Vice President Vance and the Trump Admin Honor Charlie

My name is Charlie Kirk.

I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

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But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.

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You got to stop sending your kids to college.

You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.

Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter.

Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.

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Sign up and become an activist.

I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

Most important decision I ever made in my life.

And I encourage you to do the same.

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Buckle up, everybody.

Here we go.

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I am so excited about our next guest.

And of course,

I'm not going to tease it out.

This is the Vice President of the United States, folks.

And I just want to start by saying

this whole story, this whole tragedy that we've been living through, a nightmare, really,

you and Usha have been just tremendous.

People know, need to know.

We haven't asked for some of the things that you guys have done for Erica, for us.

You've been out front.

You've been offering.

Your team has been getting a hold of us.

You've been calling.

And I think that speaks volumes about who you are, the man you are, and your character.

And I just, I really want the audience to know that, that you're a human being, that you have

a big heart and you care about people.

And as somebody that's been a beneficiary of that in some of the darkest days that any of us can imagine, I I just want to say thank you, Mr.

Vice President.

I appreciate that.

It's good to see you guys.

And obviously, wish it was under slightly different circumstances, but yesterday was quite a celebration of the White House, Charlie's 32nd birthday.

You know, I'm sure it's true for you guys, too.

It still feels not real in some cases.

I still occasionally will pick up the phone and think to myself, like, oh, I wonder what Charlie thinks about this, or I wonder if Charlie could help me with this.

But we're just going to keep on trucking on, man.

I appreciate you saying that.

I mean,

to you, a little backstory about just sort of this dignified transfer transfer where Usha and I go out and pick up Charlie's body, pick up Erica, pick up some of you guys, and then take him back to Arizona.

I mean, the background on that was I was sitting at the White House with then communications director.

He has since, you know, taken a job in the private sector, making a lot of money, I'm sure, Taylor Budowich, who is another dear friend of Charlie's.

And, you know, Mikey was actually communicating with Taylor directly.

And so, you know, it's a little gruesome.

But right after Charlie gets shot, Mikey's like, you know, we're at the hospital.

Charlie's got a pulse.

I'm sure you guys were getting the same messages.

There was a lot of struggle with Taylor a little bit.

There was this sort of point of like optimism where it's like, oh my God, because you see the video, you think there's no way Charlie's going to make it.

But you say, oh, you know, could this be a miraculous thing?

And then, of course, Marky, Mikey was the one who had to make the call to Taylor.

And to me, I was actually in Stephen Miller's office with Taylor.

And Mikey said, you know, Charlie didn't make it.

The doctors just called it.

And that was obviously an incredibly hard moment.

But then I was sitting with Taylor and I was like, well, you know,

what do we do now?

And Taylor actually had the idea of we should go out there.

And I was like, that's an incredible idea.

Like, I'd love to go out there, see Erica.

But you also wonder, like, you know, the vice president of the United States, the Secret Service detail, the media, does it become too much of a spectacle?

So I was like, reach out to Erica and like let her know.

I'm not pushing, but if she wants me to come out there, we'd love to be out there and be supportive.

And so he did that.

And she, of course, was receptive.

And then I actually had the idea.

I texted my chief of staff.

I was like, well, wait a second.

If we're going to be out there, you know, moving a dead body body from one place to another is not necessarily like easy logistically.

We have a big airplane, and if we're going to fly from Utah to Phoenix anyway, we should offer.

And he was like, Yeah, I'll offer.

I remember, I'll never forget my chief of staff saying, I doubt they'll accept.

I'm sure they already have another plan, but we can offer.

And then, of course, you know, you guys accepted, and that led to that day, which, despite the grieving, was very special to be able to be part of that grieving process with the family and with all you guys.

So

it was, it was a, you know, this whole month has been so surreal for so many of us in so many ways.

But that day really did set the tone for us in a lot of ways.

I mean, one, it's, it's, um,

you,

so, so Usha had met, um, she had met Charlie before, actually, the Claremont speech that I gave that Charlie was really to.

I mean, he, I remember he texted me afterwards.

He's like, that's your best speech I've ever given.

That's an amazing speech.

And, you know, I kept on looking at the audience, and there's Charlie sitting next to Usha.

They were like in the front table.

And that may have been the first time that Usha had spent like more than than five or ten minutes with Charlie.

And but I don't think she had ever met Erica.

But that, of course, was the point at which Usha was able to be there for Erica.

And that

cemented their bond, that created their bond.

So it was, despite the sadness and the tragedy, it was a special day in a lot of ways.

And I think set the tone for the next month,

which has been us mourning Charlie, of course, thinking about Charlie, trying to keep Charlie's memory alive.

And all of that, I think, really, really, at least for us, started on that day.

Well, you have done an amazing job and you've been an incredible friend.

I think, you know, what I've realized in this process is that it's not just me grieving.

It's not just Blake grieving or the team or Erica.

The whole nation is grieving.

And so as you've come alongside us, you've almost, I think, symbolically come alongside the entire nation.

And knowing that your steady leadership and your carrying hand is alongside Erica and us and the whole team has been, I think, a lift for the entire nation, genuinely.

And the world, really, because Charlie's message has we've seen has spread across the entire world.

And, you know, on that note of you coming alongside us, we do have a little bit of news.

That's right, big announcement.

Yeah, big announcement.

Do you want me or you?

No, go ahead, man.

All right.

Well, so you are actually going to be joining Erica Kirk on our campus tour.

This is going to be a big one.

Big one.

At Old Miss.

If you could throw the graphic up there, guys, 179.

Throw the graphic up.

There it is.

So, Erica Kirk and J.D.

Vance at Ole Miss.

And correct me if I'm wrong.

Will's going to get mad at me here.

That's October 29th, I believe, at Ole Miss, Oxford, Mississippi.

And we also, the other pictures you see on that graphic are going to be Benny Johnson, Lara Trump, Eric Trump.

They're going to be at Auburn

on November 5th.

So the one-year anniversary of the big win.

But you guys are going to be in Ole Miss together.

Yep.

And it's going to be Erica's only appearance on the tour.

I mean, we really, you know, we thought about suggesting to her to do more, and it's just, she needs time.

She still needs time.

She does.

But she wanted to make it a priority to be at this one.

And you're making it a priority to be at this one.

It's going to be like 9,000 or 10,000 people in the arena there.

So it's a huge, please tell us,

tell us your perspective on this.

Yeah, I'm excited about it.

And one of the things I said to you and others, as you know, privately is I was like, well, you know, part of keeping Charlie's memory alive is keeping the mission alive.

