SALT LAKE CITY — Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance visited Salt Lake City Thursday to pay respects to Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed at Utah Valley University a day earlier, according to a person familiar with the vice president’s plans.

Vance was on the ground for only about two hours, reportedly in meetings with Gov. Spencer Cox and Kirk’s family before taking off just before 4:30 p.m.

In a long post on social media, the vice president described a yearslong friendship with Kirk that began in 2017 and said he first began receiving text messages from people saying they were praying for Kirk after news that he had been shot.

“I prayed a lot over the next hour, as first good news and then bad trickled in,” Vance wrote. “God didn’t answer those prayers, and t

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