In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s memorial service on September 21, much of the attention was on Erika Kirk’s message of forgiveness for her husband’s killer and the sharp contrast with Donald Trump’s admission that, unlike Kirk, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” Many overlooked what Trump said immediately before this. Kirk, he said, “was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose.”
As if to reinforce the point, Trump used the language of mission twice more in his speech. “Money was never his thing,” Trump said. “He was always in it for the mission, as he liked to say, even back then, ‘We have a country to save.’” He later observed, “The more success Charlie had, and he was getting more and more successful, the more dangerous his mission became. On campuses all over the country, his quest for open dialogue was met with menacing hate.”
Trump may have been inspired to use these words because, two days earlier, Cardinal Timothy Dolan told the hosts of Fox & Friends that Kirk was “a modern-day Saint Paul. He was a missionary. He’s an evangelist. He’s a hero.” Dolan’s statements drew criticism from Catholics who were embarrassed by the now-retired prelate.
