Charlie's Empty Chair — In His Honor, Never in His Place

I talked to a lot of young people on campuses, at our events, on my radio show, podcast, and social media.

Said differently, I visit college campuses, so you don't have to.

We're talking to so many voters that know it is time for change.

They know that something is wrong.

America's future is a series of choices.

Our current state of slow motion national decline is a choice.

Today is our two-year-old's birthday.

And I look at my daughter, and that is my why.

For those that are parents, you know exactly what I mean.

There is no mountain that stands tall as your faithfulness.

There is no river that runs

wide as your goodness.

Man, Charlie,

I remember when we were starting these out and...

It was that like that?

No, it was like this.

It was like your average...

Three rows.

It was like your average political meeting where there was like 12 people in a room and

this is awesome.

This, in my personal opinion, was the most over-the-top Trump event that I've ever covered.

This is the number one boots on the ground operation in the country.

We're working directly in harmony with the Trump campaign.

It's been vetted, it's been cleared, it's been blessed, blessed, as you can see there, and we're going to try to win this thing.

No guarantees.

It's what we do that matters.

Mr.

President, I can tell you this room is 100% with you and we have your back.

God bless you.

We will agree.

Thank you.

As you know, we are heading on campus here momentarily at the University of South Florida, throwing it down with the students.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

We are excited to continue this cultural movement that we have started at Turning Point USA.

More high school chapters, more college chapters, and disagreement is not just welcome, it is invited.

We want to have those tough conversations.

That's what it's all about.

Because you're not supposed to be involved in this.

You're supposed to just kind of be on the vote for me every four years, give me more political power, and stay out of my business.

And what has happened is we are seeing an explosion in citizen participation.

All of my days,

your

mercy all over me.

Oh, there is nothing

else I'll ever need.

Knock on that extra door.

Go that extra mile.

Talk to that extra friend.

Because throughout voting month and culminating on the 5th of November, I believe it will go down as a day that people remember, as a day that is written about in history books, as the final battle from the golden escalator on down, from defeating Hillary Clinton, from the nonsense of 2020, from Butler, Pennsylvania, November 5th, it all culminates, where we restore the promise that the founders gave us.

And they said, hey,

if the people want it, the people get it.

And we, the people, take back America.

God bless Arizona and thank you so much.

Every day, the American people demand certain accomplishments and victories.

Disagreement is what keeps a movement alive, keeps a movement fun.

Here in this country, we are a country of flourishing.

We're a country of risk-taking.

We're a country of building.

We will achieve American greatness.

And we are just getting started.

Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

This is Andrew Colvett

filling in for the one and only Charlie Kirk.

Nobody can.

And

we wanted so badly to do this show for all of you today.

And I wanted the friends of this show and of Charlie that knew him best, the thought crime crew,

to be here in the studio

to commemorate our friend, our dear brother,

for this sacred, this solemn moment, this occasion none of us ever dreamed we would have to do.

And here we are, because Charlie would want us to be here.

He would be upset if we weren't here.

And we, of course,

have left his chair open and empty, because nobody will ever fill it.

Nobody could ever hope to.

But

by all of us together, we want to honor him and we want to be more like him and we want to be inspired by him and we want you in the audience to know him like we knew him

and to be up close and personal to the front row seat to history to a legend to an American icon that we got every single day.

And I don't know why we were so fortunate and blessed to be those people, those few

that got to see it so up close.

He touched millions.

He personally knew tens of thousands.

And somehow we were the blessed ones that got to be close to him.

And in the chats, we got yelled at by him.

We got pushed to more and to be better because of Charlie and by Charlie.

And so we have,

to my right,

Jack Bisobic,

Blake Neff,

and Tyler Boyer.

and myself, Andrew Colvett, the executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show.

And we are so honored to share what we know about Charlie and to do it on a day where the authorities tell us that his killer

has been brought into custody.

And I want to say personally thank you to Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, Governor Cox.

You told us you would not stop until you got him, and I admit that my faith wavered at times.

as the hours stretched on,

but you appear to have the suspect in custody, and we're grateful that you have not slept, you did not rest, just like you promised.

And you are men of your word, and we are grateful to you.

And so, with that,

I just want to again welcome my friends.

And

Jack, I'm going to start with you.

Tell us what's on your heart right now, brother.

Well, you know, it's like

I know

the seat looks empty, but it's not.

not.

The seat isn't empty at all.

Because in a way, Charlie is the only thing we're all thinking about right now.

We can't think of anything else really.

We can't think straight.

We can read and we can talk, but at the end of the day, all we're thinking about is Charlie.

And we know that Charlie

is looking down on us.

And I know that when we all gather here,

it's like he's here.

Yeah.

And that's why no one wants to sit there because he is there.

We are saying thank you is just there.

And the only thing that I guess I would add is, you know, we're hearing these reports that

family members of the suspect were involved, particularly the father, in bringing him to the police, bringing him to the authorities.

And if that's true,

I'd just like to extend a sincere thank you and gratitude to something like that.

As

as a father.

I can't even imagine.

I just can't even imagine

what that must be like.

But to have done that

is is

just shows the ultimate

goodness and the ultimate righteousness that still does exist in this country and the fact that people are willing to step up and do the right thing even in impossible odds.

And that's the Charlie Kirk spirit.

That's always been the Charlie Kirk spirit is to stare down impossible odds and say, I'm going to do it anyway, when everybody told him he couldn't.

And that's the Charlie Kirk I know.

That when you told him he couldn't do it, he'd say, figure it out.

Tyler, I'm sure he told you that

more times than you can count.

I've just, it's been really hard.

I mean, we've been able to lean on each other, I think, talking a lot to one another about

the memories.

And

that's probably, I think, the most

the most important thing that we can do today is share those memories.

I've been telling everybody that's reached out on our staff.

I mean,

we've hired thousands of people in Turning Point.

And it hasn't been easy.

It's been part of the Battle on Charlie.

It's like, I'm going to miss those,

right, Tyler?

You know, conversations when we are sitting around.

Because it's,

you don't really know the battles unless you've been in them.

But there's so many people that have looked at Charlie along the way as

a mentor.

And that all have different emotions and they have different stories.

And I've told people, write them down.

Every single person that's reached out to me, I'm so sorry, Tyler.

I'm just like, please just write down your memories that you had because some of these stories are so unbelievably funny.

They're so unbelievable in general because

God's hand has been such a big part

of

Charlie's story and legacy.

I'm so sorry.

No,

we're all right there.

We're all right there.

And for those of us that have been close, like we've talked about,

we've

Heaven's Hand is part of that.

And that has to be that has to be accentuated because that's what Charlie wanted.

We talked about that all the time with

people invested in Turning Point, all the major stakeholders that, you know, a lot of people look at this as

political dynamo,

the dynamics of all of that.

But all of this has been,

you know, even through this tragic, this tragic week, week,

I believe that

God has been with Charlie from day one and will continue to be.

Blake, I want to.

You're next, buddy, so get ready.

But

I want to just comment on what you're saying because one of the last trips that I took with Charlie was a couple weeks ago, and we were flying all over the country, spent hours on the plane.

And I said to him,

isn't it crazy?

Like, you know, we were talking about South Park.

We were talking about just everything.

Like, we just kind of had a moment.

And he's just like, yeah, it's all God.

He just instantly goes, yeah, it's all God.

It's all God.

And as I was driving to the office in the studio this morning, I thought to myself,

it was always God.

And God has not pulled his hand away from Charlie Kirk.

They did not pull his hand away from Turning Point.

He did not pull his hand away from this country.

It was always God that got us here.

There were so many times, and I want the audience to know this, there were so many times where we felt like our backs were so against the wall that we were not going to get through whatever it was,

that this thing happened or, you know,

this,

it was just so many things.

It's impossible right now.

Now's not the time to get into the details.

It was just so many things.

And Charlie and I would feel the weight of the world when we would talk to each other.

And I know you felt it, and I know you felt it, and I know you felt it.

And then we got through it, and it was God.

And somehow we came out stronger and better.

And

Charlie had more influence in our reach and our staff, and everything just kept growing time and time again.

And

he knew that it was all God's hand.

He knew it was all the blessing of God on him and on this organization and on the show.

Yesterday I said...

I said, Charlie's on assignment from God.

And he always has been.

Every time you filled in for Charlie, you said, well, Charlie's on assignment.

So now he's on assignment from God.

He's on.

And he always was.

All right, Blake,

it is your turn.

And

I want

everybody to know that probably nobody traveled with Charlie more than Blake

in the last, I'd say, 18 months.

Except maybe Mikey.

He's Mikey, for sure.

Mikey, but you traveled to London with him.

You went to Korea with him.

Blake, the floor floor is yours.

Thanks.

I feel unworthy to be here.

You guys all knew him a lot longer than I did.

Compared to a lot of people here, Charlie entered my life pretty recently.

I remember you called me out of the blue almost exactly three years ago,

first week of October 22.

And I don't want to get into the details of it, but I can say

Charlie had a drastic impact on my life.

He basically gave me my life back,

and

I don't know how to express how grateful I am for that.

And how,

just over the past three years, how

much I came to admire him,

not just for how talented of a person he was,

but but how good of a person he was,

And how everything he fought for was because he believed it would be good for the country and good for every single person in it.

And

I'll always think one of the final things I was doing with him, I mentioned with you, Jack, yesterday, the last speech he gave was in Japan to an audience.

Buddhists.

No, Buddhists, Shinto, no Christians in it, or maybe a handful, but not many.

And, you know, it was about immigration.

It was about other stuff.

But he wanted to include, I should witness to the faith, you know, regardless of where we're going.

And we talked about how we could do that.

And we put it into the speech five minutes before he went up there.

And he did it.

And

'cause it was that important to him that he do that.

It wasn't about just, you know, he wasn't catering to any audience.

This is a speech almost nobody in the U.S.

would ever see or watch.

And most of the audience in Japan might not even get it, but he wanted to do it because it was important to him.

And

just a minute before

when it happened,

you know, he was witnessing to the gospel there at the college.

And

Blake,

it makes me

it gives me some solace and some comfort to know that you were there with him on campus that day.

And

I just grateful to be able to call you

and know that that I at least had somebody that was there and that loved him and that was close and I could call you and

I'm just glad you were there man it's it's not

it's not good it's not fair to you that you had to be there but I'm glad that

I'm glad that you were.

And you and I and Charlie were texting literally moments before he went out to the crowd and we were talking about

arguments and finer points that he could make and he was going over you know this kind of question

You know, we should what it was about he was what are the good arguments in favor of of marriage marriage monopoly Christian the Christian version of marriage.

Yes.

And

it was you know, that gets back to you know one of the other core things how much he how much he loved Erica how much he loved their children

how much

and how, and how much he cared for them, and how it really demonstrates the power of that, you know, familial love, because we all talked about how they made him better, too.

Isn't that the truth?

You see Charlie, like, pre-Erica,

and then Charlie post-Erica, and it's, and it's still Charlie, but it's, like,

more

clothes that actually fit him.

We were just talking about this yesterday, I, and he's a father, and

No, it was like night and day difference.

So we used to, like, I used to be worried about Charlie Jerrica.

Charlie is legitimately the real MBA.

And I don't just mean the fashion.

I don't just mean the fashion.

I don't just mean the visible.

We were talking against Charlie's birthday.

I was talking about that.

It's rough.

The visible book.

Charlie's birthday is in about a month.

And

I used to buy him clothes on his birthday as an excuse to buy him sneakers because he wouldn't wear sneakers.

He would only wear dress shoes.

That's right.

And then Erica came and then he worked.

I was like so relieved because he would wear clothes that

he'd look better than anyone.

Like a normal person.

No, he looked better than everybody because Erica is incredibly stylish and great.

It was just like he went from like the Stone Age to like he now had this incredibly well manicured dress person.

Let me, let's.

I love this

vein.

We want to tell you about Erica, and we're going to.

The before and after Erica Kirk story is a really amazing story.

And I did

make a point of

so emotional.

I listened.

I have been basically crying for two and a half days.

And

I was just, I remember Charlie being,

when I first met him, it was like everything was baggy and the suits didn't fit and like the collars were always out like this.

I was playing those videos now

when he's younger.

I was showing Andrew

an image.

It was so funny because studio, can we get an OG CK

shot with his shoes?

I'll send one.

That's like a perfect one.

But he was

before and after a shot.

It was like a very baggy suit, and it just...

But you know what?

This is kind of very...

This isn't with a suit, but this was like...

No, no, no.

I've got a perfect one.

But anyways, the point is, but his spirit shined through so brightly.

It didn't matter.

It didn't matter.

No.

Like, that's what it was.

Like, I remember being in some of these meetings, I was like, oh my gosh, like, because he would carry around the backpack.

He had this big black backpack that had his initials on it.

He had that forever.

And he had forever one, one pair of shoes, dress shoes that he wore.

And then these big, but it didn't matter.

Like, none of that mattered.

Every single person that talked to him, every one of these big-time donors.

early on like big time I mean they had he would just just be able to break through to every single one of those people and well it was always special it was it was his unique voice and this is why Charlie would go viral on campus he would never pull any punches the guy would say

he would say the truth with a hundred percent fidelity do you know what I mean it was like men and women like you know are different you know two two sexes like it was never

there's no equivocation no there was no like well some people feel this no it was like, you know, it's wrong when people steal.

Does it make it okay that they were poor?

No, it's wrong, right?

You know, and it was just, he had this moral clarity that he was just blessed by God with, and he would not cut any corners with it.

And

so, yeah, it didn't matter the suit he was wearing.

It didn't matter his fashion.

Although, I will tell you.

But Erica, Erica made his looks much better.

And I will also tell you that his friends, Don Jr., Gentry Beach,

they gave him like a gift card at one point, a $10,000

credit at the Trump Taylor in New York City, in Manhattan, to get him some proper suits.

It was like one of these things that were like, hey, Charlie, if you're going to be around with us, if you're going to hang around with us, Charlie, we need you to

look a little bit more put together.

We got to take care of that a little bit.

It was a...

Oh, my gosh, Tyler,

get this up.

You have to see.

This is the pre-Erica.

And then Erica came in and then

looked immediately.

I love it.

I mean, no, immediately better.

I mean, I'm not even kidding.

It's like,

we got to.

The real miracle is that Erica went for it.

You know what I mean?

She's seen the baggy shirt.

I mean, she knew.

He knew.

No, but that's female, right?

That's the female.

Tanya was the same with me.

It's the female.

I see the thing, and I want to nurse it.

Michelangelo could see a block of marble, and he would just bring it.

He would just bring the David out.

He's like, the David's already in there.

I just have to reveal it.

I want to say, it's typically not a good idea to say, I think

I could change this man or something for the women watching.

