Charlie Kirk Mentor, Assassination Eyewitness Frank Turek Sets the Record Straight

Dr.

Frank Turek has long been a prominent figure in Christian apologetic circles, thanks to his radio show, books, and teaching ministry cross-examined.

Over the last five years, he also developed a close mentoring relationship with Charlie Kirk and was by Kirk's side the day that he was killed.

But in the wake of the assassination, clips of Turek began circulating online, with conspiracy theorists suggesting he was collaborating with the shooter.

Turek sat down with Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham to talk about his deep friendship with Kirk and to set the record straight.

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley, and this is a weekend edition of Morningwire.

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Now we have Dr.

Frank Turek, apologist with us.

Frank, you were with Charlie when he was shot.

I can't imagine what that was like for you.

And I think probably the number one question most people have right now is just, how are you doing?

It's waves of grief.

You know, sometimes you feel almost normal, other times you're just bent over.

And, you know, you've got the knot in the stomach and you're going, I don't know.

I don't know how I'm going to get through this.

Right.

So anyone that goes to a tragedy like this will probably tell you that sometimes you're fine.

Other times you're just overcome with emotion.

I mean, I love Charlie.

He was one of my best friends.

And

everything that I ever wanted in a

Christian in politics, Charlie was.

Somebody that

knew

that a Christian was a Christian 24-7, 365 in every area of his or her life.

That the number one goal was to love Jesus and then love one another, to make disciples of all nations.

And the secondary goal is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And Charlie understood

that you can't love your neighbor if you allow your neighbor to be hurt by bad legislation, right?

That if we're going to protect innocent people from evil, which is the purpose of government, we have to be involved politically.

He understood that.

And he understood that while it wasn't our first calling, our first calling is to make disciples,

it affected our first calling.

Because if you don't have good laws in place,

you can hinder your ability to preach and live the gospel and make disciples.

I always ask people, you know,

if you don't think politics makes a difference in evangelism, why don't you go try and evangelize North Korea and see how far you get?

You know, why don't we just dump you into Syria and see how many converts you get?

Why don't you go try and open a church in Saudi Arabia and see how well you do?

Okay, because politics affects our ability to preach and live the gospel.

And we're not loving people if we allow secularists or Sharia law adherents to take over politically because they're going to take away our freedoms to preach and live the gospel.

Can I ask, in that moment, did you have fear for yourself or your own safety?

What was going through your mind?

I was about

25 feet from him, off to his right.

I was,

I had my phone out because I was FaceTiming my son and daughter-in-law because they love Charlie.

And I was just standing next to him because I wanted to be there with him as he kicked off this new season of college events.

And we were working together to perfect his answers to some questions he might get about Christianity.

And when I heard

the pop,

it sounded like it was close, but

the gunman was further off.

And he immediately saw he went back.

And I started to brush toward him, but his security guards were closer.

And so they were immediately on him.

So then I ducked down thinking, oh, maybe there's going to be more shots.

And they immediately

evacuated him from the stage, from the right side of the stage.

I'm on the left side of the stage, if you're looking at it.

Not really a stage.

It's on the grass, but a tent, you know.

And so I went around behind the back and met them as they were heading toward the car.

And since Charlie was like a son to me,

if your son was shot, what would you do?

You'd get in that car and try and save him.

So that's what I, that's what I did.

But he was already gone.

His eyes were fixed.

He wasn't, he wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at it, look, looking into eternity.

So you knew at that moment that that you were saying goodbye?

Well,

it seemed to me I, I hadn't been up close to a gunshot victim like that before, but his eyes were fixed.

He was not responding.

We were trying to stop the bleeding.

I gave him CPR.

But

you just hope against hope that maybe there's some life in him.

And so that we were just trying to get him to hospital.

You know, Frank, I want to turn to the aftermath because

in what you might call the fog of war, there's been a lot of

unseemly at times conspiracy theories circulating a lot of chatter out there from people who don't have information but want to weigh in with opinions.

And you know, one of the things I saw was video of you circulating where people were suggesting, oh, look, this man in the crowd is, or this man standing next to Charlie is signaling.

And when I saw the video, I went, That's Frank Turek.

This is ridiculous.

Do you want to comment on some of these conspiracy theories that are circulating?

Well, first of all, I didn't know about it until I landed in Phoenix

two days later.

Two days later?

No,

like 30 hours after it happened.

And my wife said,

Oh, there's an internet conspiracy about you.

Like, there's millions of people have seen it.

Like, what?

That you were signaling the shooter.

What?

So I didn't,

you know, I didn't even know about it because we were focused on the family.

We were focused on Erica.

We were focused on, you know, other than that.

I wasn't looking much at my

phone.

And

the whole thing is colossally stupid anyway.

I mean, why does a shooter need somebody to signal him at all?

If he's 120 yards away and he has Charlie in his sights,

what does he need some guy to signal for?

What would that

makes no sense at all?

Like he, if he's, if he's shoot, if he's, if he's got him in his sights, he's going to go, oh,

what?

I mean, why?

