It was an event organisers had hoped, perhaps optimistically, would be civil. Then comes a shout: “Shut the f**k up!”
In a busy room at Colorado State University, where Charlie Kirk had been scheduled to speak before his assassination, the crowd is riled, loudly heckling the speaker, Steven Bonnell, a left-wing streamer better known as Destiny.
It’s rowdy, gladiatorial and, in some ways, childish. A man in a Donald Trump shirt and a MAGA hat addresses Mr Bonnell: “You’re a fascist! You’re a degenerate!”
“I don’t want to get killed,” the streamer tells me after the debate.
“I’m out here at these events. And I wish that everybody could take a step back and realise that not every single issue that we fight over is the end of the f*****g world.”
This is where Kirk had been due to speak on the next stop on the tour that ended with his assassination in Utah.
A 21-year-old student has said she now carries a handgun because she’s a conservative. A young man says he came here from Florida because he didn’t feel safe.
Another man, clearly quite drunk, points out a transgender person in the crowd and says they shouldn’t be allowed firearms. He receives a loud chorus of boos and cheers.
Across the road, in the football stadium, there had been a vigil. Amid a heavy police presence, more than 7,000 gathered to pay their respects, most of them wearing MAGA hats.
It was as much a rally or a recruitment drive for Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, with speakers promising to set up thousands of new chapters around Colorado. I’ve come here to understand the movement he created, how he built it – and what it looks like without him.
“His political ideology is abhorrent, but I think he’s a very effective organiser,” Bonnell says. “And yeah, I’ll give credit where credit is due. He built a very impressive movement in an area that was considered unwinnable by conservatives.”