But you can polish that.

Yeah,

not the deeper bringing forth.

And you could never change Charlie's spirit, right?

That's exactly right.

But what she did, I think, if anything, just in terms of this, is make it so that the external match the internal.

Yeah, sure.

And I will say as well, though, that Charlie's faith became so much stronger as soon as Erica came around.

And he started vocalizing it more.

And for those of you in the audience that don't know Erica Kirk, the woman is a lioness.

She is fierce.

She is strong.

She's obviously like distraught and hurting, as we all are, but

she is fierce, and she is strong.

And I want you to know that about her.

That I have seen her up close.

And Tyler, you've been there as well with us.

And

she is so strong.

And Charlie wanted to marry her because of how strong she was.

And ultimately, he knew that

she could do this life that he was leading.

And Charlie was already leading...

a crazy life when they met and when they fell in love and when they got married and he he knew that she had the strength in her core and she was was also she is also such an incredible woman of faith he knew that she could do this and he was a hundred percent right about erica kirk she is truly something amazing and we all love her dearly tyler why don't you tell the story of how uh you inadvertently connected charlie with his wife so it's it's it's this is the miracle of the entire thing which is incredible and i don't think we can talk about it enough it's trump it's Erica, it's Arizona, it's Turning Point.

You couldn't script this any better.

Can I, let me tell, let me just set two points.

I told it a little bit of a trip.

Because, yeah, Tyler, I think you've told this story a few times on the show.

So let's like

big picture context here.

Tyler pulled off the first Trump rally, the very first one in Arizona, and there's a lot of crazy details that go into it.

But the first one, Tyler gets the credit.

But the most important part of that, truly in the background, is that Erica Kirk is at that rally.

And we don't focus on that.

We've talked about the rally and all that with Trump getting reelected.

She's in the background of the main shot.

So right behind Trump, people don't know this.

We can put it up.

There is right behind Trump on stage, first Trump rally ever.

And again, they were expecting this to be a hundred-person rally.

They were like wanting to give

refreshments.

You didn't even call it a rally, right?

Well, so the original was Cory Lewandowski.

Correlandowski was like, can you get 100 people in a room?

We'll provide refreshments.

We'll give you money, whatever.

And And I'm like, no, no, no, we don't need any of that.

We can get lots of people there.

And we started doing this, and it starts to go bonkers, right?

Because I'll give credit to Jake Hoffman, who is the

president of the Freedom Caucus here.

He's a state senator.

He was my unpaid comms director, who was actually the guy that helped start Charlie's Instagram with me and start all the turning point, like all the turning point assets that we have on social media now, by the way, too.

But we started just going bonkers with all the media.

And so then I started fielding calls from everywhere.

It was crazy everywhere.

And one of the calls I got was from Erica.

She's like, hey, I was Miss Arizona.

I love Donald Trump.

Can I be involved?

I'm like, absolutely.

So

I met her and I was like, we've got to put her behind the president.

So I had my family behind the president.

My grandpa, who just passed away just a few months ago, who loved Charlie, loved...

the show, everything, listened daily.

It was my grandpa, my dad-in-law, Lauren, my wife, and Erica is up there.

Yeah.

So, Erica, after we.

We got to find the picture.

After this, I'll pull it up.

After this rally,

I meet with Erica, and I'm like, there's a way that we can,

she's faith-based.

So, this is the funniest part.

She's faith-based.

She's so centered on Christ.

We've got to lean in and involve her here with, because we were starting the initial talks about Turning Point Faith or TPUSA Faith.

And I was trying to recruit her hard to come work for us and so through all that uh i had introduced her to charlie i was like i think she could be great she could be wonderful and charlie was immediately in love absolutely in love and i was like it was straight charlie going back and that's where it's like the tee up with you know the clothes everything else i was like charlie i don't know like this is who you're gonna

well this is miss arizona so i was nervous i'm like I don't know if we, we don't want to scare her away, right?

Like, we want her to work for us, you know, so, but like, that's great let's just let's feel out and so charlie did the right thing he did everything perfectly as charlie always does uh did everything perfectly i dropped him i dropped them off i dropped him off he was at the office here which he was rarely at the office because he's always on the plane and he had set up a date to go meet her at the gym

because

she was it was it's a it's a fancier nicer gym that's in the north valley and i dropped the i took him over and i dropped him off there and i was it was the whole car ride over there was pep talk so all right this is what you got to do this is what this is what you got to say hey if she says this don't do that and he's like well what do I do if they like this because Charlie had had a number of dates but not that many people he's busy he's a busy guy he just didn't yeah yeah and so uh he it went immaculately and after that they had met again in New York where she was living at the time and he had made a special trip just to go there yeah he made an excuse this is what Charlie would do he would he would he would go somewhere and he would make an excuse that was like a formal reason to be there, but there was always kind of like an ulterior motive.

But it was, I'll never, like, and these are the memories I'm putting on a tweet right now that's saying, just write down these memories because I, until just now, I just forgot about that.

Was like driving him over in my car, just having that conversation, which was just like, and again, Andrew, I know you've had many of these, all of us have had many of these conversations one-on-one with Charlie, of just like the pep talks.

Because,

you know, even though Charlie was such a lying of a man, it takes a village, I think, of like having those conversations with one another.

It takes a family.

It takes a family.

Yeah, but he would position people in places to be able to speak to him and give him like that, like before he took the stage, like, okay, okay, okay, okay.

You know, but he would always, it's like, he would always just want that, even though you knew that he didn't need it.

And he, right, no, but you know, the other thing is, you'd think you had a really good idea, and you're like, hey, no, no, no, no, and I give it to him, and he'd be like, okay, okay.

And then he would always take, chew the meat, and spit out the bones.

He would, he was always so good at filtering out your bad ideas without like making you feel terrible.

Well, and that's like to that point, Erica became that person, like you were saying, yeah, right.

Erica became the person that would, uh,

you know, and it was a two-way road.

You know, you'd have to filter out some of Charlie's bad ideas, too, at times.

And Erica is, you know, has become the best at that.

She is the

go-to.

And I know that

that was the most valuable thing.

But to put a pen in it, that weird situation, though, which was that moment where I was sitting there with Charlie and the Trump rally culminated, and Eric was there, and then became his wife.

Like, the entire thing is like, again, you talk about God things.

Clearly, God has

his hand and watching over Charlie constantly.

Well, this is the Charlie Kirk show, and I want, we, we, we played,

sorry, we played

an opening, and we put together a Charlie Kirk,

which number is it, Blake?

Do you have it?

We put together a

just a montage of some great Charlie Kirk moments,

and I think it is 443 is the number.

We put together a montage for the audience of Charlie in his own words, and he loved this show

so much.

He loved this show.

And

he, I remember one time when I talked to him and I said, who's your greatest hero?

And

this space, you know, obviously Donald Trump's the president.

And, you know, that was the obvious answer.

But like, no, Trump.

You know, like, who's?

And he said, Rush Limbaugh.

And Charlie got to know Rush personally.

I think we had basically the last big event that

Rush did was introducing the president.

The last two.

So he never made public appearances.

Yeah.

He's a very private person.

He came to our event at Mar-a-Lago.

So we were one of the first groups to do anything with fundraisers, things like that at Mar-a-Lago.

People don't know that.

We actually did it very small, but Rush had such a personal connection with Charlie, and this was kind of early, too, before Charlie was kind of a known quantity everywhere.

Really leaned in and showed up.

Yeah, and

Charlie actually went to Rush's house, picked him up in the car, and

drove him there.

And we had, yeah, we gave him

the street.

Yeah, in West Palm Beach.

Or he would live in Palm Beach.

So he,

yeah, but Rush was his hero, and he listened to Rush.

Rush was so influential in just the way Charlie thought about politics.

And if you want to know why Charlie never lost the grassroots, he was always so into the grassroots.

It's because you emailed him.

It's because he looked at all your emails.

He looked at all the comments.

He could do 48 things, it seemed like, at once.

The most amazing multitasker I've ever seen.

When I would be here and

we'd be on the show during breaks, even, I'm going to say it, even sometimes when interviewing people, he'd be looking at the camera and yet somehow also on his computer, switching between tabs, texting, emailing, reading faster than you could even grasp what was going on.

All the emails he would share, like in the middle of a show segment, like right after you came out, or even

like in between someone else giving an answer.

Like, oh, Jack, you gotta figure out this.

Here's this email I got from.

Look at this.

And you're like reading the last three things that he sent you.

No, and he's always two steps ahead of time.

And his speed was,

I have no idea how he did it.

And he's, and these are, and what's crazy too is you could see it would be like, oh, hey, I got something from the Speaker of the House.

Oh, here's the president's son.

And then, like, here's a guy I met walking his dog and he needs a ballot.

Tyler, make sure this guy gets a ballot.

You know, like,

it didn't make any difference to him who he was talking to.

But he never lost sight of the grassroots.

And one of the guiding lights for that, and we set up freedom at charliekirk.com.

And please send your tributes to Charlie, your thoughts, your prayers, anything that's on your mind to freedom at charliekirk.com.

And I will do my best to read them.

And Blake, you're going to help read them.

And Jack and Tyler, and we want to see what you have to say to Charlie.

That's freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

And Rush always had his email dialogue with his listeners.

And Charlie took note of that and that it kept him close to the people because this world can get very insulating.

And it's, and Charlie never let that happen.

That's why he went to college campuses because he learned and he knew and he saw what kids were really thinking.

He always made such a point to stay so close to the public, even though he was so stratospherically famous.

We couldn't take him anywhere.

I mean, it was really at that point of

stardom and fame that we couldn't take Charlie anywhere.

But it all started with a love of the spoken word and what Rush Limbaugh told him.

And he would take lunch breaks from school just to listen to Rush Limbaugh.

And so to have this show and to be behind the microphone

was one of the greatest honors of his life.

And he did not take it for granted.

He loved it.

And he saw it as a way to pipe

the vanguard of the current thinking on the current debates into the zeitgeist and to keep the base steady and keep the coalition together.

So, without further ado, I want to play the show tribute that our team put together.

I haven't seen it yet, so I can't wait to watch it.

This is 443.

I want to thank my great friend, Charlie Kirk.

He's done something that is just incredible for somebody really of his age.

You need tremendous talent to do what he's done, building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created Turning Point USA and I want to thank you really Charlie incredible job

I have the greatest job in the world.

I couldn't be happier every day.

I feel as if what I'm saying what I'm doing is making a difference giving people meaning Charlie you should have emotion.

This is a moment you totally reformed the GOP.

And look what you guys have done.

Let me hear some words here from you, Charlie.

You put all this together, my man.

Let's hear it.

I am just humbled by God's grace.

It's all God.

It's all God.

God alone.

It's done.

It's done.

It's beginning.

We did not earn this.

This is God's mercy on our country.

Yes,

you're on the Lord's side.

Last week, we welcomed welcomed our beautiful daughter into the world.

Most important thing that one can do, except giving your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

We,

Erica and I and our family, were celebrating the birth of our son.

I'm just, I'm finding out how honest you are, Charlie.

And so far, I think you're doing good.

And I hope I'm doing good with you.

Candace Owens, welcome back.

Yes, good to be back.

I'm a Charlie Kirk show.

So, Megan, there's a lot happening right now.

And I recently went on the Bill Maher Show.

I want to get your reaction.

Matt, walk us through the decades-long journey from 2015 to today on the public opinion battle.

Michael, why are people going back to church?

People are going back to church because the atheism ran out of steam.

Ben, thank you for taking the time.

I was moved by your podcast on Monday about how we must stare the evil in the face.

Pete, you're doing a phenomenal job.

I just want to say that from the American people that

you don't get the credit that you deserve, obviously, in the mainstream media.

We are here with Stephen K.

Bannon.

Charlie,

I never roll through this town without seeing you.

It's always the highlight.

That's the advantage of being in Phoenix, is that you're like one of the only shows in town, so everyone kind of just comes on by.

I'm sick of people stealing my stick!

Wait, so a campus thing I've been doing for 13 years to debate random college kids has now been so important that it gets prominent prime time placement on Comedy Central.

I think the whole thing is just awesome.

Bobby Kennedy, welcome back to the program.

Charlie, thanks for having me.

They canceled the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, but it was my father.

If they can do that to him, they can do it to anyone.

If they can't do it, if we're all banded together and we're fighting one battle.

Don Jr., everybody.

Very special our episode for you today.

My wife joins us, Erica Kirk, the beautiful legendary Erica.

I love you so much.

I love you.

You're my best friend.

Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

Thanks, babe.

Was blind,

but now

I see.

Thanks so much for listening, everybody, and God bless.

That's a great job, guys.

Really good job.

We miss him.

That last shot is a fair.

I miss my friend.

I miss my friend.

You know, one of the things that Charlie was kind of interesting early in Charlie's career was he wasn't

he's a

prolific speaker obviously he's a genius on stage but he wasn't really interested in you know spotlight it's a really interesting piece to him was that he was it was I think that's kind of like almost like we were talking with I was talking with people and the best analogy to Charlie was that he was very much

in the come follow me spirit of of Christ.

I think that's what the most Christ-like thing about him was, was that people wanted to follow him.

Sorry, I just can't get through all this.

But he didn't want spotlight.

And I think that was part of his...

And so when I had suggested with our events team that we do bigger things, that we do consider because we have more people who want to show up and we have more kids and all that.

It wasn't about that for him.

It wasn't, people watched these things and they're like,

I mean, we went rock star.

We went full rock star on Charlie Kirk.

And a lot of that is thanks to Andrew.

I mean, without a doubt, you know, know, we give Erica, Erica 100% made him rock star.

I give you more credit for that because you forced him to do it, and then eventually he embraced it.

But

he wasn't interested in that.

But he also wasn't your sort of

central casting character to do it.

No.

And you made him

enter out, you know, embark out on a much bigger vision.

But this is the point with Charlie, is that he was a very humble person.

And I don't want that to change with how people start to take the memory of Charlie, because he's big.

He wasn't interested in what the states looked like or who was there, what the spotlight looked like.

He just wanted to tell the truth.

He just wanted to tell people

what they needed to hear.

And he was really good at that.

Really good at that.

But everything else was built around him for the right reasons.

I'm so sorry.

Like, I'm like spitting tears everywhere and everything else.

It's like splashstone.

But he is

his legacy is going to be what you said, Andrew, is that he was an incredibly humble person that was thrust into something that was so much bigger than all of us, so much bigger than him.

But he was the perfect person for the perfect time.

He always told young people: be a part of something bigger than yourself.

And

he is the

most iconic example of that that I think any of us can imagine.

You know, I wasn't going to do this,

but I think the team was absolutely spot on.