And nobody can replace Charlie.

But if we all sort of take little pieces, we can do as much as we can to ensure that Charlie's mission continues to survive long after he's gone.

And part of that is these college campus tours, right?

And I'm going to do exactly what Charlie did.

My plan is to give a little speech, talk a little bit about the issues of the day, but turn most of it over to just do Q ⁇ A with the audience.

I actually want to, I want to hear from these kids.

I want to answer questions from them.

I want to do what Charlie did because I think that engagement is something that was such a big part of Charlie's legacy.

It's not just that he he went and talked to people or talked about issues that he cared about, it's that he actually interacted with people and he answered questions.

Sometimes, as you know, he answered tough questions.

He would answer tough questions from the left and from the right.

And so I want to do that too.

And of course, having Erica there is very special.

I am glad that she's not doing all of them because she's obviously got a lot to deal with.

She's grieving more than any of us are.

She's taking care of two beautiful kids, but it'll be very special to have her there.

And, you know, I actually, it's interesting.

I mean, any of you who have known somebody who's grieving very, somebody that they love very much, know that it comes in hills and valleys, right?

Some days it's like the worst day imaginable.

Some days you actually feel like you're doing okay.

And I, you know, Erica's been staying with us the last few days at the Naval Observatory, actually.

And you sort of see it all, right?

There are days where you think she's doing pretty well.

There are days where you think she's doing terribly.

And that's just the process.

And I hope that she continues to kind of, yes, keep Charlie's mission alive and yes, you know, do everything that you guys are doing at Turning Points USA.

But I also hope that she continues to grieve a little bit and to carve out some time for her and her family.

You know, a buddy of mine,

I didn't mean to talk about this, but I'm going to say it.

But a buddy of mine, and this is what drives home how angry I get at the people celebrating Charlie's death and how really one-sided it is that you have people actually celebrating the murder of a dear friend, of a guy who is a leader to so many people.

But I was talking to another mutual friend, actually.

He was the guy sitting to my left at dinner a couple of nights ago at the vice president's residence so i i won't i won't reveal who it was publicly but he told me that he had called erica about a week or so after charlie died and he could hear charlie's daughter say where's daddy like six times during this very brief phone call

And I think all of us have had these moments where, yes, we love Charlie and we loved his ideas and we loved what an important voice he was.

You know, he's a necessary part.

It says the White House right behind you guys, right?

We're right here at the White House complex.

We wouldn't be here without Charlie.

But most tragically, they took a very loving husband away from a wife, and they took a very loving father away from two kids.

And that is, to me, the great tragedy of this moment.

We can't forget that.

Yeah.

I mean,

what Erica said in her speech yesterday

about

the birthday wish for the chat we had.

That was the one point where I lost it.

Yeah, I did too.

And I think I looked around and, gosh, I mean, people have seen some of the images of who was in that crowd.

I looked around at the most powerful people in the country, which means they're probably some of the most powerful people in the world.

And we all kind of just lost it.

And, you know, it was a really powerful and moving speech by Erica.

I think, you know, Dana Perino, I think we have the clip.

We don't need to play it.

But Dana Perino from Fox said she's one of the greatest orators of a generation.

And

she's given three speeches now.

Yeah.

And each one is in my top 10 of speeches

the whole way through Blake.

They're all pretty different too.

They hit on different themes.

This was, I think, arguably the most personal one in terms of talking about

talking about his birthday habits and stuff.

It was very philosophical, like the meaning of freedom.

I thought that was very interesting.

Really dwelled on it.

And it's all her.

I helped her prepare for it, but everything that was in that speech was what she wanted to say, how she said it.

And just tremendous how

well delivered it was,

how well it communicated.

And

what what he meant to her, and also what Charlie meant to America.

People want to know how Erica's doing, and you've touched on it because she's been staying with you at your guys' Naval Observatory.

But she is so strong and clear-eyed.

Charlie, when President Trump was talking about that story, about oh, you're going to love it.

Erica, Mr.

President, she's so smart, and she really is very smart, and she's so human and caring.

But you touched on something else, Mr.

Vice President, about the

rise in sort of like the

celebration of Charlie's murder and assassination and this rise of left-wing violence.

And you said it on the show the Monday after he was assassinated.

You hosted this show, and you said, We want unity, but we also want truth.

Maybe just really touch on that before we hit this first break and what you meant by that.

Yeah, I just meant that real unity comes from acknowledging the reality of the situation that we're in, right?

Unity requires everybody being on the same page, having some commonality of values.

And real unity requires us to acknowledge the fact that while, yes, there are crazies on both sides, we have a country of 330 million people, you're going to be able to find crazies on either side.

Political violence is just a statistical fact.

It's a bigger problem on the left.

And if you had, God forbid, somebody on the left who was assassinated, yeah, I'm sure that you could find one person who would maybe celebrate it or one person who would be offensive.

But the fact that it became mainstream to celebrate Charlie's death, to talk about the fact that he maybe deserved to die because he had said hateful things like, you know, we don't want women playing or we don't want men playing in women's sports.

Just the effort to try to like justify his murder, to lie about things that he had said,

so as to justify his killing, it was just really disgusting and really disgraceful.

And one of the things that we just have to, I want our country to be unified again.

I really do.

I mean, I'm the vice president of the United United States.

I really do feel like I represent every single person, even the people who say disgusting things.

But if we're going to have real unity in this country, we're all going to have to acknowledge that killing people for what they think and what they believe is wrong.

And right now, that violent impulse is a bigger problem on the left than the right.

That I asked our daughter

what she would like to say to Daddy for his birthday.

She said,

Happy birthday, Daddy.

I want to give you a stuffed animal.

I want you to eat a cupcake with ice cream.

And I want you to go have a birthday surprise.

Yeah.

The team flagged that clip that we had it ready to go.

And

it really brings it all home.

And I know you had such a close personal friendship with Charlie, as did we.

And

I think it ties into what you were just saying, Mr.

Vice President, that

if we cannot get unanimity around the fact that killing people for their ideas is horrendous and awful and un-American and bad and has no place here, like, what are we even doing?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And the only way to get unanimity about around that fact is to acknowledge that we do have a problem.

Like you first sort of acknowledge the problem.

That's, you know, a cliche at this point.

You have to acknowledge the problem before you can actually solve it.

And right now, you have a number of people who actually think words are violence.

And if words are violence, then one reasonable response to people saying things you don't like is to kill them.

And we have to just completely reject that in the United States of America.

It's one of the reasons why I wanted to get out there to Ole Miss to go and do this because I think that engagement really matters.

And it's not most people, right?

