Trump Compares Charlie Kirk to Socrates

President Donald Trump posthumously awards the Medal of Freedom for Charlie Kirk to his widow Erika Kirk, Tuesday, October 14, 2025, during a ceremonial successful the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

Donald Trump connected Tuesday compared blimpish commentator and Turning Point USA laminitis Charlie Kirk to Socrates arsenic helium posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The grant was announced connected what would person been Kirk’s 32nd birthday, if not for his assassination successful Utah astatine the hands of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.

“Charlie ne'er missed an accidental to punctual america of the Judeo-Christian principles of our nation’s founding, oregon to stock his heavy Christian faith. In his last moments Charlie testified to the greatness of America, and to the glory of our savior with whom helium present rests successful Heaven,” Trump remarked astatine the ceremony.

Trump: Kirk was a martyr for information and for freedom

“Charlie Kirk was a martyr for information and for freedom. And from Socrates … and to Saint Peter, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, those who alteration past the most—and helium truly did—have ever risked their lives for causes they were enactment connected world to defend.”

Socrates, a foundational fig successful Western philosophy, was famously condemned to decease for “corrupting the youth” and impiety successful Athens and accepted his fate, becoming a legendary illustration of a martyr for his philosophical principles and the pursuit of truth. Trump explicitly places Kirk’s “martyr[dom] for information and for freedom” successful the aforesaid humanities lineage that begins with Socrates.

Trump walked Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, retired to the Rose Garden to contiguous the award, arsenic a assemblage afloat of the president’s Cabinet, members of Congress and friends of Kirk looked on.