People want something to remember Charlie by.

I have been getting message after message, email, comment,

this huge outpouring of people saying,

and because Charlie, as as we all know

he loved

t-shirts apparel

he was always like get me one that says that get me one that says that like literally the team would screen press them almost on a two-hour turn and it's because it's because he understood that that is a a physical real messaging platform that you can wear in the real world in the real space that would be seen that would be seen billions of times in charlie's instance and and he wanted so whatever the message that he wanted to send or what he was thinking about would usually be what he would wear.

And there'd be times where he'd have

a different one on five days a week if you watched the show.

And that was all very, I just didn't mean to say it.

It's very deliberate.

It was not like some random thing.

No, no, no.

He loved his different shirts.

And so please put them back on screen, guys.

So here they are.

And they are available for purchase.

We're going to, as many as everybody wants.

We don't have them made yet.

So please be gracious with us.

We're going to to get them out as fast as we can.

CharlieKirkStore.com.

CharlieKirkStore.com.

And I think the team did an amazing job with them.

And

the middle one is, I am Charlie Kirk.

I've seen so many people saying that.

Yeah.

And

it's a beautiful testament, and I love it, and I want one.

And the other one is,

I'm just humbled by God's grace.

And that, of course, was from election night, November 2024, when Charlie got news that Pennsylvania had been called by Fox News for Donald Trump and that he would be the 47th President of the United States.

Right in this room.

That viral video had happened right here.

Right in this chair.

And Charlie put his hands up to his face, and

a man who doesn't cry very often got misty-eyed.

And

he gave all the glory to God, and I love that.

And I'm so glad that they picked

that moment.

And then the other one is

the freedom shirt.

And it has the date that it happened, and that's the shirt that he was wearing.

And we put the turning point hook on that sleeve as well.

And so if you want to honor Charlie and obviously you want to help the show,

that would be amazing.

Can I shout out?

you guys real quick i mean we have so many good people who work for it for charlie uh show his his personal side People don't talk about this.

I I was careful not to talk about this because Charlie again didn't like the spotlight of it all

but

Part of the reason why this show exists is because Charlie didn't want to do things that would cost money from turning point

for years and years and years and years Charlie didn't take a salary from turning point

He paid himself I know this because I I was the one that had to approve payrolls for at Turning Point for seven years.

He paid himself like $30,000 a year, then

a little bit.

Yeah, he didn't take a wage for the first five years, and then his first wage, I think, was like 20, it was tiny.

$15,000 the first year, $20,000.

And I know that because mine was tiny, too, when I came over, it was like insane.

And then the part of the show was that he was able to give back, so it cost...

Turning point nothing for Charlie to run Turning Point.

Yeah, people don't know this.

Charlie gave...

There was was this stupid AP article, I'll never forget, where they tried to,

I know, but they tried to make it sound like Charlie was somehow taking money from donors or something or fleecing the donors.

But here's the truth.

Charlie paid back his salary and then some back to Turning Point every year.

He donated back all that.

Go ahead, Tyler.

I was just going to say this is that.

He was able to do something beyond anyone else.

So there's, I mean, there's great people that people admire a lot.

lot rush is one of those people but rush didn't build in his spare time a turning point usa a turning point action and and all that right like charlie did all that gave it all back essentially for that and then we have the whole point of why i'm saying this is we have so many good people here at the show that that have that work here that that produce it to get truth out because again what that charlie was interested in wasn't spotlight it was getting the truth out it was doing something bigger than himself and every single person that's here that are back behind the glass right now and that are in this building that are across campus here at Turning Point headquarters

join Charlie on that vision and are part of that.

And so

with that, we talked about the shirts and everything else.

Please support

this mission to continue Charlie's voice with Charlie's show because there's so many good people here

that have done that.

And I know Andrew's.

Erica looked at me yesterday and she said the show has to keep going and turning point has to grow even bigger.

And

I hope I'm at liberty to say that.

I think she would want me to say that.

And so we don't know what the future holds for everything,

at least

with fine detail, but we know that that will happen and that we will honor that.

And I know Charlie would want that to happen.

That's the only way to honor Charlie is for everything to get bigger.

And to, again, again, that point, which is that this is bigger than any singular person,

but honoring Charlie's memory permanently with making Turning Point bigger and the mission, which is to activate as many human beings as possible to do the work, to do the Lord's work, and to do the work to save the Republic.

So put those shirts back up

for the radio.

If you can, you can go to charliekirkstore.com, charliekirkstore.com.

We have three options.

The election night shirt is a drawing of him

putting his hands on his face after he found out that Trump was going to be elected the 47th president.

And he said, I'm just humbled by God's grace.

And that's a beautiful one.

He is, I am Charlie Kirk.

And people love that.

I am Charlie Kirk.

I've been seeing that everywhere.

And then we have the shirt, the freedom shirt that he was wearing.

and with the date on it and the the turning point hook also on that on that sleeve.

I think that message message in the center shirt there, I'm Charlie Kirk, that speaks to what Tyler's talking about.

It's that it's the Charlie Kirk spirit, right?

I was saying this yesterday on an interview, you know,

who's the next Charlie Kirk?

Well, there isn't a next Charlie Kirk, but Charlie, if you asked him that in public, right?

He would say, you, you know, you go get a megaphone or

you know, a chair and go to your local park and set up a folding table on camp, whatever it is, right?

Whatever public place you can be and go do this too.

And so it doesn't mean, you know, it doesn't, it's not about him, right?

It's about you take that Charlie Kirk spirit and go and be the next one and go set up your chapter or go set up your thing and go be that person.

And that, I think, is the message that's now.

And you see this, it's around the world.

It's completely, we'll talk about it later, but it's totally around the world.

I'm getting messages from like, I don't even want to say, but just countries that you wouldn't even believe had heard of Charlie are doing vigils for Charlie.

I actually do want to talk about that at length because one of the things that I've realized,

and I tweeted about this or posted about this last night on X.

There was a video of a vigil that was sent to me, and I just,

and I said, I've constantly had to recalibrate my internal clock because you kind of

know how famous Charlie is, and then like something else would kind of blow your mind and be like, whoa, he's actually way bigger.

And Blake, I'm sure you had a bunch of those even in Seoul.

You're like, whoa, people know him here.

But

yeah, I am realizing that as much as I tried to recalibrate, I'm probably two years behind, like, actually, how famous he was.

Like, in my internal clock.

And I, in his death,

and Trump said this beautifully actually this morning on Fox.

I don't know what clip it is.

I'm sure we have it.

We'll play that.

Yeah, that he's now he's even bigger.

He was huge, and now he's a worldwide icon.

And

before we get off the topic,

I want to piggyback on Tyler and just say thank you to the staff for being here today.

Yeah, their hearts are broken too.

Impossible to impossible.

And all of our turning point staff right now are at home with family,

as expected.

But again, for here, being part of the show and honoring Charlie, I mean, that's just such a hard thing to ask people to do.

And I can't thank you each enough.

Everybody behind the glass, seriously, thank you for being here.

Thank you to our amazing team.

They really are amazing.

And Charlie loved them dearly.

Here we are at the Charlie Kirk Show studio.

I remember building this studio, and I remember...

designing it so Charlie would be here and then he decided he liked it here better.

So we flipped everything.

And he had to have his Oregon duck thing over there.

It was the original original was a straight line.

Yeah, it was a straight line.

Well, this desk actually is modular, and so you can kind of fold it so that the two levels fold into one another, and it was just a desk, and it was supposed to be designed so that if you had guests, it could fold out.

But he just liked it like this all the time.

Wasn't it we did we did one of the election night streams or something, and we set up the V, and he just liked it he just like liked it left it and he just left it that way well this when we I remember walking into so the story of this complex is really interesting because we were in Chicago and we came over here and we found this this this space because we wanted to have a building for turning point that was by itself yeah and fast forward to we had to go through and talk every single one of the people in this complex to sell the buildings so I I had to get on the phone with these guys and luckily we had this incredible kid that was in real estate that helped, and we talked him into it.

But I remember walking through this building for the first time, and this is a garage.

This was actually a garage.

So this was like a shop.

Like they had like a bunch of machines and stuff in here, and they used to have all this equipment that was like hanging off.

And we just started going through, just yanking stuff out.

And we're like, this will be the home for

Charlie Kirk studio.

And I feel bad for the audience because

I'm not sitting in Charlie's seat, you're seeing the profile shot of Tyler because he's looking at at me when he's talking.

So I apologize.

It's been everything on the show that I'm always looking at.

I'm always looking at Charlie.

Because that's Tyler's seat.

I know, and I kept telling the studio, I was like, can we get that camera?

Andrew's pointing out this is a blocking violation for films on TV.

It's worth it.

But we've kind of always done it.

Let me ask you this when radio gets back on.

But I was just talking with the, we took a quick bio break, as they call it in the business.

And I was asking the team, I was like, What do people want to hear right now?

And the whole team is out there in the bays, and they were like, People want to hear stories about Charlie, and they want to see the behind-the-scenes stuff.

And so I want us to share that with him and

with the audience our interactions with him.

And I don't want to force you to start when we're going to be welcoming back national radio in about a minute.

But that's, um, there are there are

there's that line in in the Bible about Jesus where it says you know there there would be the writing of endless books about all the things that Jesus did and I feel like

not to compare Charlie to Jesus but his life is like that where if you compiled all the little things that he did for all the tens of thousands of people that he interacted with, there would be no end of the books that we could write about his life.

And

that is

a true it's like so true.

Like, I'm not even.

That's not even

31 years on this planet, and that's not even a hyperbolic thing to say.

That's not me exaggerating.

It's a really remarkable feat.

And so, Blake,

we're just going to go around the table.

I was just going to put you on the hot seat first, so it wasn't me.

So,

our team is telling us that people want to hear more personal stories that you wouldn't have seen if you didn't know Charlie.

So, Blake, the floor is yours.

Tell us a story about Charlie that you think people would like to hear or that they haven't heard yet.

Man, I'm thinking of a few things.

Gosh, personal stuff.

I think one of the things that always impressed me about Charlie was his immense

personal discipline about everything he did.

He had, you know, his day was very ordered.

Everything he did was very ordered, and he didn't deviate from that.

And if you, you know, asked him about that, he'd be like, well, this is the smart thing to do.

Why would I do something different?

And the thing I'd always tease him about is the number of foods he ate, which is about four or five.

Like, I would joke about this, and I'm not exaggerating.

The variation of food Charlie ate was like grilled chicken, avocado, hot sauce, like cabbage, lettuce, like that.

Like salmon, I guess.

And I think he used to have beef, but I think he later decided red meat was probably

bad than good.

He started doing that.

He said it was like a couple years ago that he just, because he said he wanted to get back in fighting shape or something.

Yeah.

charlie as long as i've known charlie has always been

very focused on what he puts inside his body yeah from day one it was i remember because i've always when i was when i first met charlie i was skinny and then i got you know

you know dad fat less skinny at your road layer i got dad fat i put on the pregnancy weight a few times uh throughout that that cycle campaign 30.

but charlie was always and he would always kind of yell at me you know and andrew i'm probably sure you've had some of these situations.

Blake probably hasn't, but

never got yelled at for what he eats, but he would be like, because I would like pound sodas and like, I was like, oh, yeah, and then it caught up with me.

I was like Charlie's like sin eater because

I eat everything.

But he would eat like piles of singular foods.

So it would be like stacks of, like stacks of broccoli.

He would order that, like steamed broccoli, or he would order just meat, right?

It would just be like meat.

And then he would just, he would pound through it.

He would eat like as we're talking, talking like like we didn't have time to waste as we were going it would just eat

later in life he enjoyed i think he enjoyed meals a little bit more but the early was like we were going going going he's always in the travel ready to go and he would just eat and i would just sit there and be like oh because i would order like a normal sandwich and like drink a drink but he would just eat to eat but it was always healthy and uh he would always be like you're gonna eat that like he would look at me like you're gonna eat that you're gonna put that i actually remember i think the night i think i'm pretty sure we were all there too.

It was the night of the RNC when he gave his speech there.

Not the 16 or 20, but the 24.

And I think I want to, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he have like a couple of chicken wings?

And he like made a huge deal.

He had a couple, and we had like a huge pile of

hoodishly vast pile.

But it was like each, as Tyler was saying, like each box was a separate food.

And then we had a whole bunch of chicken wings that we were all just chowing down on.

And he goes, I will allow myself to have a few.

Well, and that was like

he would find something he liked.

And early on, he used to say this all the time.

He'd be like, You could build a religion around those things.

Have you ever heard that?

Have you ever heard him say that?

We could build a religion around this thing.

No, when he found a food he liked, he'd be like, You could build a religion around those things or that thing or whatever.

But it's like the first time he's eating it.

But no, he wouldn't.

No, it would be.

It would be like, it'd be like, I'd be like, I mean, I think he's chicken.

These are great.

He's chicken break.

You could build a religion.

I think I heard Charlie say that no short of like 500 times.

Yeah,

there's certain set phrases that were just like the Charlie phrases.

And, you know, when you say them, you could just hear it in his voice because

that's the only guy who talks that way.

What about

you, Jack?

Do you have a fun Charlie story that you think the audience hasn't heard or would like to hear?

Oh, man.

You know,

look, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's just private.

So that's like, how do you how do you steep through that?

Um,

you know, I'll tell the story that in uh you know from last year though that I think is just just kind of a funny thing.

So Charlie

worked so hard on these campus tours that

people don't realize that he worked himself sick last year.

And there were, I don't know, two, three weeks where he just he had no voice.

He completely lost his voice out there on the campus tours, the campaigns between everything.

He was traveling so much and just picking up whatever germs and bugs and all the rest.

And obviously with his health regimen and that he, you know, he did what he could, but, you know, sometimes it just kind of doesn't work that way.

And

I remember we had, we had talked about, and he was like, hey, Jack, you know, you're a Pennsylvania guy.

We're doing this Penn State.

I think it's going to be big.

Do you want to come?

And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, we'll see if it works out with the schedule, et cetera.

And then a couple of days before the event, he sent, or no, the day before the event, he sends me this text and says, Jack, we need to talk.

So I we need to talk.

I lost my voice.

So then I call him and he immediately hangs up and he texts me back and I said, he said, Jack, I can't talk.

I lost my voice.

I can only text.

And so he, he's like, I need you up here.

And

so I get up to Penn State, and the entire time we're there, and I'm with him, we're spending time, and he's like sending me text messages or just writing stuff on his face.

And you're like right next to him?

Yeah, and he's like showing it, and I'm like saying it or tweeting it or whatever it is.

And then as we're about to go, you know, we have this whole thing set up, and there's thousands of kids.