This is the good news.

It's not most people who think that Charlie, meaning most people on the left who think that Charlie deserved to die because they said something that they had disagreed with or that they even found offensive.

But it is a large enough and powerful enough minority.

You know, it's pretty well funded.

There's a lot of resources behind it.

There are a lot of powerful media voices behind it.

And it is, I think, the most significant domestic problem we have in the United States of America is this justification of violence, which then, of course, leads to the real thing.

Yeah.

And you, you talked about the funding networks.

We had Secretary Scott Bessant on the show yesterday.

Treasury is taking a leading role in this.

He said he described Charlie's assassination as a domestic 9-11

of its own right.

And the Treasury really got involved after 9-11 to find these funding sources that led to al-Qaeda being able to pull off that

horrendous attack.

And so they're using some of those same systems and

authorizations to go and root out the funding networks.

Is there maybe anything, maybe just philosophically, anything you want to add to kind of what you maybe know what's going on there?

Well, I wouldn't even say philosophically, just a matter of practice.

There is some muscle memory that we're trying to create within the federal government.

And I'll just be blunt with you.

There's this idea that exists, certainly not at the administration, not at the leadership level of the political appointees, but there is a group of federal law enforcement, what you might call the deep state, where they almost automatically assume that left-wing political violence is protected by the First Amendment and right-wing political violence is a crime.

And you sort of see just that the basic muscle memory, the basic sort of apparatus of government is very, very primed at right-wing political violence.

But the instinct is to almost say, well, no, no, that left-wing political violence, that's actually protected by the First Amendment.

So, no, political violence, wherever it comes from, is just not protected by the First Amendment.

And because we have such a big problem with left-wing political violence, we have to train the investigatory and law enforcement powers of the government to focus on that particular problem.

Now, I think Scott maybe has the most important part of this because a lot of this is financial, right?

If a brick gets thrown through a wall in a government building, who bought the brick?

If somebody shows up and is a paid protester, but then that person goes and riots and commits an act of of violence, who paid for it?

If you have an application that's helping people hunt down or even avoid law enforcement officers,

if you're helping immigrants avoid illegal immigrants, avoid ICE enforcement, but you're helping people actually target the law enforcement officers who are trying to enforce our immigration laws, well, who's paying for the hosting there?

Who's paying for the programming?

There's an entire financial element of this, but we really have to retain

the entire government to focus on this left-wing violence problem.

We're doing it.

It's going to go a little bit slow, more slowly than we'd like, but we are doing it.

You're making a little bit of news here yesterday on X, formerly known as Twitter, about this Politico story.

But I think it ties in because we're talking about the celebratory nature of some, not many, maybe not most, but

some.

And it was disgusting about Charlie's assassination.

There is a story, and I believe it's there.

The two stories are connected, that came out of Politico yesterday.

Blake, explain this for our audience, for those who don't know.

We don't need to wallow in it it too much, but so Politico has a story where somehow they got their hands on something like 28,000 messages in some

group chat of, I think, 12 people that nobody's ever heard of, but they decided to just publish every single thing in this chat, whatever they found that they thought was the most salacious.

And

I think 10 years ago, there would have been a very different response to it.

But people are starting to learn.

from this and the vice president is one of the reasons why.

So you tweeted this.

This This is far worse

than

so what you did is instead of reacting to the story itself, you just posted what Jay Jones, our friend in Virginia who's running for AG as the Democrat, had said where he wanted his political opponents to die.

And then when someone thought he might be kidding, he called to make it clear, actually, it wasn't a joke.

I was serious.

That's how people change their mind.

And you just pointed out.

quote, this is far worse than anything said in any college group chat.

And the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia.

I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.

And we have 14 million views on that.

Just a little viral, Mr.

Vice President.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'll let the tweet speak for itself.

I'll say a couple of additional things.

First of all, a person who is very politically powerful, who is about to become one of the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country, that person seriously wishing for political violence and political assassination is 1,000 times worse than what a bunch of young people, a bunch of kids say in a group chat, however offensive it might be.

That's just reality.

And if you allow yourself to be distracted by this person's incredible endorsement, disgusting endorsement of political assassination by focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat, grow up.

I'm sorry, focus on the real issues.

Don't focus on what kids say in group chats.

But there's another angle to this that I just have to be honest about.

I mean, I'm like an old guy at this point.

I'm 41 years old.

I have three kids.

You know,

I grew up in a different world, right?

Where not most of what I, the stupid things that I did when I was a teenager and a young adult, they're not on the internet.

Like, I'm going to tell my kids, especially my boys, don't put things on the internet.

Like, be careful with what you post.

If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.

But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.

They tell edgy, offensive jokes.

Like, that's what kids do.

And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives.

And at some point, we're all going to have to say, enough of this BS.

We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old's group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time.

That's just not okay.

Like, we live in a digital world.

This stuff is now etched in stone online.

We're all going to have to say, you know what?

No, no, no.

We're not doing this.

We're not canceling kids because they do something stupid in a group chat.

And if I have to be the person who carries that message forward, I'm fine with it.

And by the way, if they were left-wing kids telling stupid left-wing jokes, I would also not want their lives to be ruined because they're saying something stupid in a private group chat.

Well, you and Charlie shared that, by the way.

He became, I mean, because he had so many young people at turning point that were working for him that did stupid things from time to time.

And he would refuse to start engaging in the pearl clutching.

And especially in this moment where we have seen people celebrating Charlie's murder.

Yes.

And there's been zero outrage, as far as I can tell, from Politico or others about something so vile as that.

I'm still so disgusted that this is like something that we've put up with as a country.

Mr.

Vice President, final minute to you, whatever you want to expound upon.

Say something interesting.

That's always dangerous.

Give a politician a free microphone for a minute.

But I guess, one, I mean, look, I'm so proud of you guys.

I think you're doing a great job.

I know it's very hard to grieve for a friend, but also to try to carry on an impossibly large legacy.

I'm here to support you guys while you're doing it.

I will just say that

for all of the negativity and the hate and the people celebrating Charlie's assassination, for every one negative moment, I've had a thousand positive moments in the past month.

I've had people who've come up to me who said, I went back to church because Charlie got shot.

I've had people come up up and say that

they listened to his clips for the first time, didn't even know who he was, especially like older people who didn't know who he was before he was killed, but now they're consuming his video content and learning from it, getting back to their faith.

I just remember there's a lot of love out there, and we should remember that for all of the hate out there, there's 10 times as much love.

I think that has to be our charge as we move forward and carry on Charlie's legacy.

Well said.