And then they tried to accuse Dan, too, his main bodyguard, who was standing right behind him of doing this.

What I did,

they just gave me a hat.

I put on a hat and I was adjusting my hat and like touching my nose, maybe.

And I'm holding

the phone.

And this is a signal?

Who needs a signal anyway?

It's colossally stupid, but we know that since it's on the internet, it has to be true.

Right.

Well, and there's been so much upsetting coverage of Charlie and particularly some of his commentary taken out of context.

Of course, we saw the New York Times claim that he was saying something anti-Semitic, and they had to retract that and say, actually, he was quoting someone saying something anti-Semitic.

And he would go on to then critique it.

Every day I read the New York Times and the Bible just to see what both sides are doing.

Well, that was going to be my question: is what, what is your sense of how the media has been treating this well

to be honest with you i have not consumed a lot of media um

i

i did watch brett bear last night um on fox news uh i

if i see something that i know is just propaganda from the left it just depresses me And

look, Charlie Kirk

was the greatest man I've ever known personally, especially someone who's only 31 years old.

And I've known him for five and a half years,

had a lot of private time with him,

text almost every day.

I have never,

ever heard Charlie Kirk utter

slander,

backstabbing, gossip

on anyone.

I mean, if he has two friends that disagree over an issue, he would never pit one against the other.

He would just want to hear them both out.

He would try and keep people together for the greater good.

Like, you know, Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson don't agree on everything related to Israel.

But Charlie knew it was more important to keep both those ships pointing in the same direction, as Ben Shapiro put it, because getting 80% of what you want is better than getting 0%

of what you want.

And he was just so gracious with everybody, including the students that disagreed with him.

Why is he putting his life on the line to go talk to students?

Why would he say to people, hey, anybody here who disagrees comes to the front of the line?

Because, you know, that's what fascists do, Megan.

That's what fascists do.

They give the microphone to their opponents and say, make your case.

I mean, it's absurd what the left says about him.

Yeah, I had a friend who said, and I thought this was great.

She goes, you know, the only thing Charlie Kirk would have wanted was to have a conversation with that kid, speaking of the killer who shot him.

Oh, of course.

Yeah, Charlie Kirk would love to talk to him and ask him by what moral standard, because these are things we always talked about.

I'd always say, hey, turn it back on him.

You think you're correct?

By what moral standard are you saying that you have such and such a right?

Where are you getting that from?

And they could never really answer that question well because there isn't a good answer to it.

Unless God exists, there are no rights.

Everything's a matter of opinion.

Well, I want to talk about the work you were doing with Charlie, Frank.

So you mentioned that you guys met about five and a half years ago.

I believe I heard you were starting to embark on another potential campus initiative.

Tell us about the work you were doing with Charlie.

Well,

Charlie and I, over the past

four months, met every month for at least two days just to,

he wanted to be better at answering kids' questions about Christianity and the evidence for Christianity.

So, I mean, I live in Charlotte.

He lives in Phoenix.

So I'd be out there.

I'd go out to Phoenix and we'd hang out for a couple days.

And

we were famous for, you know, we'd do a couple hours maybe during the day, two, three hours.

And then we'd go to dinner.

He'd go, you know, eat with the family because he's a family guy.

And he said, hey, can we go, can we go on a walk after you're, yeah, let's do a walk after.

So we'd be walking through his neighborhood with a bodyguard behind us talking about evidence for the resurrection,

how to answer questions related to the Bible,

how to convince the last.

Walk we had was last Monday night, two days before he was murdered, where he was martyred.

And one of his big concerns is, how do we get young people to realize the beauty of marriage and family?

That was on his heart.

The two things we talked the most that night were the resurrection and the family.

How can I, how can, how can, what can I do to help restore the family in America?

He was trying to find answers to that.

I don't know if you saw the recent survey.

It was a recent survey out

about

what were the priorities of young people dependent upon how they voted.

And the Trump voters, the men, the number one goal in life was to get married.

Women, I thought it was five or six or something.

The Harris women, it was like 12 out of 13.

And Charlie thought, that's a disaster.

You know,

how can I demonstrate to people the beauty of our marriage, the beauty of marriage in general, and the beauty of family?

Because he wanted people to flourish and he knew the country would flourish if the family flourishes.

So he was concerned about a lot and he was so articulate and so caring for these kids.

I mean, Jack Hibbs said it best the other day.

He said, when

we learned that Charlie was killed,

my granddaughter was crying and I was crying.

What other figure in America right now would the murder of such a person cause waves of grief to come on every generation?

I don't know of one other than Charlie Kirk.

I mean, everyone's valuable.

Don't get me wrong, but Charlie had a cross-generational appeal.

Without Charlie, J.D.

Vance said this himself.

He said, I wouldn't be vice president.

And I think President Trump realizes he probably wouldn't be president without Charlie.

So for you then, as you're carrying on your work, and I know you go onto college campuses as well, and you do a lot of that same sort of apologetics work with many, many young men and many young people.

How is Charlie's influence going to impact that work as you go forward?

Oh, well,

I know we're recording this on a

Tuesday.