I mean, 5,000, maybe.

Because I know we brought,

We brought 30,000 hats, but then we ran out, and only about half of the kids had hats.

So that's why I know.

You would not believe the number of hats that Turning Point bought and still managed to run out.

And it was insane.

And then the campus ended up shutting down the speakers.

What do you mean that many boxes?

I want to just

throw out hats.

It was so many boxes.

Like the logistics of getting that many hats is actually to each campus was actually a marvel in and of itself.

And you're reminding me of, go ahead.

I don't know if you had something you wanted to add, Tyler.

No, I was just going to say that

the miracle of the organization of Turning Point being able to do all those things is what enabled so much of Charlie Kirk, right?

Charlie was

wanted to be enabled all the time with every little crazy idea that he had.

I would call Charlie Kirk wild goose chases, like with stuff.

We would just be like constant stuff, right?

And it was just like trying to channel where those things would go, but the enabling of the staff to do the things that needed to be done because Charlie was almost always right on these things.

He was always right on.

And when you got one that was right,

you would make a mental note and be like, yeah.

Because

it was 99 to 1.

But where he wanted to go with everything was always right.

And

he knew he had the vision.

And the people people who helped execute that deserve a ton of credit.

Every person, every,

I look at the videos from the campus tours.

Every one of our activists that is there, that's volunteering to help hold microphones to, you know, standing in the gap there, especially in such scary times as where we're at today.

They have been such incredible warriors.

And that honors Charlie so much.

Yeah, we have this.

Let's go ahead and play.

We have just enough time.

This is Charlie eating with chopsticks in Japan with Blake 479.

Is it like a big thing?

Yeah, of course.

Am I doing okay?

Yeah, perfect.

This is Noto.

What a mental

bean.

It's very good.

It's so gooey.

It's very gooey.

Why is it so gooey?

Because it's fermented, I think.

Right.

That's great.

It's very good for a US soul.

Blake, I remember

you and I were on a chat when this was happening or moments after it happened, and he was like, there was literally 11 dishes in this thing.

It was amazing.

Oh, the Japanese food.

I mean, you can build a religion around this.

Yeah, you can build a religion around a religion.

People don't realize how he would just get fixated on

how he would, you know, he would interrogate me about things.

Because

Charlie loved to learn things, loved to pick new things up, and and yet he was also so busy all of the time so he would even just he would send me on he's like Blake you have to learn all about this thing so that you can just tell me about it when I need to learn about it later so I'll I'll go read you know a 300 page book about this so that I can just be ready yeah when Charlie interrogates me I remember once on a flight it was like an hour and he's just like Blake tell me about the Roman Empire I'm like

the start or the end he's like whatever you want and just started going off about that I also asked you about that Blake is a very good resource if you want to learn about the Roman Empire And he was he was very, you know, sometimes just to, he would ask Mikey, he would be like, Mikey, just ask Chad GPT to make some trivia questions, and then let's just see if Blake can get them.

And he was very proud that, you know, he's like, okay, Blake, I'm going to lose to you on, you know, history.

I'm going to probably lose to you on geography.

But he was very proud that he was competitive with me on, you know, biblical stuff because he was very,

he loved to study the Bible, you know, book by book.

He was really into that.

He was very, very proud of that.

And he was right.

He was better at Bible trivia than I was.

Actually, that's something I could share, and I'm sure we all could.

That you know, late, you know, late night, whatever it is, people would say, Well, what is Charlie like in the in you know, off-air?

It

he would be constantly going through books of the Bible, and then he would send you, you know, some file or a podcast or something and be like, Jack, I just did this five-hour course on the book of Deuteronomy.

You need to go through all five hours and come back to me with it.

Yeah, um, and not even for the show.

I have a story like this actually from recent.

We were in Aspen Aspen doing

an investor summit,

and it was an amazing trip.

And we had a Cambridge professor who was actually,

we played that

the last live, it was a pre-record, but it was like the last radio live hour

before he started speaking at campus.

And it was with Dr.

James Orr.

He's an amazing Cambridge professor.

And

he

flew back from Aspen,

and Charlie was like, What are you doing tomorrow?

And James was like, Well, I don't fly out until Monday, and it was a Sunday.

So, Charlie was like, Well, do you want to have breakfast with us, and we'll do our morning worship, and then I'll pick you up.

And can you just like teach me all day?

And James was like, Well, you just want to, you know, you just want to do class?

And he's like, Yeah, like I just want to do class.

And

so

they sat in a room, and Charlie peppered him with questions.

And you have to understand, Dr.

James Orr not only sees the world similarly the way we do, but he has like a photographic memory of the classical Western canon, of all the texts that make up the Western.

He can remember almost page and verse of all of these great books, and he can connect them, how they relate to now, and where we got this word, and how it evolved from this.

And so Charlie was gathering this three-dimensional understanding of the Latin and the Greek and how it made up European history, which gave birth to America, obviously, the Western canon.

But that was Charlie's idea of a Sunday well spent.

And I remember being so jealous.

That's a day off for Charlie.

That was a day off.

I remember being so jealous because I had to go back home.

I had to catch a flight Sunday morning to get back home.

And I mean, I got to be with my family, and it was great, and that's where I should have been.

But Charlie got to spend the day with his family and learning from one of the great minds in

Christendom.

And it was amazing.

That was Charlie in a nutshell.

I also, it's weird things that I remember right now.

Charlie walking around all the time with like, he'd wear shorts on planes with like his tall socks.

Yeah.

So he always,

the tall socks.

The tall socks.

Tall socks.

It improves circulation, Andrew.

No, he would always talk to me about this.

He's like, it's a thing for tall people, Jack.

It's It's compression socks.

You wear them.

You wear them on planes.

The pressure.

He had it all like...

I'm not going to

decision made.

A week ago,

I was actually flying out to Korea for a thing.

I was like, okay, I've got to see if there's something to this.

And I just put on socks and I pulled them all the way up and I wore them that for about half the day.

And then I thought, this is way too annoying.

And I slid them back down.

He would say, you're not tall enough.

Yeah.

But you probably did have really good circulation.

He may be.

He is right most of the time.

I wanted to read something that Danny on the team.

Danny's a young guy.

Charlie loved Danny so much.

And Danny's quiet, doesn't always say a whole lot.

But when he speaks, you better listen because he's been thinking about it for a long time.

And Danny wanted to share this with me.

I hope it's okay.

I think it is.

He says, Charlie's story.

Last year when I was living out here interning, I was living in the hood off of GCU campus.

Charlie found out and goes, okay,

you're going to either live at my apartment or at my in-laws.

And he's like, I convinced him I would be fine, and I stayed where I was for a few months.

He was one of the kindest people I've ever met.

And

I love that story because

somehow this was true about Charlie, that he was balancing huge organizations, a thousand relationships, donors, friends, the show,

politicians, other organizations.

He had all these plates spinning in his head all the time, and he would somehow find time to worry about my well-being.

Or

is your wife and kids, are they going to come?

Do you need me to set them up with something?

Do you want me, can I get them here?

Are you okay?

Do you want me to put you at this hotel?

Like, he would, his brain was just always moving and spinning, and he was always thinking about other people and their well-being.

And how many stories I heard of that, Tyler?

I mean, right?

It's like you saw it in the organizational feats of Turning Point, how he would think about the speaker coming in to make sure they were all taken care of.

And he had it built into the schedule that he had to go backstage to meet so-and-so at such a time because he wanted to just say thanks for coming.

It was the intricacy of his mind and the details he was able to hold all at one time, truly amazing.

One of the things that

I just keep seeing over and over is everyone telling the stories of how they got introduced to Charlie.

And I've had received, again, thousands of messages.

I can't even respond back.

I know Andrew feels the same.

All of us probably feel the same.

Jack is a savant at keeping up with people.

I don't know how he does it, but I just can't even keep up.

So I'm not even going to try.

So I apologize.

But everything I keep seeing over and over is, Tyler, I know you were close to Charlie.

I didn't know him personally, but I want you to know how I was introduced to Charlie.

And nine times out of ten, you you know what the answer is?

One of my kids turned me on to Charlie.

They show me Charlie.

And this is like, and this kind of goes hand in hand a little bit with what you're talking about.

It's just, it's always shocking to me

how,

again, the Charlie Kirk phenomenon, how he led his life, how everything just ultimately ended up, you know, in front of people.

And for so many young people, again, and that's the mission of Turning Point.

Turning point, we always were, we're trying to get young people involved and engaged.

But to not only see young people getting involved and engaged and loving Charlie and being interested in his content, whether it's TikToks to all the way through long form podcasts,

is that they were taking their parents, in most cases, old Gen Xers or baby boomers, and saying, you need to listen to this, or grandparents.

And it's so interesting to me, and this is the legacy that has to carry on in such a profound way, is that young people can be the spur.

They can be the dynamics.

They can be the activating element.

And Charlie was right.

No one believed this, by the way, when we started.

There was no one.

And Charlie would get that face, you know, when he would tell you, he'd get excited because he'd be like, I'm going to prove you wrong.

And he'd get that voice in his.

He literally took on the hardest.

I can't.

The hardest job.

At the time, it was unfathomable.

And it was like, you have chosen potentially the dumbest career mission imaginable.

Obama-era era college campuses.

Guys, you don't understand.

That is the definition of the belly of the beast.

And where we are today is where young people are carrying on their shoulders the Charlie Kirk voice to the older generation in a lot of cases.

And I'm so that I never have really spent time thinking about that.

I mean, I know it and we're really excited about it because I do that with my parents and grandparents, but it's.

It's been so rewarding to see.

And if Charlie could sit here and read all these messages that I'm receiving that are saying that exact thing, he would be ecstatic.

And we used to send those in the chat all the time, but I actually have some breaking news.

I don't know if I should share it or not, but I'm going to.

It looks like the Cubs are going to be recognizing Charlie today.

I don't even want to tell that story.

I can't tell that story.

But they should have

a very important to Charlie.

He loved the Cubs.

His grandma was a lifelong Cubs fan, and she got to see the Cubs win the World Series and then passed away.

And Charlie was like, that was.

She lived to see

the greatest thing as a sports fan for her.

And that meant a lot.

Because no one thought it was ever going to happen.

Yeah, Charlie loved the Cubs.

Loved the Bears too, but it was a little bit harder to be a Bears fan.

I actually was.

It was hard to be a Cubs fan a lot of the time.

Do you remember

one of the last chats that we had?

We were, we were just, you know, because on

by the way, that picture right there that's up on screen, that was really recent.

A couple weeks ago, right?

I was with him, and we went to that game.

And

there's a great, yeah, it's a picture with the Cubs team, and then those, you know, all these haters online tried to, like, shame that player.

I forget his name, but he lives in Phoenix as well.

And

it's the third baseman.

Hit a home run that day,

I think, just for Charlie, which was like amazing.

And I actually have a couple pictures from that day, so go ahead, Jack.

No, no, I was just going to say, on Sundays, especially, you know, people don't realize how big of a sports fan Charlie was.

And on Sundays, you know, the group chat would turn into basically whatever game he was watching.

And just, you know, yeah, one of our last things was just busting his balls about the Bears.

And the Bears joking away.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I was scrolling through.

That's a story people would like.

I was scrolling through.

Charlie was so focused.

And it it was always that we would have uh

you know america fest is right before christmas and that's when the bull games are ramping up and i think even maybe some of the playoff games were going on this last year i can't remember what the schedule was but he wanted to see what was going on he was no he was mad what game was it he was mad that he wouldn't be able to watch a game in real time because but we would literally have something that we have we have the big stage at amfest and then behind it is our kind of command center green room and there's a table and Charlie had a place he could sit, and he had a TV monitor set up to be showing one of these football games.

And he's just sitting there, like watching it during his literal two minutes of downtime before the next thing at Amfest.

And he'd have his bowl with his chicken and lettuce that he was able to eat and his hot sauce.

He'd just be sitting there watching it really intensely.

And you know, I'd walk by.

He's like, Blake, come here, come here, come on, let's watch what's watching, Blake.

Okay, Charlie.

I please put this B-roll up.

Just don't play the sound on it because I haven't reviewed it for anything.

I never shared this, but this was just from a couple weeks ago.

That's me filming and Charlie and Erica.

And we went out.

That was the first time Charlie got to walk out

into Wrigley Field, onto the field right there.

It was before the game.

And it was so awesome.

And the IV right there.

And

this is Charlie, of course.

Looking back.

Give me the thumbs up.

And,

man,

we had just a heck of a time getting into the stadium because there was all these security barriers.

But

they had arranged it with us beforehand to let Charlie get right up close so that we could just kind of get out of the car and get on there onto the field.

And this was his childhood favorite team, the Cubbies.

He's got his Cubs hat.

I kept wanting to get him one of the new era, or like the actual field hats.

Oh, he would never do that.

But he liked his

little low-profile one.

It was the one he wore.

I think that's the same Cubs hat he wore at Student Action Summit

when he was doing the Prove Me Wrong with the students there.

And it was just so fun.

It was so fun.

He wanted to be there with us.

He was a little bit his whole life.

Yeah.

He wanted to be, he loved that field and that stadium.

This is way back in the day, but we had actually taken,

we used to have our headquarters in Chicago.

So it was it was a ways out from from Chicago.

And I remember at the early time, this is like right after we had made some changes to really grow Turning Point USA.

We did a team builder at

the Cubs Stadium at Wrigley Field.

And so we Charlie and I had driven over to the the Cubbs state, you know, to Wrigley.

Very difficult to to park.

You have to like basically just park in people's garages and things like that.

But we took all of the staff there.

And it was at the time, I think we have like 20 people.

And I remember we're just there and we're sitting and he just nonstop would be talking about to everybody how, because we had staff from all over the country at the time, just different places, about how great the Cubs were, how much he loved them.

And you knew from that moment how much...

that mattered to Charlie.

And there were a few things that were like Chicago boy things.

I mean, he loved Chicago.

He told me, Tyler, Chicago is the greatest city on planet Earth.

I'm never going to leave.

And I was really nervous, you know, when we...

But then

you were instrumental in him falling in love with Phoenix.

He's really a

Chicago boy at heart.

And the Wrigley, the Cubs, yeah, everything else was such a big part of the things that he loved.

Right here in his studio in Phoenix, Arizona.

His seat is empty because we are honoring one of the greatest people any of us will ever meet: a legend, an icon, a martyr, a man who lifted up God

above all.

His faith in Jesus Christ was the most important thing to him.

And then it was his family, Erica, his two beautiful kids.

And

then it was the country and turning point

and

everything that our founders built.

And

I'm just realizing, Jack and Tyler and Blake, that

how much I've been changed by this

person.

