power to change minds, one student at a time, as Kirk traveled across the country visiting campuses to trade ideas. He is also credited with transforming the Turning Point organization from a pipe dream into the most powerful conservative youth movement in the history of America, according to Clark.
Most critical to Republicans, however, is that Kirk played a significant role in delivering a 14-point shift in support among voters aged 18 to 29 to President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
Former congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah also told the Cache Valley audience of Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s death.
“This is a painful one,” Chaffetz recalled Trump saying in a late night telephone conversation on Sept. 10. “Without Charlie, I wouldn’t be president.”
The previously scheduled engagement at USU was originally slated to be held in the Daines Concert Hall, but was moved after Kirk’s death to provide more security and accommodate the massive audience of students and Utah residents expected to turn out to honor the conservative activist’s memory.