Argentine President Javier Milei issued a statement on Wednesday honoring the life of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, killed on Wednesday afternoon by an unknown gunman during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.
Milei, who met Kirk during a visit to Florida shortly after his election to the presidency, praised Kirk as a “formidable spreader of the ideas of liberty and staunch defender of the West.” He also emphasized the relationship between left-wing ideologies and rampant violence in his statement.
“He was the victim of an atrocious assassination in the middle of a wave of left-wing political violence in the entire region,” Milei wrote. “The left is always, at all times and in all places, a violent, hate-filled phenomenon. The whole world lost an incredible human being.”
Milei’s statement, accompanied by a photo of the Argentine president alongside Kirk and former Congressman Matt Gaetz, expressed condolences to the Kirk family “and to all the youth of the world who admired and listened to him.”
Milei’s reference to a “wave of left-wing political violence” appears to be contextualizing the public assassination of Kirk following several high-profile killings of popular conservatives in the Western Hemisphere. In June, a child gunman killed the frontrunner in the 2026 Colombian presidential election, Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, who remained alive in intensive care for two months before his death was announced in August. Prior to the Uribe assassination, another presidential frontrunner, former journalist Fernando Villavencio in Ecuador, was assassinated publicly during a campaign rally in 2023. Both candidates were aggressive opponents of communist terrorism, Marxist narco-terrorists, and gang violence. While these two cases are the most high-profile in recent memory, conservative political figures throughout South America have experienced direct political violence throughout the past year, most aggressively in Colombia under the presidency of socialist former guerrilla member Gustavo Petro.
Kirk, a television and radio host in addition to his duties in political organizing, took an interest in Milei during the latter’s successful presidential run in 2023, describing his win October of that year as “an amazing shot of hope across the Equator.” Kirk celebrated Milei — an economics professor by trade who rose to fame in television and radio — as an unorthodox political personality, calling him “a populist nationalist — albeit rather kooky, weird person, with great hair by the way.”
“This guy’s bizarre, but he also hates communism,” Kirk mused.
Kirk described his in-person meeting with Milei during an edition of his program in December, recalling the exchange as “hilarious” given that Milei “doesn’t speak any English.”
“I said one thing — he stared laughing, I said afuera and he laughs,” Kirk recalled. Afuera, or “out,” became an unofficial catchphrase of the Milei campaign after a video went viral of him listing all the government agencies that he would eliminate if he became president.
Kirk’s familiarity with Milei’s campaign lore won him the affection of many Argentine conservatives. On Wednesday, Milei campaign videographer Santiago Oría shared what appeared to be the video of Milei and Kirk meeting that Kirk described on his program, in which Kirk can be heard saying, “¡afuera!”
“He knew about the president’s ‘afuera!’” Oría recalled. “Great guy. They killed one of us.”
Kirk died on Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, part of a greater tour of college campuses in which Kirk encouraged open dialogue and civil debate. The shooter is still at large at press time, according to national law enforcement statements. Kirk was 31 years old and leaves behind his wife and two children.
Milei is the third world leader to honor Kirk after his assassination, following President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post following the shooting. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”
Netanyahu published a statement in which he described Kirk as a “lion-hearted friend of Israel,” and declared, “Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom.”
“I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel. Sadly, that visit will not take place,” Netanyahu revealed. “We lost an incredible human being. His boundless pride in America and his valiant belief in free speech will leave a lasting impact.”