It was funny, even while we were starting the show, and it didn't occur to me while I was doing it.

And so I hope it didn't come off as some fake emulation.

But I was sitting here going like, hey, send so-and-so in.

Hey, send so-and-so in.

And then like,

I remember that's what Charlie would do before the show.

It was always like,

and it's like,

I don't think I'm going to fully understand how much I've been affected and transformed and changed by Charlie.

And I don't think I'll ever fully understand it.

Because

you're not purposefully doing it like Charlie is

Charlie's imprint.

You are so saturated with so much Charlie Kirk at all times that.

No, the way I put it was like,

like people ask you, what about this question?

What about this question?

Would Charlie wanted this?

Would Charlie wanted that?

And it's like,

it's like I can hear him in a way.

Not like he's speaking to me, but it's just, if you know him, you kind of know what he would say.

Yeah.

You know, you almost know, not on like, you know, certain things, but just little basic things.

You just, well, that's what Charlie would say this.

Well, Charlie would say this.

Charlie would do this.

And you just, you just, you just know.

You just know that that's what he would have wanted.

And

it's weird because, you know, talking to everybody throughout all of this, it's, you know, even having having heard that Erica said that she wanted the cameras on and wanted this up, I know that's exactly what Charlie would have wanted.

That he would say, get on the stream, get the rumble up.

It's almost like we are the large

language model for Charlie Kirk because

we've had so much input from this person.

Well, I mean, that's...

That's what a life is, right?

When you know somebody.

Yeah.

That's what they do.

They imprint on you.

People didn't give Charlie enough credit for how funny he was.

Charlie could be hilarious.

Charlie was funny, but it was his own very distinct brand of it.

Like, because he was so distinctly Charlie and so rigidly Charlie Kirk, when he would kind of come, you know, you would do that look when he'd go,

you know.

But he would make...

Oh man, the plane rides were the best.

We would just get on topics.

Yes.

It was topics, and it would almost kind of turn into the best way to describe Charlie Kirk's humor is probably Seinfeld.

He'd love Seinfeld.

I've been only watching Seinfeld.

I've needed it to fall asleep the last couple of nights.

He'd live Seinfeld.

He loved Seinfeld.

But it was like kind of these weird, funny, just like situational things with personalities involved where it's like we would kind of talk about those things and it would be like, oh, I was like, what's this guy doing?

And that, that's that.

And like, this is, isn't it funny how this is connected?

That's connected.

And it was like kind of smart humor, but it's like, that's the very in-real life reality show type.

He was a good storyteller, too.

And I almost feel bad that so many of the funniest ones you can't tell because it's

private information.

But when he could actually tell you something, him relating it secondhand was

so funny.

I'll give you a good Seinfeld moment from Charlie Kirk's life.

And I'll never, I think about this all the time, and I don't know why.

It just sticks with me.

So Charlie and I were going back and forth to LA for like every week for like a year.

It was there's a reason for it.

It was crazy.

It was stupid, but my life got like completely uprooted and I was going to LA every week.

So the horrible part about this is we had to find LAX and LAX is like a third world country.

And it just is.

And like you just like.

And again, for people who have patience, you can probably get through LAX.

Charlie Kirk cannot.

And we were flying just back and forth.

And so

one day we cut it really close on the Uber that we were going back to LAX.

And you get in the loop around LAX.

It's like a horseshoe.

And if it's stopped, and there's like that Uber spot where you have to.

But you're so close to the terminal, but you're really not.

Yeah.

Are you talking about just as you enter the airport?

No, just the horseshoes.

I just are going around.

If it's packed.

So sometimes you can just bounce and then you can run faster than the other one.

People who don't know LAX, that's a total thing where you're stuck in your Uber outside the airport and you can see the whole string of cars and people are getting out running and walking.

But you can cut across the thing.

You can cut your hands.

Yeah, because it's a horseshoe and in the middle they have parking and there's some pathways you can actually cut right in through.

So anyways, this guy

was this guy.

This guy was dropping us off and, you know, he wasn't communicating very well.

And we're going through and

that basically scenario played out.

And he's like, oh, well, it's just right up here.

It's right up there.

And we just kept going and going and going.

He's like, and I just remember the guy had messed up and then missed.

He cut through the middle because there's a kind of a road through the middle and actually missed he's like oh, we're gonna go have to go back and do this all over again and we just flew open the doors He's like this is crazy and like he just like looked at the guy he's like this is actually crazy and we like grabbed our stuff out of the car and we're like having a walk across the airport But I just rings in my ear the whole time because the guy was like oh no, it's fine.

I do this all the time and but the interaction between Charlie and this guy and us trying to get into the airport you can almost hear the

um he loved this this clip, by the way.

He actually thought that Seinfeld had really profound, like, deeper

parallels.

He thought it basically thought our entire modern world could be.

There was going to be a Seinfeld episode that mocked and parodied what we're experiencing now.

And so he loved this ribbon clip.

So let's just go ahead and play the ribbon clip if we have it.

I don't know what number.

It doesn't have a number, but it's the ribbon clip.

You're checked in?

Thank you.

Here's your AIDS ribbon.

No, thanks.

You don't want to wear an AIDS ribbon?

No, no.

But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.

I have to.

Yes.

Yeah, see, that's why I don't want to.

But everyone wears the ribbon.

You must wear the ribbon.

What you are?

You're a ribbon bully.

Hey.

Hey, you, come back here.

Come back here and put this on.

Hey, where's your ribbon?

Well, I don't wear the ribbon.

You don't wear the ribbon?

Who do you think you are?

Put the ribbon on.

Hey, Cedric, Bob, this guy won't wear a ribbon.

Who?

Who doesn't want to wear the ribbon?

And

remember, Charlie loved this because it was the parallel to the Black Squares during George Floyd and this coercive, you have to put it up, and if you don't, you're guilty.

And that was just one instant of

Charlie

using Seinfeld as, and I'll never forget, he always brings Eric Metaxas on the show.

And the first thing he does when Eric Metaxas comes on, and he'll make like an inside Seinfeld joke reference because Eric loves Seinfeld as well.

And it's a beautiful thing.

Man, it's just watching that clip.

Charlie loved that clip.

Charlie loves saying that line.

You must wear the ribbon.

Yeah.

I'm going to miss joking around with him so much.

That's.

How did you get him to wear this hat?

This is hilarious.

Tyler.

This is my greatest moment, by the way.

Tyler got him to wear this hat.

Put this hat up.

I can't believe you got it.

I forgot you got him to wear that.

The one thing that I feel

happiest about is that I was able to get Charlie to do crazy things for a long time.

Again, for that, but

we had these hats that said

precinct sheriff on them.

Sheriff, yeah.

Because we're focused on recruiting for precincts.

And this is how serious about it.

And Charlie was very serious about chapters.

And on our political side, we talked about precincts and getting everyone involved in the precinct level.

And so I was like, Charlie, if you're serious about this, you got to wear this.

And we, I think, we wore for a thought crime episode.

Yeah, everybody had to wear it.

Charlie, I think Charlie probably took that off pretty quickly, but it was great that he

was always a good sport.

No, he had it on for quite a bit of the episode.

Charlie was always a good sport, actually.

And

South Park.

They didn't understand the South Park.

We found the clip 477

of Rush talking about Charlie.

I'm going to play it before

this show is out because

this show is the Charlie Kirk show, and Rush Limbaugh inspired Charlie to pursue this line of work.

There's no question about it.

That's not me speculating.

I know for sure that's why.

And

so I'm going to play the Rush Limbaugh clip because they were both two men that we lost.

way, way too early.

And I'm pretty sure that was the clip.

I just saw it.

And

Rush saw,

yeah, it's 477.

Let's go ahead and play it.

They brought Charlie Kirk to the golf course to meet me about a month ago.

He was in town to set up this turning point thing, and they brought him to the golf course to meet me.

It was during, we were getting ready for an 8:45 a.m.

start,

and they brought him out while I was getting ready to go to the range and loosen up.

And I spoke with him for about a half hour.

And he told me how he grew up in a home where my program was on all the time.

He was

just effusively complimentary to me, which I, of course, understood and

told him he's very wise.

His family is very wise.

He chuckled.

He laughed.

This is the kind of guy

that

you can see

really becoming big in politics as he gets older.

He just has

the carriage, the personality, the charisma.

You may think this sounds weird, but I remember when Bill Clinton became president,

there were all of these stories about Bill Clinton at Oxford and Bill Clinton at Yale and Bill Clinton here and all these people who went to school with him.

There was story after story after story where people were saying that they just knew Bill Clinton was going to be president someday in college.

He just had that kind of ambition and he impressed people.

And I'm telling you that people are saying the same things about Charlie Kirk.

Yeah,

Rush saw it,

and Rush knew.

And

Rush didn't want people to know this.

And then we asked Catherine after he passed.

And

she

said it was okay to share that Rush was a seven-figure donor to Turning Point

and because he believed so much in Charlie and what he was building and the mission of Turning Point USA.

And

I want all of you to rest assured that are wondering what's next.

Turning Point USA is not going anywhere.

The mission that Charlie started, he always wanted it to be an institution that would outlive him.

And we obviously wanted so much more time with him, but that was very clear.

that that was spoken of expressly.

And I know all of us are ready to get to work on that.

We're honored by all our partners at Real America's Voice who believed in this show.

And they've always been so supportive, by the way.

They would send crews halfway around the world to have our back.

Rob Sig, Parker Sig.

We love you guys.

You know what you mean to us.

And I've talked with both of you in the moments after and since and Jack I know you work with them directly as well and your show's coming up next and we're going to keep going for yeah but I'm not

just it'll be the Charlie Kirk we're going to do this we're just going to continue this yeah

and

anyways we love them and

there's so many people that we should remember and thank thousands thousands and thousands and we're not gonna this this probably is not the show to do that um just because it's impossible and we're going to forget too many people.

But

I just can't tell you how many people believed in Charlie and gave us a shot.

And as a matter of fact, I am.

Daisy,

do I have your permission to read this?

All right, so this is from Daisy Phelps.

Daisy,

she was originally Daisy Dibley when she joined us, and she got married, and now she's expecting her first child, and we love Daisy.

She,

you were joking, Tyler, you were like, my life was really hard, and then you came along, and then I was like, Yeah, and then my life was really hard, and you were like, I felt bad.

I didn't want to tell you

how much easier my life got when I came around.

And my life was really hard until Daisy Dibley came around, and now Daisy Phelps.

100%.

And then Blake, candidly,

changed everything as well.

I'm trying to make sure I got my show clock right here.

So this is from Daisy, who would do Charlie's makeup and make sure his eyebrows, because he had these crazy eyebrows.

He had like 60-year-old eyebrows at 27.

Like, they would just spark up like this.

And I was like, Daisy, make sure his eyebrows are like his hair.

He had this crazy mop that would just fight you.

And Daisy got really good at kind of putting it all together.

And Daisy also ran his Instagram account and so much more.

So much.

She did so much around here.

She said, Charlie was a force, a believer, a patriot.

He was my friend.

I've had the privilege of speaking to him every day for the last four years, and I can't tell you that I've ever known someone with more integrity.

He was exactly who he said he was, except better.

There wasn't one thing that was fake or fabricated.

He believed in what he said, and he lived out what he believed.

He loved Jesus more than anyone.

The truest thing about him was his belief in God.

He was constantly researching new ways to defend the gospel and making sure we all knew them.

It was that important to him.

I can still hear him say, good morning, sports fans, coming into our studio every morning.

I can still hear the worship music coming out of his office.

I and everyone in the building was watching.

I can still hear, oh, I can still hear the cubs games he'd turn on, all the TVs to make sure everyone in the building was watching.

I can still hear his kids running to hug him during breaks.

He not only took a chance on me at 21 years old, but he pushed me,

trusted me, and listened to me.

Our show was everything to us.

We lived and breathed breathed the Charlie Kirk show because we believed in it.

We still do.

He consistently raised the bar for everyone on our team by first raising it for himself every day.

He saw greatness in you, and he brought it out by first being great himself.

Just being around him, being in the background, made you want to fight harder.

He was ecstatic when I told him I was pregnant.

He made sure to ask about the baby every day.

He wanted to see every ultrasound, and when we found out it was a girl, he yelled, I told you.

My faith is completely different had I never met Charlie.

My career, my adult life, my marriage from watching the way he loved Erica, everything is different had I never met him.

I'll never be the same, and I wouldn't want to be.

If there was one thing to know about Charlie, it's that he loved Jesus.

He is with God.

He spent so much time learning about and teaching others about.

We just miss him.

And I know we're all very honored to be here.

We're going to keep going for another hour, Jack, and

at least.

And I'd like to

have an opportunity for people in the audience to call in and tell their stories and how they remember Charlie.

So I want to do that.

So I don't know if we're planning on doing that today.

I think we probably should just keep going.

And so let's set up, let's make sure the studio is ready to do that in a little bit.

But

go ahead, Tom.

Andrew, there's a few people to, you know, and again,

it's really important.

Yes, please do.

This is not not the show to everybody because there's so many people who are influential, but there's a few people who are so dear to Charlie that I know of that

just loved him to pieces.

Mike Miller, who's been one of our longtime board members, is like a father figure to Charlie.

And in fact, he's one of the individuals

who

has been there from really day one.

When I met Charlie, he was a big-time big game hunter, Africa, everything else.

But he's a jeweler, a big jeweler in Illinois.

He's from Barrington, Illinois.

And he's so American.

The guy, his address, I think, for his jewelry shop is 123 Main Street or something.

And

I've slept at his house.

Mike's a great man.

Incredible.

Love Charlie.

Love Charlie so much.

Love Charlie so much.

But this is, I mean, There are people that have, that were so influential.

Our board members, we have so many incredible board members.

members, but you know, Doug DeGroot, for example, has just been there, has been a rock and a stalwart for Charlie Tom Sadeka, who is going through some health things, and we're praying for him every single day.

I mean, there's just so many people, and so, and those early people, especially the Chicagoans

that were there who believed in Charlie, Bill Montgomery, who was one of the first kind of in Bill's

enigmatic energy, was like a tea party guy that wanted to show Charlie to everyone.

And it was many people like that who created, gave the way that enabling of Charlie Kirk to be introduced to the world.

And if you're one of those people, and I didn't name you, I'm so sorry.

David Angle.

I'll get there.

David's there.

On the board.

Obviously, Rob McCoy, so many others that have been so close, all of our board members, truly, Jeff Webb, others, that you just, you took Charlie around to expose him to the world, to others.

We're just thinking about you so much today because

you did this and you need to remember.

And there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people who

did that.

These people were just champions of Charlie.

Ed Zeman.

So many.

