Vice President JD Vance hosted “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Monday, honoring his late friend for his faith, courage and example as a father and husband.
On Sept. 11, Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, traveled with Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, to pick up her husband’s remains in Utah and bring them to his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.
Vance recalled a conversation on Air Force Two where Erika said Kirk had never raised his voice, cussed at her, or been cross or mean-spirited to her.
Reflecting on these words as he tucked his children in bed at night, read them books and kissed them, Vance said, “(I’ve) realized that all of these moments that I get to have, Charlie is not able to have them anymore, and Charlie’s kids and his beautiful wife are not able to have them anymore. And maybe the best way that I can contribute and the best way that I could honor my dear friend, is to be the best husband that I can be.”
Kirk, a conservative activist, was gunned down last week during the opening moments of his “Prove Me Wrong Tour” at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
Authorities apprehended Tyler James Robinson, the suspected gunman, at 10 p.m. Thursday at his parents’ home in Washington City, Utah, following a statewide manhunt and tips from friends and family who helped alert authorities.
During the two-hour podcast, Vance had on several guests from the Trump administration and other conservative pundits who were close to Kirk throughout his life. Each shared their personal relationships and life advice they took from being touched by Kirk.
In his closing remarks, Vance made clear that unity in a country that feels heavily divided by politics can be achieved, but only after some “harrowing truths” are addressed.
Stephen Miller on going after violent networks
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was the first guest on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” hosted by Vance on Monday.
He remembered his late friend as everyone’s “biggest supporter.”
“If I was working on a hard project, important executive order, a major new initiative, he would give me the strength and the focus to get it done,” Miller said. “He was everybody’s supporter, enthusiast, cheerleader, promoter. He made all of us better every single day.”
Vance said the federal government will be going after non-governmental organizations that “foments, facilitates and engages in violence that’s not OK.”
He also asked Miller to explain what else the Trump administration is doing to ensure violence like Kirk’s murder does not happen again.
“We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Leavitt and Wiles on Kirk’s Gen Z outreach
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said as a “Gen Z conservative,” Kirk was an inspiration to her as a college student when her “political ambition and love of media and politics really began.”
As the White House’s head of communication, Leavitt said what she learned from Kirk over the years was that you can stand “firm in your convictions and taking a fight, especially when you know you have the facts and the truth on your side, but doing it with a smile.”
She gave credit to Kirk for his role in President Donald Trump winning more of the youth vote in the 2024 presidential election, emphasizing that the Trump campaign would strategize with Kirk often.
“Charlie played an instrumental role in returning the president to the Oval Office,” she said, “And I just love that clip from election night when Charlie realized President Trump had won, and he was speechless for one of the few times in his life. There were no words, just tears.”
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, also touched on Kirk’s abilities to communicate with all ages in a way that “was not talking at you, but engaging you where you were.” She called that a gift.
Wiles added that whoever takes the Turning Point reins, needs “to be somebody that’s willing to engage at a level where you’re not talking to the followers, (but) you’re talking to the people that are not, and engaging them where they are. That’s going to be the hardest thing, I think, to replace.”
TPUSA record-breaking applications
Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said that Turning Point USA, Kirk’s nonprofit, which he founded in 2012, has 900 official chapters on college campuses and 1200 high school chapters across the country, which were called Club America which was launched in 2022.
A couple of weeks before his death, Kolvet said Kirk was saying that he wanted to have a Club America at every high school in the country. There are more than 20,000 high schools in the nation, Kolvet stressed.
They got Kirk to agree on a 10,000 chapter goal, he said, but told Vance that in 48 hours of Kirk’s death, TPUSA received 32,000 inquiries to start new campus chapters.
He also shared it on social media.
Tucker Carlson: Kirk was the model for civil discourse
Tucker Carlson said Kirk modeled civil discourse and lived his Christian faith by treating every individual with respect.
“His Christianity was sincere,” and was an example of “how to disagree with people on topics without hating them,” Carlson said.
“His commitment to Jesus was totally sincere,” Carlson added, “In his case, it informed every single part of his life, from his marriage, the way he treated his children, the way he treated his staff, to the way he approached disagreement, to the way he thought of other people, which was always primarily as people first.”
Carlson said that if you were working in good faith, then Kirk would be on your team. He emphasized that Kirk was an example of how to communicate when you disagree with someone on the same side of the political aisle.
“He modeled civil discourse within the right. He accepted there were big disagreements on all these issues, but he thought we were all on the same team, and we could debate this stuff, but actually have a drink at the end of the day and recognize that we were all trying to accomplish, fundamentally, the good of the country,” Vance said.
Kennedy found a ‘spiritual soulmate’ in Kirk
What united Robert Kennedy Jr. and Kirk was his “total commitment to free speech,” the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services told Vance. At a time when Kennedy said people wouldn’t hear him out, Kirk did.
“I first met Charlie in July of 2021. I’d just written a book about Anthony Fauci, and he had me on his show for this very, very wide-ranging interview, on which he really let me talk a lot, which was unusual at that time, because I was not allowed to talk on most outlets.”
“By the end of that interview, I felt like I’d met a spiritual soulmate, and our friendship blossomed after that,” Kennedy added.
Kirk was a strong advocate and “strategically brilliant” for getting Kennedy the federal position he has now, Vance said. Kennedy agreed, “he understood the use of power, and he understood what buttons needed to be pushed to move the ball across the goal line.”
Vance’s call to end political violence
In his closing remarks, Vance once again recounted the emotional journey of transferring Kirk’s remains with Erika, Kirk’s parents and sister, from Utah to Arizona.
During that time, Vance said Erika had “asked my wife how to tell her beautiful kids that their father and my dear, very dear friend is no longer with us. ... And as she was doing it, there were people dancing on that father’s grave.”
Vance specifically called out an article published in The Nation, which said Kirk was an “unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct. He had children, as do many vile people.”
He noted that he was so grateful for the words of Democratic colleagues and friends who shared their condolences, but said the nation must face a difficult truth.
Vance quoted the following statistics by YouGov:
- 24% of self-described “very liberals” believe it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a political opponent.
- 3% of self-described “very conservatives” agree.
- 25% of “very liberals” believe political violence is occasionally justified.
- 3% of “very conservatives” agree.
Though radicalism resides on both ends of the political spectrum, “the data is clear, people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence. This is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and more malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told,” Vance said.
It takes a pyramid of people to convince a radical to act, he said.
“Not every member of that pyramid would commit a murder. In fact, over 99%, I’m sure, would not, but by celebrating that murder, apologizing for it and emphasizing not Charlie’s innocence, but the fact that he said things some didn’t like, even to the point of lying about what he actually said, many of these people are creating an environment where things like this are inevitably going to happen.”
Vance continued, “There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and there is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers, who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagreed.”
To the people of America, Vance called for civility.
“We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination,” he said, advising citizens to call out those who celebrated the death and even to call their employers, or get involved in a TPUSA chapter. “We owe it to our friend to ensure that his killer is not just prosecuted but punished, and the worst punishment is not the death penalty, but the knowledge that Charlie’s mission continues after he’s gone.”
