On Tuesday, Turning Point USA returned to Utah for the first time since Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10. According to the organization, over 5,000 people gathered at Utah State University’s 10,000-plus-seat Dee Glen Smith Spectrum arena in Logan to listen to a panel featuring some of the biggest names in state and regional politics.
Among the notable names from the GOP attending were Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who headlined the event, alongside former Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz and Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, with Turning Point-associated podcast host Alex Clark opening the show. Utah Senator Mike Lee was scheduled to attend, but pulled out due to the government shutdown.
The atmosphere was largely upbeat from the outset, with MAGA hat-adorned visitors doing the wave to contemporary pop and rap music and clapping along to ACDC’s “Thunderstruck” in the 15 minutes preceding the event.
However, a different vibe soon filled the arena once the countdown clock reached zero and a video charting Kirk’s career from 18-year-old organizer to one of the GOP’s most prominent activists came on-screen. Chants of “Charlie” followed, ahead of Yrefy CEO Don Fenstermaker discussing his debt finance company’s student loan refinancing services, which was followed by renditions of the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Proud To Be an American.”
“I’m not here to eulogize Charlie Kirk—I’m here to pass the torch to every one of you,” Clark said after taking the stage. “We are about to raise the most conservative, Christian generation America has ever seen.”
Promoting childbearing, healthy eating, homeschooling, and church attendance, Clark rallied the crowd behind her traditionally conservative message adapted to the predominantly-Gen Z audience, with references to dead-end, Snapchat-based romantic relationships and dating app frustrations. She stressed it was Kirk who pioneered adapting traditional values for the next generation and saved conservatives from losing the youth vote.
The attack on Kirk was generally framed as being part of a broader assault on free speech and open debate. In a prerecorded message, Lee said silencing a voice cannot silence an idea and urged attendees to carry on Kirk’s mission. The governor echoed these remarks.
“This was more than just an attack on Charlie Kirk, this was an attack on free speech, on America, on American ideals,” Cox said. “This idea that speech is violence is so wrong, and it goes a step worse than that because then they think violence is speech.”
At the onset of Cox remarks, a minority of attendees loudly booed his presence, but the governor was able to rally applause by invoking his pleasure to be back at his alma mater. The Republican governor—who has been a fixture with Disagree Better, a campaign in favor of civil dialogue by the bipartisan National Governors Association—has previously faced heat from the hard right.
Nonetheless, Biggs, former chair of the House Freedom Caucus—a group whose brand of conservative politics is to the right of Cox’s—cooled the crowd. “If you use the worst possible rhetoric, you’re going to trigger some people to engage with violence,” Biggs said. “This kind of demonization kills trust in your government, and trust in your fellow man gets weaker.”
Biggs pinned that behavior largely on the left, as did Chaffetz, who was there the day Kirk was assassinated. He said the tragedy was “still raw” and discussed the fear attendees at the Utah Valley University event felt during the day’s chaos and uncertainty.
Despite Turning Point USA now operating under the leadership of Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, the organization faces uncertainty in wake of its founder’s passing. Kirk had a personal relationship with President Donald Trump and played a significant role in organizing around his eventual 2024 victory. Cox, who denounced violence by the far right, made clear he would like to see Turning Point advance Kirk’s legacy of cross-party dialogue.
“He treated those with differing views with love, with respect, with dignity—that is not soft,” Cox said. “There are people in our party who don’t want us to do what Charlie did, and we cannot fall prey to that.”