Yeah, we shouldn't start because we're going to miss people that really

Foster Freeze.

Oh, Foster.

I guarantee you, Foster is waiting right there for him when he came out.

We were sharing pictures of Foster.

I remember sitting with Foster actually just right before he passed in the Trump Hotel in D.C.

And he scolded me.

He was always scolding, you know, for

giving that advice

to Charlie, to me, to anyone that would listen.

And he loved Charlie.

Everyone has loved Charlie so much.

I just also want to say thanks just in these few final moments of the live show.

And again, we're going to keep going, but

we want to thank all the

Phoenix PD that has been

stalwart

just from a security standpoint.

Cops blocking off roads, making sure our staff was safe, making sure these buildings were safe, making sure all the families felt safe going home and coming in.

The buildings are closed for all intents and purposes, and that's great.

That's fine for right now.

The first responders at the scene, we want to thank them.

Thank Charlie's personal security detail.

You cannot imagine how

tough that was for them.

And I really love those guys, and they love Charlie.

You have got to believe me.

If anybody loved Charlie

and had his back and was fighting the warriors by his side, it was those guys.

Dan and Brian, you guys are the best.

Incredible.

Incredible.

I can't.

I mean, we've known Dan from the very, very beginning.

There is not a person that loves Charlie Kirk more.

Absolutely.

It would have taken a bullet for Charlie.

And the PD at the vigils,

I know that there's just we're running out of time.

We have 25 seconds left here before we lose radio.

Charlie loved being on radio.

And so the radio audience listening all across the country just know that Charlie was inspired by Rush.

Rush believed in Charlie.

And Charlie took this medium to the next level, and he was rewarded with it and ratings, and the performance of this show, and all of your amazing belief in it.

Thank you so much.

And sorry, I just, it's the way this thing works, man.

Like,

you see somebody you haven't seen yet,

you haven't grieved with yet, and it gets the emotions flowing.

In

the, you know, guys that I know who have lost people in the military, they say it's

waves.

Yeah, it's waves.

It feels like waves.

That's the best way to describe describe and it's just and it's you know certain certain phrases certain people certain faces certain memories like like for me i i didn't expect a seinfeld clip would just

you know yeah and everybody deals with it differently and um charlie was not much of a crier unless you know he literally helped elect the future president in the 40 45 and 47.

and uh you know just hat tip to everything everything he just accomplished by sheer will.

And I really, truly believe that without Charlie Kirk, we would not have President Trump and

Vice President Vance.

And Vice President Vance, we would definitely not have him.

And thank you to President Vance and to Usha, Vice President Vance, and first second lady Usha

for just their

just how wonderful they were with Erica yesterday.

Through and through.

They came to Salt Lake City and they picked up Erica and they picked up Charlie and all of us and took us on Air Force 2 back to Phoenix and it was a beautiful ceremony both getting on and getting off and

JD came back and talked with us and he spent most of his time with Erica and I mean just class act class act hugged us all he is he is genuinely I want to say this about the vice president he's been genuinely interested in individuals and this is the same thing with Charlie this is the same thing with President Trump

to be very point blank, is very interested in individuals.

And

his touch, his warm touch on this, of making sure that Charlie was honored the way that he deserved to be honored is never going to be forgotten.

It's never going to be forgotten by this team.

It's never going to be forgotten by the conservative movement, by obviously the entire Turning Point family.

But

that is such a testament to our vice president's character.

It's just as easy to say, I

and keep and you got to understand JD's hurting too.

JD loved Charlie as a brother and as a friend.

They talked almost,

I really mean this, probably on text at least, almost every day, if not every day.

And JD was strong.

He understood the moment was probably not his moment to grieve.

He's grieving in private, and he was there and he was strong, and Usha was strong.

And

yeah, I just

love him for it.

And there's a lot to love about JD, but that was a really amazing,

a really amazing moment.

And

for our members, and by the way, thank you, Jack.

This is your hour, and you're graciously letting us continue this show.

I wouldn't have this hour if it wasn't for Charlie.

So

it doesn't mean anything.

Just keep going.

And I appreciate that, brother.

And

I just a quick programming note: we're going to be sending our members at members.charliekirk.com.

We're going to be sending you a phone number to call in

and share your thoughts.

So if you're one of the members of this show, you know who you are.

You were the nearest and dearest to us

out there, and you believed in this show, and you put your money where your mouth is, and we adore you for it.

And Charlie believed in his members in such an amazing way and so if you're a member of the Charlie Kirk show you are about to get an email with a phone number and you can call in and you can share your thoughts and your remembrances of Charlie and what he meant to you and we would love to hear from some of you we'll try and fit in as many as make sense and

how you got to know Charlie how you discovered Charlie is incredible your interactions with Charlie and your interactions with the show your interactions with with turning point uh please like coming to events whatever we want to hear all of it and we please send those thoughts if you don't call in to freedom at charliekirk.com I'll just say that you know and we haven't really addressed it here obviously we

you know you know what we do we see all the information that's coming in about the suspect we've even got stuff that that hasn't been put out yet and we just

there'll be a time for that and we know there'll be a time for that there will be justice for Charlie Kirk, but that's not what we're doing right now.

That's all I'm saying.

Can I share one more thing that I saw that was a frequent thing that was really touching?

We have, of course, tons of people who've worked for us, tons of people who have worked with us, alongside us, that have helped build Turning Point into what it is today.

But so many people, even people who, you know, again, there are people who aren't always,

that don't always agree with

every single thing that comes out of Turning Point.

I think this is really important, but their life was dramatically changed because of Turning Point.

And they had met their spouses.

The one common theme I saw was people reaching out to me saying, Tyler, I've always had this unbelievable respect for Charlie and for Turning Point because it changed my life for the better.

I found my spouse.

I have my kids because of Turning Point.

I've heard so many stories like that.

Exact phrase.

And that consistent message that Charlie gave about the family and building your family and everything else reinforced all of that.

And so so many people are like almost coming back home because they're like, oh, you know, I didn't always agree with Trump or I like Trump or whatever.

And, and, or I didn't like X, Y, and Z.

And now they're on, they're on the team.

And it was because Charlie, they stuck with it.

And listen, they're like, yeah, actually, you know what?

This is the life I want to live.

My family is important.

My religion is important.

Christ being the center of my life is important, what Charlie said.

And so it's been really a beautiful, actually, honestly, a miraculous thing to watch.

As these people come back who I haven't heard from for almost 10 years, maybe that have said, Hey, this is how much this has impacted and changed my life.

And, you know, and some of those people are saying, I'm sorry, I didn't say something before.

And that was because of Charlie and what he built.

Blake.

I just,

you know I keep thinking about uh

there's a there's a poem that's a favorite of mine.

It's from uh

it's a it's a poem during uh it was written during World War I by Lawrence Binion.

It's titled uh For the Fallen and it was about the men they lost in World War I and

I think about just a few lines from it

and about and about Charlie

they went with songs to the battle they were young

straight of limb true of eye steady and aglow

they were staunch to the end against odds uncounted

they fell with their faces to the foe

they shall not grow old as we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them

nor the years condemn

At the going going down of the sun and in the morning,

we will remember them.

And

that's how Charlie will always be for us.

All of us are going to grow old, all of us are going to die, but

Charlie will forever be

how he was

on September 10th.

Brave, strong,

out there

could be like that forever.

The end of that one is

well said.

There's a couple of lines where the next line of that is actually:

they mingle not with their laughing comrades again.

They sit no more at familiar tables of home.

They have no lot in our labor of the daytime.

They sleep beyond England's foam.

It's a British poem.

And the very last part.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, to the end, to the end, they remain.

So much of this in retrospect,

and you don't have eyes to fully appreciate it in the moment, but

where you realize that you were encountering greatness,

and the moment you get the news

you realize that

you were around somebody that was so so incredible

and

and in kind of in a weird way like in retrospect it all kind of makes sense that we were that we only get him for such a short time yeah because he was too great for this world in so many ways

And he was a shooting star.

He was a mythological creature.

You know,

you hear these images of descriptions of George Washington and how he's this huge man and like

especially over his time.

Well, Charlie, we always joked he was a Nephilim.

He is literally the only chair.

The only chair that we could get.

This is actually a really funny story.

When we first started getting Charlie the chairs for his studio, it was like, nope, not that.

It was like mattress shopping.

It was like, nope, not that one.

Not that one.

Literally, this chair.

This is a Shaq chair.

Yeah, from

Shaquille O'Neal.

It's It's a fairly inexpensive chair.

Yeah.

Just from like a chair.

It's made for huge people like Shaquille O'Neal.

And

from Staples.

Yes.

From Staples.

And he's like, oh, this is the one.

And he's worn it out.

It's got like a little, like,

you know, the very cheap

veneer on it or whatever.

I don't even get what you call it.

It's definitely not leather.

It's like the vinyl.

It's vinyl.

Vinyl.

Vinyl, yeah.

And he wore it out, and he loved that big chair.

And I have to say, like, when I've sat in it in the past, like, you've sat in it, it's like, you're like, oh, okay, I see what he was kind of, you know, it's a good chair.

It's like a hug.

But he was larger than life.

And we all saw it, and we all, you know, he was younger than us.

Everybody at this table, he was younger than us.

And so we just,

you know, you assume that you're going to probably go before him.

But in retrospect, like...

He was so larger than life, and he packed so much into every single day that it's pretty impossible to

to fully grasp just how much life he lived and how much he accomplished in 31 far too short years

but we do have our first caller do we want to you guys ready for that um

uh his name is Evan Evan uh the floor is yours

gentlemen it's it's an honor to just be on and talk about Charlie for a sec I'll keep this quick Charlie was a friend I consider him a dear friend even though I never ever met him I've listened to him for a very very long time I run and operate a lawn and landscaping business, and I also host a podcast.

And what Charlie really taught me was he was always continually learning.

And even with my show, that helps me.

You got to know things.

You got to know about equipment and things like that.

And Charlie was always learning.

He's always listening to books and things like that.

And his boldness to stand on the word of God.

And Jesus is what I've tried to do with my business and life and even my family, too.

I have a two and a half year old son and a kid on the way.

And when I heard the news just a couple days ago, I was on the mower.

I stopped and I cried.

It was just, it's, it's devastating.

But we know that God's going to work this together for good.

And through his tragic death, guys, more people are going to know about Jesus.

And that's the one thing that we have to remember through this.

And it's just, I've never been, he had, I can consider him a friend, even though I just never knew him.

And I want you guys to hold on to God's word because that's what Charlie would want for us to do is stand on God's word and hold on to it right now and not let the enemy just blind us from the mission that he had set.

Guys, I appreciate all that you do.

And just, Charlie, just thank you.

And thank you, Lord, for just putting him on this earth for 31 years.

Well said, Evan.

And I think I just want to echo what you're saying.

I've gotten so many notes and I've seen so many comments on social media of people saying their kids are coming back to church because of Charlie and because of this, what's happened,

that people are coming back to the Lord.

And I just, Jack, it is your hour, but I'm just going to say a quick prayer.

I'm going to say a quick prayer

for that.

that.

Heavenly Father,

we ask that you would

bless Charlie's legacy right now in this moment across the country and across the world as we mourn

his passing is far too early and too soon.

We ask, Holy Spirit, that you would enter the hearts of millions of people across this planet, across our nation,

and that you would bring people to faith in you jesus saving faith in you

he loved you and i know that he is getting his reward in heaven right now and that's what he wanted in the beautiful eulogy that blake helped write that

all he wanted was thriving young people that went back found their faith in you and thriving young families that made this country strong and great so that more could

follow that same path.

And I know, Lord God, that getting married and having a family and knowing you were his greatest accomplishments on top of everything else he did.

And so, Jesus, we just bless this country and everybody that loved Charlie or that heard about him, that only heard about him even from his death, Lord, that you would make so many new believers, mint so many new members of your heavenly kingdom right now and in the days and weeks to come, Lord Jesus.

We ask in your precious name, Amen.

Amen.

If you guys want, we could follow that up.

Tyler, I know you just put the hat back on, but we could all say together,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit,

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil.

Amen.

Charlie would have wanted people going back to church more than anything.

More than anything.

That more than politics or campaigns or

whatever the next election was or whatever the next turning point was.

The core belief was...

That was it.

He was a true believer

in what Andrew Breitbart said.

And we talked about this all the time.

I actually remember visiting.

We were visiting a donor, and we stood in the spot where Andrew Breitbart passed, which is a kind of a, I think

you've been there, right?

It's on Sunset.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

It's right outside a restaurant.

Well, it's in Brentwood, at least.

I don't know if it was.

It's kind of an interesting place, but he had always had kind of this infatuation with the concept, and we actually leaned into it, talking about culture wars and all of that, but that culture

is what dictates your politics.

And culture is dependent upon your faith.

There's nothing.

Faith's the bedrock.

It's the absolute center.

There's nothing that impacts that.

So the politics that is really downstream from culture is really, and this is like kind of like I would say Andrew Breitbart next level, which was with Charlie Kirk, is that that's why I believe Charlie was so adamant about faith being so important is that he was a true believer in that statement, but that faith was what was dictating how our politics would end up, which is absolutely correct and true.

And so there's nothing that could be more important right now.

What you can think of is just tie it up and say

politics is downstream from culture.

Culture is downstream from faith.

That's right.

And

Charlie led by example in embracing faith, embracing

the Christ-like attributes that are necessary to impact culture in the positive way that needed to happen.

And I think that's why you're seeing that turn of so many young people that were influenced by this, maybe starting with politics, but walking themselves backwards and going, oh my gosh, well, my politics is dictated by my faith.

And that's a great legacy.

That is the most important legacy, which Charlie himself said, which is that's all he cared about.

was that people would know that.

Well, it was interesting.

I saw a clip yesterday from Larry O'Connor, who worked for Breitbart, Andrew Breitbart.

And

he was talking about this memory at CPAC.

They were doing an Andrew Breitbart panel.

And Larry put it together.

He's like, well, all of us worked directly with Andrew.

You never knew him.

He's like, and Charlie,

I can't wait to be on this panel.

You know, this is so amazing.

And so he's like, I'll call you and tell you about it, like my thoughts.

And he's like, okay, we probably should talk because the rest of us knew Andrew.

And

Charlie said that I was so inspired by Andrew Breitbart that I created Turning Point.

And Larry realized that he started Turning Point in 2012,

the year that it happened.

And he realized that

Charlie in many ways is the blossom of the seed planted by the death of Andrew Breitbart.

And so when you think about how that can keep going forward, and I know Charlie would want that.

that that we would have many such stories like that, not just Turning Point or whatever.

And it's really an interesting

point to make for those that study modern conservatism.

