Donald Trump refused to let a historic Middle East peace deal delay him from honoring a fallen friend. As White House aides rushed to arrange Trump’s last-minute trip to sign the monumental Gaza peace agreement, the President issued one non-negotiable demand: be back by Tuesday, October 14 — what would have been Charlie Kirk ‘s 32nd birthday, the day he’s posthumously award Kirk the Medal of Freedom.

‘He’s a friend of mine, a friend of all of ours, a friend of all the people right here,’ Trump said Friday evening in the Oval Office, vowing to return in time for ‘a great celebration’ of Kirk’s legacy with his widow Erika and a gathering of the conservative leader’s closest allies. To make it back in time, Trump left immediately after signing the monumental peace deal in Egypt and his historic address to the Knesset with Israeli leaders. He flew back to Washington, DC on Air Force One, arriving at 2.57am in Tuesday morning.

Just 13 hours later, Trump is scheduled to appear in the White House to keep his promise to Erika and all their friends. Erika and her Turning Point lieutenants, friends and allies of their mission have gathered in Washington to mark the occasion, grateful to the President for keeping his commitment even amid the whirlwind of global events. It was classic Trump, they reflected, fully committed to the Turning Point family despite historical achievements for his presidency.

The White House Medal of Freedom ceremony will give them the chance to come together again and reflect on Kirk’s legacy but also find renewed focus and purpose to keep his mission alive. Friday marked the one-month milestone since their friend was assassinated, shattering their worlds beyond imagination. Erika will attend the ceremony, the first public event since her monumental speech at her husband’s funeral when she moved the nation by forgiving her husband’s suspected killer.

Since then, she has withdrawn to grieve, but behind the scenes she and her allies are determined to keep her husband’s work going. The entire organization rallied to Erika’s side as she first vowed to keep Kirk’s flame alive and was anointed as the new chief executive of the organization that he had built. Each of Kirk’s colleagues, shocked by the horror of the assassination of their friend, vowed to step up to fill the hole they all felt.

Kirk’s friends and allies spoke to the Daily Mail about the last month at Turning Point since the events of September 10 shattered their lives. The last thing Kirk would want, they agreed, was for his team to fall apart. ‘Charlie was about the mission,’ Kirk’s friend and prominent conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec told the Daily Mail.

‘Charlie was all about saying, what’s the next mountain?’ he added. ‘And then we’re going to climb that mountain. And then once you, once you get to the top of that mountain, he would say, Okay, where’s the next mountain?’ They agreed that Trump’s success at reaching a peace deal in Gaza and Israel would have been the rare moment where Kirk would have paused briefly to celebrate a victory for the movement. But today, they will pause and reflect on how they have honored their friend in his absence.

Erika moved quickly to assume command of Turning Point, inspiring everyone in the organization to unite despite their grief. ‘That was totally her call, and we were there to support her,’ Posobiec reflected. ‘No one was better suited to serve as the fierce protector,’ Posobiec said. ‘She was the person that Charlie would go and confide to about everything.’ Erika was intimately familiar with Kirk’s struggles and questions about how to handle donors, media, friends, enemies and the big decisions.

‘She was Charlie’s heart, she was building hand in glove with Charlie,’ Johnson reflected. While the rest of the world was still grieving, Erika appeared within the organization to deliver her remarks and urge the entire team to greatness. ‘There was just unbelievable strength, absolutely unbelievable strength and a giant heart, just absolutely amazing,’ Posobiec reflected afterward to the Daily Mail.

Andrew Kolvet, Kirk’s executive producer of his podcast and the spokesman for the organization, was quite comfortable in his role behind the scenes, working every day to communicate with his boss and spread his message across the planet. After her husband’s death, Erika reminded Kolvet of his duty to act as a spokesman, urging him to move in front of the camera. ‘The way to dishonor him was to curl up into a ball and cry and give up,’ conservative media luminary Benny Johnson told the Daily Mail.

Other background figures in the organization including his show producer Blake Neff, his chief of staff Mikey McCoy have also stepped up in front of the cameras, operating as ‘Charlie GPT,’ Kolvet joked. With hours of video footage of Kirk’s message, every day, they piece together what he would want them to do in the present moment. Kirk’s chair on the show remains conspicuously empty, a sign they know that there will never be another Charlie Kirk.

But in his absence, they stepped up to try and fill his shoes, with well-laid instructions from their leader. Kirk had left behind a blueprint for the organization until 2030, Turning Point executives revealed. Under the guidance of COO of Turning Point Justin Streiff, the organization has already doubled in size since Kirk’s death. College events are overflowing with attendees, even in remote places like Montana and North Dakota. The biggest problem is where to put them all.

In the past month, there have been 350,000 new student sign-ups and over 130,000 requests to launch new college and high school chapters. It’s rare for an organization to only get bigger after the founder passes. His friends believe that’s the ultimate testament of his legacy. ‘You’re never going to get another Charlie Kirk,’ Posobiec told the Daily Mail. ‘But if you put everybody together, you might get the outline of who Charlie Kirk was.’