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We have James Blair, White House Deputy Chief of Staff,

who is really in charge of a lot of the political strategy and policy strategy across the country.

And we're here live at the White House.

It's an honor to be here, James.

So I don't know what strings you pulled to make this happen, but we're glad to be here.

Obviously, yesterday was a really emotional time for a lot of us on the team.

I know you were at the ceremony, the presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

It was beautiful.

It was a who's who

of Washington politics, of American politics, leaders, cabinet members, President Trump, obviously.

So I just want to, I'm going to start right there with you, James.

People don't know this, but I know this, that you and Charlie communicated all the time, all the time.

And I was even on calls with you during the campaign.

You were so active in the campaign, putting together the macro strategy and then on the state level.

But you and Charlie had a really deep relationship, and that's why I was so glad you could join us today because a lot of people don't know that.

So, tell us about your relationship with Charlie.

What was that like?

What was your impression of him?

And what did he mean to what happened in November of 2024?

Yeah,

he meant everything that happened in 2024.

The way Charlie and I became close really was during the 2024 campaign, where we'd had this meeting

where we presented to a few sort of key players on the right that ran big organizations, Charlie's being one of them.

And this was kind of right at the end of the primary, beginning of the general election.

April, right?

Yes, exactly.

I remember.

We presented, we kind of came in and we wanted, we did sort of a, it was kind of a closed door kind of secret meeting and we said,

we want to show you our analysis of the 2020 campaign and where things could have been done better and what the outcomes were.

And then we want to walk you through what we're doing in the 2024 campaign and basically what our path to victory is, not only on the strategic level, but a tactical level.

And

Charlie had spent a lot of time thinking about exactly that since 2020.

And you know, obviously you guys are part of it, that turning point had started to make this pivot since 2020, particularly of becoming not only a campus organizing organization and a media organization, but an actual grassroots organizing and activation organization.

And between Charlie and Tyler and you guys and everybody, they spent a lot of time thinking about this.

And the takeaway was they were really excited.

I think they thought it was not going to be as good as it was.

So we had this total mind-meld.

They were immediately like, you know, this is amazing, all, you know, full speed ahead.

And sort of a partnership with the campaign was born for,

you know, it was just an opportunity.

There was a change in the rules, right?

There was.

There was a change.

So the Federal Election Commission ruled in the late spring,

thanks to a case brought by mark elias which is ironic that

third-party organizations which previously sort of couldn't engage with the campaign at all a federal campaign could engage on canvassing door-to-door activity sort of traditional get out the vote activity and that is something that turning point had been building for a period of time with its chase the vote program and all these sorts of things and it was you know turning into a big player in that space and had been sort of working towards that for the election cycle so just because of right place at the right time, thank you, Mark Elias.

I never sent him my fruit basket.

I promised him on Twitter

that we would basically become partners, where the groups that did this grassroots work out in the field in the campaign would become partners under the new confines of the law.

And we did that.

So then immediately we started talking all of the time.

Not only about that, but just grew into one thing after another.

Obviously, I'm just a little bit older than Charlie was, but we're basically from the same generation.

We're millennials.

He turned 32 yesterday.

I'm 36.

So very similar.

We also have similar personal lives.

He's married with a wonderful wife and two children.

I'm married.

I have three children.

We're both Christians, so it just blossomed into a personal friendship, too.

2024, Charlie and the organization was essential to what we did all over the country, not only rallying the youth, which is what it's really known for, younger voters, but just rallying voters in general and just really getting into the granular weeds of turning out voters and getting people to go to the polls, getting people to return their mail ballots, hence how the Chase the Vote program was sort of born.

So we're working on that very closely.

But

Charlie and I developed a personal friendship.

And I said, I wrote this online.

I didn't know what to say

after news of the assassination, but I wrote online.

I mean, one of the things, the thing that I admired about Charlie the most is he really inspired people around him, I think, to be better, me included.

I never heard him use a swear word.

I wish that was true of me.

My parents are mortified to see me having sworn on TV accidentally recently.

Never used a swear word,

but he's a great father, great husband.

And the biggest thing is that, obviously, his testimony for Jesus, we should all be the way Charlie was and put our faith first.

And two, to advocate to our generation for why it's great to get married and have a family.

I always joke with my wife, we've been married 11 years now.

I don't know what we were doing before we had kids.

Everybody should have kids.

It's the most fulfilling thing in your life.

And I know not everybody can, or haven't

found the right spouse.

I would say ask God for that.

But, you know, that sort of transcends politics and everything else, but it also doesn't.

The family should be at the center of everything we do.

It's the center of our culture centered around God.

And Charlie just understood understood that in a way.

As the president said yesterday, his wise bond is here.

So that's so true in so many ways.

And that's one of them.

The president talked about Charlie's marriage a little bit in his remarks yesterday, and he mentioned

how he knew Charlie actually before he even got married.

And then he talked about Charlie telling him he was going to get married.

So let's play that.

Let's play clip 213.

I was with him before I met Erica, and he told me he was going to get married.

He said,

you won't believe how beautiful she is.

I said, well, then now that I meet her, he's right.

But then he also said, and you know what?

She's like the smartest person I know.

See, they do go together on occasion.

Not often.

Not often.

But on occasion they go together.

But

he was in love with you.

He was deeply in love with you.

It's great.

Erica, your love and courage have been an inspiration to all of us and we will always be here for you and we're always going to be here for your gorgeous, beautiful children.

And we'll never forget what your family has sacrificed for our country.

Man loved our country.

Yeah, and I can just attest, you know, I saw, I knew Charlie before Erica.

I saw them when they started dating and their love was so, I mean, passionate and such an inspiration to so many people.

I can tell you, the Turning Point staff was all, you know, so obsessed with their marriage.

And he inspired so many people just in Turning Point to get married and start having families.

And, you know, you mentioned his faith.

Let's go up and throw up 169.

This made up a bunch of news yesterday.

So, apparently, this is the first time a cross has been inscribed.

I haven't fact-checked this, but this is what the internet tells me.

But it has a cross on the back

engraved, along along with Charles James Kirk, with the cross and his Christian faith just prominently placed there.

And I think that is the legacy.

I mean, Charlie worked so hard for this country because he believed that this is a providential country, that God has his hand on this country, and he's guiding world events to support this country.

And

that gave him all the faith in the world to just leave it all out on the field.

And I'm so glad that you saw that because you are a first-hand witness to history and what he did for this country.

30 seconds before our break, if you want to add to that, James.

Yeah, I mean, I think Charlie just understood that,

at least in our lives, you know, politics and how we're living our lives ultimately is a reflection of our faith or not, and

that there's sort of an existential fight between good and evil.