There aren't very many people,

I mean, let's

if you if you had to pick the top three, it would probably be, you know, and again, we're setting Charlie aside, but

Andrew Breitbart, Donald Trump,

and

the third being Rush Limbaugh.

And when you look at that and you start to go, wait, what's the connection between all three of those men?

It's really, you look at that and you go, Charlie Kirk.

And Charlie was a,

again, enigma.

He was, he had

a personality that was unlike anything else.

But he was the continuation.

He picked the baton up

for all three of those men in different ways.

and carried the entire conservative movement on his back and created something.

And again, the culmination of that you know what is the representation of Charlie and people like well what can we do to you know keep Charlie you you have it it's turning point USA it's turning point

the the entire ecosystem he he did it yeah he was he was able to do all the things I all of the things all the things I promised we would we would mention this and before we go to the next caller

I saw some people saying that you know they thought I was trying to brush it off I just I wanted to give the vigils a moment because

I knew we were up on a clock before.

It's unbelievable.

And they are worldwide.

South Africa, I've seen.

Australia.

Australia.

New Zealand.

Huge one in Australia.

I got a video from Sydney this morning.

Someone sent me Sweden.

Sweden.

All across Europe.

I just got one from

Hungarians.

I'm sure.

And then all across the country.

there's like little ones popping up, you know, like just hey, this is the one in our town.

If you want to come, just come on.

I had someone send Westchester PA.

And, you know, I hear there's, I hear there's going to be a, I think, I hear this

they're trying to put together one, not like an official one, but like at the at the White House at Lafayette Square Park.

There's just some local people trying to get a permit.

And

it's

that

spirit of individuals becoming activated

and

coming together around one core concept, principle, value, that's what Charlie Kirk stood for.

That's what he was all about.

He lived his entire life trying to inspire a turning point in this country.

And he's done it.

I take so much solace in a couple of things.

He got to see

young men and the youth vote win win a president.

Yes.

He got to see it, and he got to do it.

And

he got to see the decline in church start going back up.

He got to see that.

It bounced.

And he got to see just

before that NBC poll that said that young men want to get married and have babies as their top priorities.

And

I can't tell you how much that means to me that he got to see the fruit of his work because so many people

don't.

They don't get to see what they've accomplished, and he actually got to see it.

And all of you that came out to the campus events, all of you that came out to our turning point events,

all of you that subscribed to the show that gave him like one of the biggest shows and reaches and platforms in the entire country, day in and day out.

And we had millions of people listening to Charlie every day.

Every day.

Every day.

We tried our best to estimate it in the way of modern

analytics with fast channels versus radio versus podcasts.

Then you take clips.

It was basically impossible to measure.

But even just in the fall going up to the election, it was 15 billion views of Charlie Kirk content

just ahead of the election.

And every day there was between two and three million people that tuned into this show,

the Charlie Kirk show, or listened to the podcast, or

and that's just the live show.

That's not even counting clips.

So that was podcast, radio, and it was truly, truly a feat for anybody.

But the fact that he was able, like we said, Tyler, to be like a Rush Limbaugh, to be like an Andrew Breitbart, and to be

brought all that together in one

human that took, and by the way, and I want to give a shout out to all of his assistant staff and his chief of staff, Mikey, who made his day-to-day possible.

They were really amazing.

We're going to get to another caller,

and this one is Anthony.

Anthony, the floor is yours, my friend.

Tell us about Charlie.

Thanks, Andrew.

Well, first, my condolences to you and everybody.

So, Charlie and I, I've been listening to the show since it probably started, and I've been a member for a while and everything.

But the one time that it stood out to me, and this might have been the funniest disagreement, was probably at the end of July, early August.

It was the weekend before he had to go on Fox and Friends.

And he put out the question to everybody in the first hour.

Does baseball need a salary cap?

And he knows that I work in the industry and it's on the college side of athletics.

And

we talked about the political question I sent in to him.

And then he goes, all right, Anthony, give me your, I need to know.

You're the professional.

I go, I already emailed you my answer in the first hour.

He goes, I know.

I'm not letting you go until you tell me.

And I said, well,

I believe I'm on the fence.

And he literally starts laughing and goes, you can't be on the fence about this.

You have to be on my side.

And I'm like, and then, and I'm like literally sitting there and I'm like, he's yelling at me.

He's yelling at me because the guy in the industry won't side with him.

And I'll be honest.

I always wanted a salary cap until I did more research.

And then he's like, well, you have to, and Blake, you can relate to this.

You've got to find me that research and send it.

So I said, all right, I will look for it i sent it to him next saturday morning when he's live on aaron fox the following week he goes i got your emails i haven't read them yet but he goes but it was the funniest to see his facial expression just so light up because he's like anthony i i just want you're reminding me of a very unique detail of charlie kirk that unless you emailed in the show you didn't know he would argue with the emails

and he would get into these he would get into these during the show during the show he's sitting there hosting the show going welcome back to the charlie Kirk show, the press send.

And then he'd be like, you know, they'd keep the show going.

But he was

arguing with people as we went.

He could be talking, like, giving a monologue and writing a separate argument to an email.

Well, we would all be debating, too.

So he would, your emails that you would make, he would drop into the chat and it would be like rolling a grenade into the chat.

Or sometimes, you know, he'd be like, what do we think?

And he'd be like, well, this person just agrees with me.

And we would take sides with all of you.

So, like,

we would have all of that.

And, and, and, and truly, and this is the one grassroots part because one of our culture point that we have at Turning Point is grassroots humility.

And this is the really interesting part.

And again, Andrew deserves a ton of credit for this because they framed the entire show, the Charlie Kirk show, here

around your feedback, your commentary,

your conversations.

Individual, every individual in America that talked to Charlie or would email in or would DM had a voice.

And again,

that's not most people that do this.

And it helped with the work because it helped frame Charlie's opinions about things.

It helped frame from a grassroots perspective.

how we think about things at turning point.

We think about issues, issues that would be covered on Charlie's show every single day that everybody listened to.

Everybody at the White House would listen to.

Twitter would change because we,

the three,

like between Jack and Charlie alone, them dropping something changes the whole direction on Twitter, anyways.

And then Benny.

Yeah, Benny Johnson.

Throw this up.

I just want to, I don't know all the details about this, but there is a prayer vigil planned in Washington, D.C.

on Sunday, September 14th.

So this Sunday at 6 p.m., location to be announced soon.

I think I may have just accidentally said it.

Oh, whoops.

Well,

if you did, I, you know, that's some,

I wasn't

giving the full conversation.

Sunday, Sunday, I mean, who knows?

But it'll be at 6 p.m.

in Washington, D.C., and I think it's a beautiful way to honor Charlie.

Charlie

candidly didn't love Washington, D.C., didn't love going to Washington, D.C.

I mean, he was

Imperial Capital.

But he would stomach it because he loved his country and he would go there and

and so I mean I think it's a fitting tribute can I can I just say if if you are at Washington DC or if you're in any other blue area and you're going to one of these vigils and protesters come up or something like that just

I'm not going to say, you know, don't get into it, but just we're not there for that.

We're just, we're really not there for that.

Charlie was his message message was peace.

I mean, Charlie,

he was a master swordsman, but his sword was the word, the logos, and

debating.

And he didn't believe in peace per se.

He believed in verbal combat, and he believed in intellectual and ideological combat.

And he believed that we were in a war of ideas and a spiritual battle.

And

so I'm I'm not here to give you some rosy

prescription about the state of the world.

We're in a battle

not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.

And obviously,

close

understanding of the state of the world a couple of years ago.

Yeah.

But like Charlie

ultimately believed in the promise of America and

the fact that

our institutions will hold.

I guess Speaker Johnson will be at that one along with Ana Polina Luna.

And,

you know, more details coming about that.

Which is very fitting because Ana is, you know, by her own admission, is the turning point congresswoman.

She,

you know, to tell this fun story again, I know some people have heard it, but Ana was thinking about going to med school.

And she had engaged with us online.

We had, I found her.

We saw that she was saying some smart things on Instagram.

And we actually reached out to her, invited her to a Young Women's Leadership Summit.

And she came, and she was like, Hey, I'm applying to med school.

And she was, again, an Air Force veteran, everything else.

And that one experience of her being there at Young Women's Leadership Summit, which, by the way, that was Young Women's Leadership Summit was the brainchild of Charlie.

We'd started that many, many years ago.

He knew that was important, wanted to do that, but it culminated.

It started at a tiny little thing in Illinois, and then we moved to the airport.

We were at the airport,

you know, kind of a three-star hotel at the Hyatt and DFW?

At DFW.

It was tidy.

It was like inside.

It's like literally inside the airport.

So you don't even

leave the airport when you show up.

And it grew and grew and grew.

But Ana showed up there and we convinced her to not go to medical school, to quit, basically move to Arizona and start touring and learning the ropes of how to debate on campus.

And to do that, that was like the Charlie Kirk model.

By the way, APL, she is

so fierce in Charlie's defense since all this.

I've been texting with her.

She has been the person.

She's so great.

And

I just love it.

Anyways, she's part of the legacy, too.

She left here wanting to run for Congress, wanting to change the country.

She's doing just that, and she's a tremendous friend and ally, and she's been incredible for the last few days.

We're going to take another caller, Caleb.

You are on, Caleb and Michelle.

How are you, my friends?

My friend, Andrew.

Well,

you know how we are, but it's such a privilege and an honor to that that Charlie called me his friend.

And, you know,

even though we were occasional acquaintances,

and I loved how he

every time we would meet, he would treat us like family, you know.

And I have this.

What I wanted to talk about is maybe just a couple stories about how he elevated those around him.

And I know it's been said before

that that was the kind of person he was.

He wanted everyone to be their best.

And,

but, you know, we, we, and Michelle's already emailed you guys the story of how we first met in 2020.

And, you know, we

he introduced us to people.

I think you were there, Andrew.

We'd come back and he says, these are my 2020 friends because we met, you know, met him in 2020, just after the election at the headquarters.

And

what was so cool is that every time afterwards, we would go to an event that Charlie was speaking at, and he did this like at least twice to me.

He's like, oh, hey, Caleb, I'm out in the crowd.

I'm just sitting out in the crowd.

He says, oh, there's Caleb and Michelle.

I should tell you the story about how we met in Arizona.

And he remembered you when he saw you again and welcomed you in.

And

Michelle and I just, we're so happy that, you know, three weeks ago, he was in Myrtle Beach and, you know, we're in North Carolina now.

And we're like, we could drive, we could go to that.

And,

you know,

and so we went to see him.

And saw you there.

Charlie.

We saw you there, Caleb.

Yep, saw you there.

And it was so cool because Charlie invited us backstage

or, you know, Mikey did.

And he brought us into the green room.

And there's Alex McFarland.

And Charlie introduces us, you know, Caleb Michelle, you know, my super fans.

These are guys are Charlie Kirk Show super fans.

And

he said, you know, Charlie, Charlie said to me, said, you know, Caleb just sends me the, you know, the best feedback.

I love reading his emails.

You know, he always talked about how he loved Michelle's emails.

She's always so encouraging to him.

And then he says, So, Caleb, what's on your mind?

He just puts me on the spot.

You know, like, you know, I'm not the guest speaker or anything.

But he says, Terry, what's in your mind?

And I throw out a couple ideas and he says, you know, he says, I'll let you choose.

You know, here's a couple ideas.

What do you want to talk about?

And he's like, oh, that's a great topic.

Hey, Alex, you and Caleb, you guys should debate this topic.

And then he just puts us on the spot and he facilitated, you know, he kind of moderated.

He jumps in on my side, you know, gives a good point here from the Bible because it was a,

you know, a biblical discussion.

and um by the way Caleb I want to give you credit because Charlie threw the threw through it to you to make a point

remember backstage with McFarlane and you crushed it man he you crushed it and I remember looking at I walked away with Charlie and I said Caleb did well and he goes oh yeah he's been paying attention

I want to throw up another image here

this is from some friends here at Memorial memorial rally, tribute ride

in Lynchfield Park

here in Arizona.

Arrive at 5 p.m., ride at 5.30,

and speakers to be announced, candlelight vigil at 7.30.

This is just,

this is what's happening.

People want a way to help, and

I think it's incredible.

that so much of this is happening so organically.

Nobody's planning this.

Nobody's like, there's no like organization, by the way, doing like the DC one.

It's just like people in DC that love Charlie.

Charlie would have loved this.

And it's just happening.

People are grabbing the bull by the horns and they're doing this because

they loved him.

But Charlie would also say, he'd say, okay, but don't stop there.

Of course.

He would say, don't stop there.

Do not stop there.

Thank you, but do not stop there.

Speaking of which, this is like, I had my team coming to me going, like, how can I help?

Like, can I make a montage?

can i make a tribute video and i'm like sure i haven't seen this one either let's go ahead and play this is from noah on our team and i haven't seen it um so 419 and thank you noah this is why your faith is the most important thing you are commanded to go do something productive with your life you are not commanded to go sit idly by and just receive you are commanded to go give and to produce and to risk to then go sow into other people that is a biblical idea that has made the world a profoundly better place.

We must put God first in everything that we do.

We are nothing here, but just for a short instant, a short little glimpse.

We act not out of outcome, but we act out of obedience.

Everybody, this was not earned.

You guys were a vessel.

We were a vessel.

Psalm 107.1.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, or his steadfast love endures forever.

I have to say this without getting emotional, but I'm very proud of my husband.

You are so intentional with your faith, and you are so intentional with just how you are as a father and a husband.

Becoming a father has made me, first of all, understand that what I'm fighting for is beyond even yourself.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and darkness and spirits.

Because at its core, what we are fighting is a spiritual battle.

And if you're here and you don't believe in God,

okay, fine, I'll pray for you.

And I hope you find Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior because it will change your life.

How do you want to be remembered?

I want to be remembered for courage for my faith.

That would be the most important thing.

Most important thing is my faith in my life.

Wow.

Good job, Noah.

Great job, Noah.

That was great.

Noah's pretty new to the team, and

you captured it, brother.

I got a note here from a John.

He said, Charlie sat down with me after my dad died.

He says, hey, thought crime crew.

I look back fondly on the time I spent with Charlie from my time as a student at GCU to working for NFP and then Chase the Vote.

Charlie inspired me and was my hero.

I specifically remember when Charlie came to GCU in 2022.

He was informed that my dad had died.

He personally spent time with me backstage before his event, and that has stuck with me forever.

Charlie was an incredible man and made me the man I am today.

Sending love and prayers, John.

Now he's working for President Trump in D.C.

And we have Sarah.

Sarah, you're on with the crew.

What's on your mind?

Hi.

I am holding back tears.

It's been a rough couple of days, as I'm sure you all know.

