Gianforte honors Charlie Kirk at Turning Point rally at MSU

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy headlined a Turning Point USA event at Montana State University Tuesday evening, filling in for Turning Point’s founder, Charlie Kirk, just weeks after the charismatic conservative leader’s assassination.

The hours-long conversation, part of the Arizona-based nonprofit’s effort to keep its movement advancing under the leadership of Kirk’s widow, Erika, swung from Christianity and starting families to ending political violence. The audience stretched from the center court of Brick Breeden Fieldhouse to the rafters of the south seating area. More than half of the arena’s seating area had been tightly partitioned out with a curtain, leaving just enough room for the audience of roughly 3,000. 

Gianforte offered a prayer and sermon that lasted nearly 20 minutes. The governor recalled meeting Kirk 13 years ago when the Illinois native was still a teenager. Kirk had traveled to Montana looking for donations to start a nonprofit organization to deliver a conservative message to young people. Years later, Kirk would tell Gianforte and his wife Susan that they wrote the second check Turning Point received.

Most of Gianforte’s speech Tuesday talked about honoring Kirk by becoming Christian. 

“Who here knows Jesus?” Gianforte asked, triggering a tide of raised hands from the audience. “Praise God. Let me just say if you did not raise your hand right now, one way you can honor Charlie is to seek out someone here in this audience who did raise their hand. Ask them all of your hard questions. Seek the truth, search the Bible and then do what Erika Kirk recommended when she first addressed the nation, find a Bible-believing church and start attending. You’ll be glad you did.”

Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, used his address to rail against political violence like the Utah shooting that took Kirk’s life Sept. 10. 

“On the left and right, we have to be united that words are not violence. Violence is violence and violence is never, ever, never, ever, in the United States of America, an acceptable response to words,” Ramaswamy told the crowd. 

Ramaswamy wrapped the event by taking audience questions, as Kirk was known to do. Kirk’s appeal to young conservatives made him a unique force in MAGA politics. Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box after Kirk’s death, President Donald Trump recalled telling Kirk that the young provocateur had the potential to be president someday.

For some, the Turning Point event at MSU was enough of a draw without Kirk. True Erbeck, who is studying accounting at MSU, said he and two friends learned about the event from campus advertising a couple of days earlier. None of the trio considered themselves Kirk followers previously.

“At this point, it seems like the best thing you can do, I believe, is educate yourself and get the opinions of as many people as you can,” Erbeck said. 

The three students wore no political swag, but floated in a sea of red or white MAGA hats, some with tiny American flags tucked into their bands. Poking out from beneath those caps was a lot of salt and pepper hair, some with merch from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Montana was a regular stop for Kirk. In Montana’s 2024 election for U.S. Senate, Kirk held a “Save Big Sky Rally” at the University of Montana in Missoula event featuring Republican challenger Tim Sheehy. Sheehy won the election, unseating the 18-year Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. At that Missoula stop, less than two months before the election, Kirk opened the event by warning of an “unaccountable bureaucracy.” 

“Our Constitution did not imagine an executive branch this overreaching and this aggressive in going after its own citizens,” Kirk said then. “It’s important we get back to a pro-business set of policies. It’s more than just taxes. It’s recognizing that businesses are the heart of the American spirit.”

Since Kirk’s death, federal officials have in some cases sought to punish people for “hate speech” that makes light of his assassination. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, encouraged people to contact the employers of anyone celebrating Kirk’s death on social media.

In Havre, a Montana State University Northern professor was placed on leave for social media comments made about Kirk.

Outside the fieldhouse on Tuesday, a protester in a long red robe held up a cardboard sign that read “Mt believes in love, not hate.”