And he engaged in that battle on the side of good.

And his outlet was through politics and by being a leader.

Other people do it different ways, but he understood the really big picture, which is there's good and there is evil.

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James Blair, you're the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, along with like Stephen Miller.

There's a, I don't know how many deputy chief of staffs there are, but it's an extremely big job.

And obviously, Susie Wiles is the chief of staff.

But so tell us how, like, your portfolio is, it's politics,

it's policy.

Maybe just give us a brief.

So each of us, I mean, the ones you mentioned, Stephen, and I,

we have different sort of portfolios that are complementary, obviously.

But the White House is actually a really large operation.

Most people don't really realize that.

It's not just the West Wing, but it's this building that we're in, and there's another building next to it.

I don't even know how many total employees it has, but

1,500 plus.

And it has components.

And everything in the federal government sort of centralizes in the White House.

And so we have different portfolios that sort of kind of divvies up the key offices and responsibilities.

And then we all work together at the senior level to sort of coordinate those.

So my big ones are politics, obviously.

I oversee the president's political operation, run out of here of the White House, and obviously work very closely in my personal time with sort of the guys outside the RNC, different groups like that.

I oversee our legislative affairs affairs office, which is the president's lobbying arm on Capitol Hill, and ultimately is the kind of final shot caller for what the administration's priorities are.

Well, and that's a bigger job than probably any other previous president because, you know, obviously we have separate branches, you know, executive, legislative, judicial.

But when it comes to President Trump, I mean, he is the Pied Piper of so as President Trump goes, so goes the conservative movement, which means James Blair is probably one of the most important people in Washington.

I mean, genuinely, you don't have to say that.

I can say that because you are, I mean, when Trump weighs in on an issue, I mean, that's when things get moving.

Because the legislative branch is, you know, notoriously slow, bureaucratic, just slow off the line.

And then Trump comes in, which just means you've been involved at some point, and we see movement.

And so I want to talk about those priorities.

But first,

I want to play this clip from President Trump yesterday giving Charlie some praise.

I don't want to get off of this just yet.

Play cut 224, please.

He was so wise beyond his years.

You know, I talk to him sometimes.

I say, this guy is like a young guy.

He was really a wise man.

From the time Charlie worked on my presidential campaign in 2016, he was there right from the beginning.

He liked me.

I don't know.

I have no idea why.

What the hell was he thinking?

He said, you're going to win, sir.

I said, you know, I'm running against 17 senators and a lot of tough people and governors.

We have all these people.

And he said, no, you're going to win, sir.

He said, not going to be close.

And he made it happen.

He helped make it happen.

I'll tell you that.

Without him, who knows what would be.

Maybe you'd have Kamala standing here today.

That would not be good.

I will tell you, Javier, you don't know who Kamala is.

Promise, it would not be good.

You agree with that, Howard?

That, of course, is the president talking about Javier Malay, who

was actually in town for a bilateral meeting with the president, but stayed for the ceremony.

And actually, you might have witnessed this down as well.

Charlie sent me pictures of him with Javier Millay, and they got to meet,

I think it was at Mar-a-Lago during the transition period.

Maybe you were there.

I don't know, James.

Yeah,

I don't think I was there, but I remember when it happened, although it's hard to remember, I did spend...

a lot of evenings on the patio with Charlie at Mar-a-Lago throughout transition and even the early spring when we were going back.

Yeah, I mean, it was great for him to be there.

It's funny, you know, just before this, we were talking about what happens on Capitol Hill.

Right now, the president mentioned it yesterday, maybe the shutdown would be done sooner if Charlie was still with us.

That's probably true.

I mean, Charlie would be calling me every day right now if he were here and say, what can I do to help?

President Trump plays an outsized role.

on Capitol Hill.

There's just no doubt.

I mean, the separate but equal branches, but he plays an outside role, which means you play an outside role.

One of the things Charlie was really concerned about, and Blake, feel free to chime in here, was keeping the coalition together and the legislative priorities.

I mean, he was big on the one big beautiful bill.

You guys got that through.

He eventually became very convinced about it.

He wanted more cutting, but

we educated the audience on that, how this wasn't a budget bill, right?

But he ended up really loving it because he believed it was going to unleash economic prosperity and it was going to secure the border and give us, give ICE the resources it needed, Tom Holman, Christino.

Thinking about it through Charlie's lens, where he was always thinking about how do we keep the coalition together?

How do we keep the priorities right-sized?

You know, Charlie would want to know what are the priorities moving forward from your vantage point for 26, 2028.

Floor is yours.

Yeah.

You know, first I'll say Charlie,

and one of the reasons he liked the bill, and we all want a little more of this or that, right?

But one of the things that I loved about Charlie is that he understands that politics is a game of addition, not subtraction.

And obviously, I have my views, you have your views, the president has his views, but this needs to be a party.

If Republicans are going to be any successful, it has to be a party with space for people who disagree a little bit at the margins.

And that's what the process of negotiating is all about.

And he said, we we talked about this as soon as we got elected and even throughout that process, how do we get this new coalition that sweat Trump and Republicans into office to stick together?

And the answer, I think, first and foremost, that we control is do what we promise them.

Just start by doing the things we promised them on the campaign trail.

Exactly.

Govern like we campaign.

That was always one of Charlie's biggest pitches.

He just loved that.

He would love to break it down.

You know, Trump was

one of the most straightforward politicians of all time in terms of if he promised this thing, he will almost certainly at least attempt to do it.

Maybe a court will get in the way.

Maybe some judge will discover novel hidden meanings in the Constitution, but he will make the serious attempt for it.

Yeah, and he would go ahead.

Well, so we talked a lot about how Charlie helped with the election, but I thought maybe you could elaborate on

Charlie

went down to Mar-a-Lago during the transition.

He didn't care for D.C., but he would come here often enough, try to get into the White House when he could.

I know he was running around this area, running around the West Wing.

Could you maybe elaborate on sort of the role he was able to play within the White House or just what his presence was like here?

Yeah, I mean, he was an advisor on personnel.

I mean, you mentioned he spent a lot of time talking to Aries, particularly that he knew very well or cared deeply about talking to people and getting a feel for who they were and whether or not they were aligned.

And he was really essential to that, helping make sure that we got the right people into the right seats on the bus, you know, as they sort of say in business school.

And he had policy ideas.

That's the thing.

Charlie's not just a political guy.

I mean, he had a well-beyond his years, wide-ranging sort of philosophical view of the world, of government, on what direction we need to go, what's right and wrong, and how that helps our movement.