I just wanted to say to all the people listening and

all of you folks who are continuing this movement, thank you, especially to Charlie.

I really believe he has been the turning point of our nation for

I guess what those words are worth.

And I'm grateful to him.

I'm grateful to his worth.

I'm grateful to how he held himself and was able to hold conversations with people.

And I do think that

in this tragedy, I'm hoping that it really is the turning point of our nation and that we can

move forward as a nation in a way that Charlie would be super proud of.

Beautiful, Sarah.

Well said.

Thank you.

And

I think we're all praying that

the reach and the impact that Charlie has,

I don't think any of us have any idea just how big it is.

And that's what I'm realizing.

I feel like Tyler, you and me specifically, and kind of what we had to do the last couple days, I think we were a little insulated from it.

And I feel like I'm just starting to see it

of what I've been kind of ignoring and the calls I haven't been taking and the texts I haven't been responding to.

But that's probably just the tip of the iceberg of how huge his impact is.

I don't think we have any idea.

I woke up this morning realizing that

just because of the people, like the layers of people talking to people who talk to people, who talk to people who are kind of coming back.

And

people have been so good to all of our team.

Like, you know, people were worried about the safety of our team.

And so, you know, Phoenix PD and Mesa PD have been incredible.

I know the Scottsdale PD and everyone else.

There's been

so many people impacted by this.

By the way, aren't even seeing anything.

And when we landed in Phoenix yesterday, there was a huge crowd.

Hundreds.

Like, gathered outside of the airport.

And as we drove away in the procession, there was people lining the streets, like American flags and MAGA hats, probably half of them that Charlie threw to them.

And

when we got to our final destination, again, there was a huge crowd gathered waiting for for us and for him.

And it was really, really amazing.

And it and it was just kind of a little insight.

And I Blake, I joke with you because we couldn't take him anywhere.

In life, we couldn't take him anywhere.

Like, he would get absolutely mobbed.

Can I get a selfie?

Can I get a selfie?

I mean, it didn't matter if you were in Seoul.

It was unbelievable.

Yeah, just in Seoul in Japan, just the number of people or i you know, even we realized it when we went to Cambridge and Oxford last spring, the number of people who would recognize him all over the place.

Yeah, and I took him to a very,

very private place in California.

And

I was like, don't worry, we'll be left alone because we had business to attend.

We had a pretty important

discussion we were having.

We needed to work out some details and some planning.

And I was like, don't worry, we'll be fine.

And it was like, no, it was not.

It was like people would come.

Candidly, they were a bit rude.

But I looked at him because, you know, we're obviously having a private discussion, and they were like, oh my gosh, can we get a selfie?

And as he was driving away after, I mean, there was like a very private place.

There was still about, I would guesstimate, about 30 people in the course of about 40 minutes.

Like, and we were trying to hide.

And then as he's driving away, these two kids were like rode their bikes after him.

And they were 14, 15 years old.

And they're like, is that Charlie Kirk?

I was like, can we get a selfie before he leaves?

And I was like, I was like, Charlie, you know, and Mikey was in the car with him as they were driving away.

And of course, he's like,

uh,

I, I got him to stop, and he was, and I, I asked him in the middle of it, and I said, Are you okay with this?

He's like, honestly, it's just, I've accepted it.

This is life, and I just, I want, like, I know that I can make somebody's day by doing it.

It's fine, you know.

Always, always say yes to every photo.

The one funny.

Yes, he would always say that.

He said, always say yes to every photo.

Even if he was in the biggest hurry.

The one funny moment that I have that's like, that was the opposite of that with Charlie.

And I don't know why this memory sticks with me, but it was during that that whole time when he lost his voice and we were trying to get his voice back.

So it was like me,

Charlie, and Mikey.

And we were just,

because of the way the travel route, we were just driving through like central Florida where it gets kind of rural.

And we had this idea to get him like a humidifier with like medicated humidifier, but we couldn't figure out where to get one.

And Charlie wanted a specific one.

And then we were just driving down the street.

And Charlie goes, well, there's Walgreens.

Let's just go to the Walgreens.

And you know how he is when he like, when he wants something and he wants something specific.

So we're like, are you coming in?

And we just, we just went to Walgreens and we're just like walking around.

And it was just so surreal because like nobody came up.

For it's like the one time among all these times where it was just like the most normal, simple.

And of course we couldn't find the one he wanted.

And then we had to get a very Seinfeld, you know, kind of thing.

And then we just go check out and it's like in the middle of all this craziness, it's just a random trip to Walgreens trying to find something for my buddy because his throat hurts.

You know what's funny, actually, now,

thinking about that, you inspired this.

I remember when he was in Seoul just like a week ago, two weeks ago, whatever it was, and he went out and explored the city.

He got up early and explored the city.

And I remember going, alone?

Are you like, and he's like, yes, alone, LOL.

It's safe here.

Like, it's clean.

Like, that actually meant a lot to him.

And I'm so glad now

that he got to do this thing that he hadn't been able to do in so long and just go explore a city by himself.

He hadn't been by himself for so long.

He hadn't.

And he loved it.

He kept sending us pictures in our chat and videos.

And you were there, right?

I mean, you weren't.

I mean, you did do some exploring on his own.

And then later we were in this old town neighborhood.

And he's like, all right, Blake, just tell me about Korea.

And I'm just babbling.

This is

the palace where they do the Confucian examinations.

He loved it.

And of course, it was also a trillion degrees out.

So we were all in nice clothes because we had to go to the thing later.

And it was swamp, and I was dying.

But it was so much fun.

That's such a good point, though, Andrew.

I mean, the thing that I think most people don't realize, especially in these

last years that Charlie was with us, was that he was never alone.

I mean, the weight and pressure of having to be that celebrity, like, that's a lot.

It's a lot to do.

And that has an impact on most people.

And the one thing I think that was really astonishing about Charlie is he didn't change as a person at all.

He didn't.

By the way, he wasn't like the party animal either.

Like, so a lot of people get in this role and they,

I don't know, you see him at clubs.

You see them drinking.

You see them partying or like enjoying all this stuff.

Charlie would go home at like the first instant that was socially acceptable for the programming, like at America Fest.

Maybe the program didn't get over until 7.30.

He would go straight back to the hotel as soon as he could after meeting with donors or supporters.

He would do a circuit of like four stops, five stops, meet with donors, and then he'd go straight back to be with Erica.

Like

immediately.

And he, but his personality never changed.

His demeanor never

changed.

I mean, his busyness level was never different.

He was always busy in different ways throughout his career, throughout the time as he grew.

But the thing that was always really difficult that I was always really worried about him was that you're never having that reprieve from the public eye or being able to go out and just do normal things.

And the one thing I really appreciate about Erica and you guys, actually specifically that are here with Andrew and Blake, because you guys spent a lot.

When he did have alone time, it was with you.

And so it was like

that was as alone as he got or with Mikey.

And

he got to do some normal things in that way, right?

Which was like going

to the Cubs game.

He was always just the kid from Chicago.

And wanting to be

and wanting to eat the rush.

I was like, I'll always remember, again, just after we had a long day of doing something extraordinarily exhausting, and I felt like it was like 10 p.m.

And you guys know this, like Charlie loved to just go sit down and break bread and eat.

By the way, the way he would order was hilarious.

He'd sit down, we'd be at a restaurant, and be like, you know, four or five of us gathered around.

And he would take the menu and go, give us some of this, some of this, some of this, some of this, some of this.

Get these out for a shareable plate.

You guys are going to love this.

You're going to love this.

Trust me.

And then it would go, and can I get some hot sauce and olive oil and some salt and pepper, please?

Thank you.

It was like he would order, like a crazy person, like 15 items.

And then, so you're just like, I guess I'll just eat what Charlie's having.

The table would be filled, and he'd be like, get some more of this.

You're going to love that.

You know, eat some more of that.

And then everybody's around eating, talking,

you know, again kind of decompressing from whatever the crazy was that we're you're going through whether it was the the travel or the event or the donor meeting or whoever or whatever you're doing the show the speech the i mean the rally the uh activist event that was the consistent thing is that you if you got that opportunity to sit down and then you talk and then it wasn't just talking about nonsense it was usually talking about big ideas and having the conversation similar to like what we have on thought crime.

So like if you, you as an individual out in the world, and I don't know if you agree with that.

Thought crime was probably the closest

visual,

videoed version of what it was like to kind of like hang out with Charlie.

And I suppose he was more distracted.

It was sort of like our, like we used to

joke about it because it was just, it was like our group chat.

on camera.

That's right.

Yeah.

And that's what it was like to sit down with Charlie, like in a, in a scenario where it's like you're sitting there talking about there's these these things going on, these topics, and like everybody's going around the horn, just like, you know, talking about it, debating it.

And, you know, he was like, well, isn't that interesting?

Or like, you know, you get into it, and ideas would spark, and he'd do that smile, and he would think about it.

My favorite, my favorite, I was just sharing with Daisy that my favorite segments in Thought Crime were so uncomfortable.

Yes, that was the point.

Was when we would explain memes to him.

Yeah, just like Charlie's entire knowledge of pop culture froze when he was 17.

Yeah, like what, what,

like, Charlie,

you mean you don't know what a bonus hole is, Charlie?

Don't use that one.

Or just, just, whatever the meme is.

What is Riz?

No, no, I'm not going to get into it.

I just mean, like, whatever, whatever the thing was that was going around, he'd be like, is that good?

Yes.

No.

Okay.

Yeah, it's just good.

Yeah, he just wanted the binary.

Like, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Remember the JD Vance memes?

Yes.

When the J.D.

Vance memes came out, he's like, are they making fun of J.D.?

Kind of.

But in a good way.

And in a good way.

Charlie didn't necessarily speak meme fluently or natively, but he understood the power of them.

I have a story I just want to share.

He loved him.

He loved them.

Yeah, he loved them.

I have a story I want to share from Emma on our team.

And she said, the night after the election, Charlie wrapped the stream and came out to the bullpen and sat and ate his dinner with the team and told us stories about the behind-the-scenes work he was doing that nobody knew about for like two hours.

It was one of my favorite CK memories of all time.

He told us how much we can trust JD as vice president and the work he did to get him to that spot.

It's really beautiful.

Charlie had the the the thing that makes me the saddest about Charlie's passing and

the that he was ripped away from us so abrasively is that that man had a had probably

a library of books to write about the things that he knew that have gone to rest with him, things that he saw that are really interesting for politics because, again, piggybacking on that, you sat down with Charlie.

He could tell you about things that nobody knows.

I mean, there's things that we know.

There's memories that I have that I can tell you.

And

when the time's right, at some point, I hope that I can share some of these stories that they come out.

Andrew has a gazillion of them.

Blake, since you've been been traveling.

Jack knows these things because he lives this lifestyle every day.

But

that's what I mean.

I'm sad that we'll never hear that.

I don't want, like, we can't, you know what I mean?

I just can't

process it.

Because people were like sharing text messages, and I was going back and

look at some of the ones that I have, and I was like, can't share that, can't share that, can't share that.

Where do you even begin?

No, I know.

The Riz one is funny.

Like, we should probably put that up.

That's why I brought up the memes.

That's because Daisy's got a lot of stuff like you want to talk about.

Put the Riz one up.

This is funny.

This is like perfect Charlie.

And so I always like to hound Charlie a little bit.

And it looks like I was making fun of the cough drop thing.

And by the way, that was the one thing that

the cough drops, right?

The South Park.

Yeah, people thought it was Zen when he was on campus and he would pop the cough drops in.

So welcome to the inside chat, guys.

This is about as close-up as you can get.

And

I would be like, actually, Charlie, I love the cop.

Makes you look really cool.

Like when you're like popping, you got this kind of like nonchalant look when you're just popping the cough drop.

And Daisy says, everyone thinks his cough drops are Zinn.

And I was like, nicotine cough drops.

And Charlie, ha ha ha ha ha.

And I go, Charlie's Riz Secret.

For the record, it's a great Riz crutch.

Makes you look nonchalant, plus the athleisure wear versus the suit.

Charlie goes, what is Riz?

And I go, like, swagger.

And Blake has to go, Ka, Riz, ma.

But no question, Mark, right?

What is Riz?

What is Riz?

It's Riz, period.

Is it good?

It's probably because he was hosting a show or something.

That was always his follow-up, though.

Is it good?

Is it good?

Is this good?

We have one more caller I want to get to, and that is Julie.

Julie, hopefully, you're still with us.

The floor is yours.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, I'm Julie.

This is me letting Charlie inspire me to be more joyful, bold, and brave.

I'm calling instead of emailing.

Calling is the scariest thing in the world.

So I learned about Charlie after he followed

Steve Bannon on RAV.

I listened to his podcast every morning on my walks.

I love thought crimes and the glimpse it gives you into the secret world of men.

I was glued to the rumble late night election coverage.

I was blessed to see Charlie interact with college students at Normal, Illinois when he was here this spring.

I was so afraid to go because I thought there's no mute button because I'm kind of like Bannon, like on the cold open stop, stop, stop, I can't take anymore.

But I didn't need it because Charlie was fantastic.

And then lastly, I'm most thankful for Charlie for introducing me to Jack Hibbs and the Relifice Network and reinvigorating my face.

Thank you.

Beautiful.

Well said, Julie.

Thank you for calling in.

And thank you for sharing that, Julie.

And sharing that.

And

your bravery was rewarded.

And by the way, I want to say this, like people describe Charlie as fearless.

He wasn't fearless.

He was courageous.

He looked fear right in the eye and he overcame it again and again and again.

And I can tell you how many moments I spent with Charlie in this

behind the scenes and the quiet before he walked out on stage or before he had to tackle something or a setback, bad news.

And Charlie just looked at the fear right in the eye and he knew there was no way but through and he just was so courageous and he just did it.

And he always won.

He always won.

He won and he kept...

He kept coming back and he was stronger and fiercer.

And frankly, I think I said this to Erica yesterday.

I said,

probably for the last two years, I knew Charlie actually was fearless

because he'd overcome so much.

And that's.

He was an absolutely fearless individual.

I mean, since the day I met him, and I shared a story yesterday, I won't repeat it.

The times where I had the greatest fear of people, and there's lots of people that fear in politics.

And I had this privilege of getting to know

what President Trump would label as bad hombres.

And

Charlie was always the person that said, stand in the pocket, fight these people.

Fight, fight, fight these people.

I saw him do it to you in our chat, too.

Many times.

Many times.

We have to wrap.

It's been a pleasure to be with the audience.

Thank you, Jack.

Thank you, Blake.

Thank you, Tyler.

Thank you, Charlie Kirk.

You are our hero, and you always will be.

We love you, Charlie.

We love you.

We love you, dear friend.