Tomorrow night, we're going to be at Western Carolina University doing If God, Why Evil, a tribute to my friend Charlie Kirk.

So we're doing QA on that issue.

Now, that issue, that event was scheduled long before, and it was scheduled to be If God, Why Evil.

The reason we're going through with it is because Charlie would want us to go through with it.

So there's a lot of people hurting right now, particularly kids on college campuses.

So we have an event this week.

We have, I think, three next week.

It's full steam ahead.

And as Erica just said the other night, the college tour is going to continue.

So

I don't know what that looks like just yet, because Charlie was the main draw, but we're going to continue to go to colleges.

And of course,

the world has changed.

We now have to have a security team to do this at great expense, but it has to be done.

So

we're going to continue our college tour.

And you'll continue doing that despite the growing threat that we've seen in violence at these events.

Yeah,

we've got a security team now.

And

yeah, that's something President, Vice President Vance talked about the other day that

a recent survey shows that 24% of people who consider themselves liberal think that violence is justified, whereas 3% who are very conservative think it's justified.

Now that's 3% too many, but still it's a lopsided issue.

And as you well know, this is really a worldview issue where people on the right are generally Judeo-Christian.

They believe in

the fact that we're all sinners and that everyone has sinned and there is a right and there is a wrong.

On the left, you have Marxist critical theory, which thinks there are a group of people who are oppressors and a group of people who are oppressed.

And it doesn't matter what their personal behavior is.

Anybody who's considered an oppressor is evil.

And And this drives some people to murder them.

I want to talk about sort of the reassessment in a positive direction that's been happening in terms of Charlie's content and his legacy, because I have heard from a lot of people, and maybe you have too, who weren't that familiar with him.

They had just heard about him.

And suddenly, in the wake of this tragedy, they're actually going back and looking at what he said himself.

And they're reevaluating the opinion that they had of him.

You know, they may have thought he was a bomb thrower or that he was, you know, just a demagogue.

And now they're looking at him and going, oh, wait, actually, he had some really thoughtful things to say and he really challenged kids.

And in fact, I've even seen a lot of even pastors saying Charlie was a model for evangelism and the way we should be doing it, as opposed to the

more quiet presence and not just being bold about what we believe.

What are you hearing as far as that goes?

Well, Charlie for me has always been an on-ramp to Christianity.

That when you're strong and you call truth what it is and you address the issues of the day boldly, that's attractive.

Yeah, some people are going to hate you, but that's a badge of honor, actually.

Other people are going to say, Wow, I can follow somebody like this.

And I think you're going to see this Sunday, there's probably going to be over 100,000 people there

because

Charlie

has,

through the help of the Holy Spirit, has

ignited people

toward

Christ

and

to find a purpose to their lives.

And the purpose of our lives is to know God through Jesus Christ and then to make him known.

That's why we're here.

And people want to have a track to run on.

They want to have direction.

And Charlie has helped people realize what the true direction is.

So

Yeah,

the seeker sensitive, we're going to be winsome all the time and we're going to dance around tough issues.

Spare me.

That's not, first of all, that's not Christianity.

You have to deny yourself and be willing to die

like Charlie was for the Lord.

Now, it doesn't mean all of us are going to do that when a gun's put to our head, but

this is not a...

Let me make your life better religion.

This is where you give up your life

for Christ and for other people.

And

I think for many,

that might be too much, but for others, that's very attractive.

At least my life has a purpose and it's a true purpose.

So let's pray that happens, Megan.

And thank you for being bold on that issue with your book, Shepherds for Sale.

standing strong when

people try and, in fact, let me say one other thing because it relates to what the work you did as well.

Bold leaders

risk being misunderstood and slandered.

And he knew that people on the left would slander him and take him out of context.

They'd call him a racist for doing it.

But

people who are

attentive realize what he was saying and he took that risk.

And you took that risk too in your own book so

if people want to pull something out of context if people want to say you said something you didn't really say or be very uncharitable in how you said something they can do it and they can try and marginalize you if you always play it safe and you never speak about these issues what good are you anyway

you know I can watch a Tony Robbins YouTube video and get my,

you know, my

home improvement, what do you call it, my self-improvement fix.

That's not what Christianity is about.

Yeah, man, we know it wasn't what Charlie was about either.

And

I think I speak for everyone, Frank, when I just want to thank you for what you poured into his life and the mentoring that you offered and how that came through, Charlie, to all of us.

So thank you, Frank, and thank you for the friendship you gave him and for the work that you're still doing.

Yeah, let's get behind Erica now.

I'm telling you, that woman's not going to be denied, Megan.

And I think everyone who saw her her speak was just overwhelmed by her strength and poise and graciousness and her obvious love for the Lord and love for Charlie.

So I think you can certainly see that.

I think the future of TPUSA is still bright and it's still going to be.

It's going to be bigger than it ever was.

So what the gunmen meant for evil, God meant for good, the saving of many lives.

Amen.

And I don't think we can end on a better note than that.

So Dr.

Frank Turek, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thanks, Megan.

That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham talking with Dr.

Frank Turek, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.