And so we would talk about that, and

he would just help us get things done.

You ask what our priorities are.

We want to bring the American dream back.

We want to make people be able to once again propel themselves upward socioeconomically through their own labor.

We want to make life affordable.

We want to make health care affordable.

We're focused on getting down the price of prescription drugs.

Charlie was all about that, and he totally agreed because this is something people come into contact with constantly.

We want to make the ability to buy a home

something that is open to more people.

Obviously, we know what's going to happen.

The biggest problem we took when Biden came into office is the Biden inflation in the last four years, right?

Prices skyrocketed, and we've had to turn that around.

That's a slow-moving ship, but you know what?

All year, inflation hasn't gone up.

It's trending in the right direction.

And we want to make the American dream accessible to people.

It's very simple.

America should be the best country in the world to live in, to get married, to work, to raise a family, and to be safe in your neighborhood.

Crime is something we're talking a lot about.

Charlie was all about that too.

We must control violent crime in this country.

And we're proving right now in Washington, Memphis, elsewhere, we can.

It's about having the will to enforce the laws that are on the books.

And we cannot be beholden to violent criminals and liberal politicians that want to be beholden to violent criminals.

We're not going to be anymore.

It's one of of the things that Charlie and the President both have really revealed over the past few years, that there is this artificially constrained realm of what is possible.

Oh, we can't stop crime because we can only do this or that.

And then, you know, the president says, actually, you know, you can just stop crime, put people on the streets, and put criminals in prison.

Well, Charlie believed in offense.

He believed in a muscular, creative, offensive strategy, always moving forward.

I know he shared that and probably learned part of that from the president.

But I know that I keep saying I feel like I have like a Charlie GPT in my head.

I just kind of like we were talking about this.

And I believe that the people in this admin do as well.

And I think we all carry that spirit.

And I know that you do as well, James, just because you worked so closely together for over the last year, 18 months.

So thank you for joining us.

Hope to have you on again soon.

Thank you.

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Hello, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.

We're broadcasting here from the Eisenhower building next to the White House.

What do they call it, though?

It's the E-E-B-E-O-B, whatever.

They're formal technical stuff.

Anyway, we're joined by Carolyn Levitt, the White House press secretary here, and we were talking just during the break about

during Trump's remarks where he was saying he was doing the Middle East peace deal, a very, very big deal,

but he

was thinking, maybe should we push this to Friday?

But we can't.

It's Charlie's birthday.

So I believe that's clip 222.

As you know, only hours ago I returned from a very historic trip to secure peace in the Middle East.

People said that couldn't be done.

Charlie felt it could be done.

Charlie felt it could be done.

But I raced back halfway around the globe.

I was going to call Erica and say, Erica, could you maybe move it to Friday?

And I didn't have the courage to call.

But you know why I didn't call?

Because I heard today was Charlie's birthday.

And I said, you know, now we, that was a definite.

But I would not have missed this moment for anything in the world.

Nothing.

He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith and relentlessly fighting for a better and stronger America.

He loved this country.

And that's why this afternoon it's my privilege to posthumously award Charles James Kirk, our nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Thank you.

We're throwing it to you in just a second, Caroline.

But I knew that this was happening.

And

I got all these calls from reporters: like, is it going to get moved?

Can he make it back?

And I

made a phone call, and they're like, no, he will not miss this.

Maybe you could tell us more about this.

Yeah, well, it was all of our first instinct as well when we knew that the deal was going to be signed.

And Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff called the president from the Middle East and said, sir,

it's now or never, right?

You've got to get out here.

We need to sign this deal.

We need to get these hostages out.

We need this momentum.

And it's crucially important, literally, for peace in the Middle East.

And all of us here thought, oh my gosh, we have the ceremony for Charlie on Tuesday.

I hope we don't have to delay it.

And the president said it was a non-negotiable for him.

And I think that really speaks to how much he loved and respected Charlie.

There are very few people in this world that the president would really cut a trip short because there was much more we could have done.

I mean, we left the White House at 5 p.m.

on Sunday evening.

We flew all the way to the Middle East.

We landed in Israel, 9 a.m.

local time.

So it was the middle of the night Eastern time.

We went to Israel.

The president gave that amazing speech in Jerusalem.

And he met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, met with hostage families.

We get back on the plane, fly an hour to Egypt, go to Egypt and meet with world leaders from all over the planet and sign the Arab peace agreement and really began phase two of this peace process.

And then we got right back on the plane and came home.

And so we were gone for, I think it was 36 total hours.

When I got home at 3:30 in the morning, my husband said, I can't believe you just went all the way to Africa and back in like one day.

But we did it for Charlie.

And I'm so glad we did.

And I know the president is glad because yesterday was such a beautiful ceremony.

And the way that the sun broke through the clouds and just kind of was over the Rose Garden, it was so peaceful, so beautiful.

And so we're so glad we were able to make it back.

Yeah,

you could tell everybody in attendance, by the way, was looking up at the sky.

Yeah.

Because if you've been in D.C.

the last couple of days, it hasn't felt like that.

And all of a sudden, right before we start the ceremony, the sun breaks through the clouds, and it was almost like God was smiling down on us.

And even President Trump, he looks up to the sky.

I saw him just stare for a while during his speech.

And

I think for a lot of us, it was just a bittersweet moment.

We all didn't want to be there for that.

But the fact that President Trump literally moved world events

to honor Charlie on his 32nd birthday is something I will never forget.

I know Erica will never forget that.

We will always be eternally grateful.

And to your point, it just shows how close Charlie was with the president and vice versa.

And really with all of you and the admin.

I'm just guessing that nobody fought the president on this.

Because you guys all share your own personal relationship with Charlie.

And you are one of those people.

You actually were involved with Turning Point at the college level.

People don't know this.

But maybe just tell the audience that, because I'm not sure how widely known that is.

Yeah, I was.

So, I mean, I'm a Gen Z MAGA conservative, right?

So I grew up in the age of President Trump and in the age of Charlie Kirk.

And so he was really one of the first people that got me into politics and into the conservative movement.

And just watching him and hearing his speeches throughout the country and when he was young at the time, you know, I mean, still young, I'm still young too, but he really helped, I think, kind of grow, helped me grow in my political philosophies.

And so I inquired about a Turning Point USA chapter on my college campus, St.

Anselm College up in Manchester, which is really a political hub for politics because of the New Hampshire primary every four years.

And so that really catapulted me into my political career.

And then, of course, when I ran for Congress in the 2022 midterms, Charlie and Turning Point Action, you guys were the very first political action committee to endorse me.

