Vice President JD Vance will accompany the casket carrying Charlie Kirk’s body on Air Force Two from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the conservative icon’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday.
Vance and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, will travel to Salt Lake City to meet with Kirk’s family, including his wife, Erica, and their two young children, as well as some of Kirk’s close friends. They will then fly to Phoenix with the vice president, according to a report from the Washington Examiner.
The Vances had originally been scheduled to attend a ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City commemorating the 24th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Vice President Vance, who was a close friend of Kirk, delivered a heartfelt eulogy in the hours following the activist’s murder. Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, he recalled the first time he heard from Kirk after appearing as a contributor on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program.
It was “that moment of kindness” that “began a friendship that lasted until today,” Vance wrote.
“Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of steering American politics away from the globalism that had dominated our entire lives,” Vance continued.
“When others were right, he learned from them. When he was right—as he usually was—he was generous. With Charlie, the attitude was never, ‘I told you so.’ It was always: ‘welcome.’”
Vance revealed that when he first considered a run for the U.S. Senate, Charlie Kirk was among the first people he spoke with.
“I was interested but skeptical that a pathway existed. We talked through everything, from strategy to fundraising to the grassroots movement he knew so well,” Vance said, noting that Kirk was the one who first introduced him to members of the Trump family. “He connected me with some of the people who would later run my campaign, and also with Donald Trump Jr. ‘Like his dad, he’s misunderstood. He’s extremely smart, and very much on our wavelength.’ Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him to.”
“Long before I had even committed—mentally or otherwise—to running, Charlie had me speak to his donors at a TPUSA event. He guided me around the room, introduced me, and gave me honest feedback on my remarks. He had no reason to do this, no expectation that I’d go anywhere. I was polling below five percent at the time. He did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man.”
Kirk continued to support Vance even after he became a rising political figure. When Vance was selected as President Trump’s running mate, he shared that his young children struggled with the intense public scrutiny and constant presence of security detail. Charlie Kirk played a key role in advising him on how to help his children adapt, drawing on his own experience raising a young family in the public eye.
“Our kids, especially our oldest, struggled with the attention and the constant presence of the protective detail. I felt an acute sense of guilt, that I had conscripted my kids into this life without their permission. And Charlie was constantly calling and texting, checking on our family, offering guidance and prayers,” Vance said. “He wasn’t just a thinker, he was a doer, turning big ideas into massive events with thousands of activists. And after every event, he would give me a big hug, tell me he was praying for me, and ask what he could do.”
“Now that Charlie is in heaven, I’ll ask him to speak directly to the big man on behalf of his family, his friends, and the country he loved so dearly.”
“You ran a good race, my friend.”
“We’ve got it from here.”