President Donald Trump has spoken extensively about Charlie Kirk since he was killed last week, and pledged over the weekend to attend Kirk’s memorial service next weekend at an NFL stadium in Arizona. He also said at the time that he wouldn’t be attending the “small one.”
“There’s a small one. I said, can we do the big one because we’re going to give him the Presidential Medal of Honor,” the president said on Saturday. It had been assumed that “the small one” referred to a private family funeral, but there’s a chance he was referring to the Kennedy Center memorial hosted over the weekend.
TMZ reported that Trump was a no-show at the Kennedy Center event on Sunday night, despite the close association his administration has had with the Kennedy Center so far in his second term.
Donald Trump skips the Kennedy Center’s vigil for Charlie Kirk … choosing instead to enjoy a weekend away at his golf club in New Jersey.
📖 https://t.co/lfLVeSz3fp pic.twitter.com/9BynlhWo4B
— TMZ (@TMZ) September 15, 2025
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Trump instead spent the weekend at his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. However, he returned to Washington at about 6:30 p.m., while attendees were “lining up,” a couple of miles away, at the Kennedy Center for the Kirk event.
“In fact, the vigil started at 6 PM, so Trump’s decision to skip out on the evening is noticeable … especially as 85 members of Congress and his MAGA allies made appearances,” TMZ reported. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was there as well.
Secret Service arrangements are necessary whenever the president goes anywhere, and CNN reported Monday about the numerous logistical headaches that will attach to Trump’s planned attendance at the Kirk funeral at State Farm Stadium in Arizona.
TMZ has traditionally been considered a MAGA-friendly outlet, although the outlet did get in some hot water the day Kirk was shot, after cheering was heard in the background during a live broadcast of TMZ’s newsroom, during coverage of the assassination. TMZ later claimed that the cheering was unrelated to the Kirk coverage and instead came from employees who were watching a car chase.
TMZ claims the cheers from their newsroom were because of a car chase they were monitoring, and that they were NOT cheering the announcement from President Trump that Charlie Kirk had died.
So let’s look at the time stamps….
I’m in central time…so at 340pm CT, Trump posted… pic.twitter.com/u5kUgfv0tT
— THE Keith Malinak (@KeithMalinak) September 11, 2025