And unafraid to do it, I flew out to Arizona.

I met with Tyler.

I met with Charlie.

And you guys were on board.

And when the mega establishment super PACs in D.C.

were pummeling money into my opponents' bank accounts, you guys always doubled down and came through, and we won that primary.

And in large part, it was because of Charlie and Turning Point support.

Yeah, well, and we haven't taken our eye off of New Hampshire at all.

So, if this doesn't work out for you at the White House, Caroline, we might be drafting some candidates up there.

But yeah, I mean, you talked about you put an inquiry in,

and that's been a big news story after 9-10 of just this explosive growth that we've seen at Turning Point

USA.

So, play put up a graphic 182.

Actually, this was from Fox News.

They did this for us.

This is a graphic that shows we've had 350,000 new student registrations.

So, our network is now over 800,000 students across the country involved in one way, shape, or form, and over 130,000 inquiries for new college or high school chapters on campuses.

So we've already doubled the number of RSOs, so registered student organizations, which I don't know if people can fully appreciate that, but it takes a while to form a chapter because you've got to get a faculty advisor to sort of put their weight behind it and bless it.

And then you have to go through certain steps and get approvals, and you have to form your club.

You have to have a certain number of people.

So it's an involved process.

So we've already doubled that, which is such a testament to Charlie.

And we will not rest until we have

Club America, which is the high school brand, in every single high school in America.

Because that's what Charlie wants.

I know that because he told us just a few weeks before it happened.

But now we have that momentum.

We can really get it done.

Maybe talk about, from your vantage point, outside of our bubble that we're in here, of what you've seen in this

city, of the people that knew Charlie, this rise, this flush of enthusiasm and patriotism and faith that you've seen from where you're at.

I think the numbers you just showed and everything that you just spoke to really shows how good our God is and how he does use everything for good, even the most traumatic and heartbreaking circumstances.

And look at how many people have been inspired by Charlie's legacy.

And I think, you know, the videos that have been circulating of him now and all of the speeches that he gave.

people that maybe didn't listen to him when he was here on earth are now listening to him despite him being in heaven and realizing the impact that he made on our country and just the truth that he spoke.

And I've heard from you know friends of mine who are apolitical.

They follow politics because I'm in this job now and they like President Trump, but they're not political people by nature.

But so many of them have reached out to me and said, I'm going back and I'm watching Charlie's podcast and I'm looking at his clips and they're coming up on my feed.

And he's really still to this to this very second as we sit here changing the way that people think and the values they hold.

And so, you guys at Turning Point, just I encourage you, and I know that you will, continue fighting on.

And how encouraging it is that so many young people are saying, I want to be part of this.

Despite the political violence we're continuing to face in our country, despite the fear and just the violence and the hatred that unfortunately comes from the left,

you know, people want to join this movement and they want to be on the side of truth and of righteousness and of good policy.

And it's great to see.

There's great trends we're seeing.

Go ahead and really quickly cut 230, please.

A Christian revival across the country.

Bible sales increasing over 40% since 2022.

Religion app downloads surging nearly 80%.

That increased since 2019.

And Christian music Spotify streams up 50%

from 2019.

All very encouraging trends.

And I think when they run that back after a little while, they're going to see the Charlie effect take those numbers even higher.

Hey, everybody, Andrew Colvett, executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show.

Charlie understood that to lead, he needed to learn.

Hillsdale College was ready to teach him.

While busy running his company, teaching America's youth, and raising a beautiful family, Charlie still found time to complete 31 Hillsdale College free online courses.

He talked about it the last time he spoke on his podcast with Hillsdale's president, Dr.

Larry Arn.

Hillsdale is the cutting edge, and I mean it.

It is America's greatest college.

You are a force of nature, Charlie Kirk.

One of these days, I'm going to give you an honorary degree.

That would be the honor of my life, but I got a lot more learning yet to do.

And I say this: the Hillsdale courses have changed my life.

Through Hillsdale College's free online courses, Charlie studied the Bible, the classics, the American founding, and through his relentless pursuit of truth, became not only a great American, but a good man.

Charlie's gone, but his spirit of hard work and lifelong learning carry on.

Each of us can follow his example and pick up where he left off.

So learn like Charlie did at charlie for hillsdale.com.

That's charlie for hillsdale.com.

I really want to hit this because I think it's another great way that you guys have honored Charlie and also executed on our policy priorities.

So yesterday, right around the time of

the ceremony, the State Department tweeted out,

the United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.

The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Here are just a few examples of aliens no longer welcome in the U.S.

Let's read a few of these.

Let's throw up 199, where they had a Brazilian national charge that Charlie was the reason for a Nazi rally where they marched in homage to him and that Kirk, quote, died too late.

Visa revoked.

198, an Argentine national said that Kirk devoted his entire life to spreading racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric and deserved to burn in hell.

Visa revoked.

And they had like five of these, and they were.

Very good.

They're great.

And, you know, it's really, we've talked about,

Charlie believed a lot in free speech.

We believe a lot in free speech.

But also, we have to build this norm against

assassination culture, that political assassinations are not acceptable.

And also,

we have the ability to control who we welcome as guests into our nation.

These are not

include people who celebrate assassinations.

Yes, you are a vile, ghoulish, nasty monster of a person, and you shouldn't be in this country.

I have no problem saying that.

And, you know, I mean, we'll throw it to you.

I mean,

you have the talking points here

for us.

But this is my perspective on it.

I'm so grateful to the State Department and Secretary Rubio.

I'm so grateful to also Pete Hegseth, who's been looking through the ranks, and there's been disciplinary actions and investigations launched

at

the Department of War.

Sorry, I don't know if I said DOD.

Did I say it?

You caught yourself.

I almost did, yeah.

But I just, there has to be no room for this.

And we, we, Charlie, we talk a lot about this between Maggioneism versus MAGA.

And like, the country's going to go down one of the two routes.

And so which one is it?

MAGA is American.

It is conservative, populist nationalism, whatever.

But Maggionism is unacceptable.

Caroline.

Yeah, this is...

just basic common sense.

And I'm so glad we have a phenomenal Secretary of State and Marco Rubio who believes in common sense.

And as he said, we've been doing this since the beginning of the administration.

If you hate our country, if you are inciting violence, if you are siding with terrorists, we have revoked the visas of pro-Hamas individuals in our country who are engaging in some of the campus shutdowns and locking down American universities.

We are not going to tolerate illegal behavior.

We're not going to allow you to side with assassins and terrorists.

Having a visa to this country is a privilege.

It is not a right.

And if you are wishing death upon America, you won't be welcome here anymore.

It's so simple.

Amen.

So simple.

It's so simple.

The fact that we've made this complicated, by the way, and by the way, there's lots of reasons that you should probably have your visa revoked.

But

if there is an

argument about this, please let us know, Caroline, because we will help on the messaging on that front.

Because

the fact that we just can't have agreement about something as simple as this is disturbing if that's the case.

But hopefully we don't get too much pressure.

I think the only people arguing this are the legacy media who have never seen real changes in Washington, D.C.

Exactly.

The people that I unfortunately have to deal with every day.

And never seen

a foreign lunatic that they didn't want to immediately give citizenship to.

Yeah, the only people they seem to support or defend are usually like illegal immigrants or visa holders that hate payments.

Or assassins.

Or assassins.

There is some news with a gentleman commonly known as Big Balls.

We'll call him Edward.

Yes, Edward.

Oh, is it Edward Edwards?

George Korstan, however you say the last name.

Well, Edward Big Balls, of course.

I love love how they say it here on the New York Post.

So anyway, as we remember, the big inspiration for the Law and Order surge in D.C.

was when he was just attacked out of the blue while I believe on a date

trying to protect her.

And they

mauled him.

And

this is just not acceptable to have happen in your nation's capital.

And so that really inspired, let's send in the guard to restore order.

And it's had a lot of success.

But anyway, Breaking Today, the two teenagers who were involved in that attack have been sentenced to probation.

Weren't there more than two?

There were 10.

Yeah.

We have two, still looking for the other eight.

I talked to Judge Janine, who's our great U.S.

attorney in Washington, D.C., yesterday, actually, at the Rose Garden ceremony before the president and Erica came out.

And she is doing everything she possibly can to restore law and order and justice in our nation's capital.

But unfortunately, like in most liberal districts around the country, she is facing

roadblock after roadblock from the courts and from the judges.

And so, in this case, you have the U.S.

Attorney's Office prosecuting the two lead individuals who should be incarcerated.

And you have a liberal judge saying, No, they should just be rehabilitated when they beat somebody to a pulp.

And they were involved in this mob mentality, gang violence that we see was so prevalent in Washington, D.C.

And as you pointed out, this instance was just one of many that the administration said, Enough is enough.

We need to do more in Washington, D.C.

to make this a safe place.

And so, big credit to Judge Janine, who's literally doing all she can with the resources that she has.

But we have these far-left judges.

I know the president is eventually going to appoint more good judges who actually believe in law and order and following the rule of law and enforcing it.

And one of the big issues in D.C.

is these juveniles.

They just get a slap on the wrist.

They say, you need, you know, again, rehabilitation, not incarceration.

This administration has a completely different philosophy.

We need law and order, period.

If you commit a crime, you're going to face consequences.

If you commit a violent crime, you are going to see jail time.

And so we'll see that through the best we can.

But the courts are a real problem.

And not only in D.C.

and all of these liberal jurisdictions, they are blocking this administration from just pursuing basic law and order.

We see it in Portland, Oregon, where there have been hundreds of nights of violent riots, of illegal behavior outside of the ICE facility.

The president rightfully and legally calls up the National Guard, and we have liberal judges saying, no, you can't do that.

When people are literally being attacked night after night, our federal law enforcement officers.

So this is a fight we are taking to every city across the country every day.

We know we are doing what is right by the merits of the law.

So we'll continue to fight these cases all the way up to the Supreme Court if we have to.

Well, good for you.

And I love that you guys are on top of this.

And it strikes me as not disconnected from...

what happened to Charlie.

There just seems to be this divergence.

And I, you know,

there's a thousand theories of what's causing it, but there's a divergence between the left and the right when it comes to acceptance or justification of political violence, celebrating political violence, or just law and order.

People, you know, the conservatives, we tend to be, no, this person needs to go into prison, jail.

They need to be punished, held accountable.

Judge Neen's been phenomenal on that, even if they're a little bit on the younger side sometimes, right?

And especially in this city, that is a lot of what we've seen happen.

These are repeat offenders.

There was the former, I think it was Metro PD chief, said that the average homicide suspect had been arrested 11 times prior before committing

a murdery.

Every murder that happens by someone who has 11 prior offenses was a preventable murder.

100%.

And I don't know what the philosophical divergence is, but it just seems like one side is doing everything they can to sow chaos and the other one's trying to clean up the mess.

Republicans versus Democrats, left versus right, conservatives versus progressives, whatever you want to call it, there's really a basic principle.

It is law and order versus lawlessness.

Democrats want to coddle criminals.

Republicans want to lock up criminals.

That's it.

It's very simple.

And again, we see this resistance from judges.

We even see it from police departments in some cities, like in Portland or in Chicago, where the Chicago PD is actually told by the Democrat mayor to stand down when a federal law enforcement agent was being rammed by vehicles.

That's an unprecedented action.

And the woman had a, was a semi-automatic

strapped to her.

Yeah, she ended up getting shot in a defensive measure.

She drove herself to the, she ended up being okay.

But it's just an insane story.

It is.

And it shows how these Democrats have put politics above public safety.

And they are preventing local and federal law enforcement from working together.

When you talk to cops on the street, they want to work with the feds.

They want that backup, that support.

They want to be able to communicate, share intel, and go arrest bad guys.

And as our FBI director says, we need to let cops be cops.

And that's what we're trying to do every day.

And we want to have accurate data on how bad the crimes actually are.

DOJ is looking into that in D.C.

That's a whole Caroline Levitt, thank you so much, White House Press Secretary.

It's so nice to have you.

Me too.

This is the Charlie Kirk Show.

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All right, without further ado, we have Director of OMB, Russ Vogt, the man, the myth, the legend.

You are...

You're a tough get, I'm told.

I was told in the break that this is your first interview in three weeks or something.

Yeah, something like that.

Something like that.

Well, I just want to say I'm honored that you would trust us with this interview and trust me.

And I know why you're doing it because you and Charlie were very close.

And I told you this in the break: that of all of the people not named Trump or Vance, because they're just in a whole different category, I think it's safe to say that he had the most faith in your ability to operate in the levers of government

move forward a conservative agenda in this, in the imperial capital known as Washington, D.C.

He knew that you understood at an intricate level the way government works.

And so

you guys had your own personal, very close friendship.

So I want to give you the floor and let you just kind of explain what that was like and what Charlie meant to you.

Sure.

Well, thanks for having me.

It's great to be here at the White House and on your show.

And honestly, that's just

what a gracious thing for Charlie to say.

And he was a huge advocate to get me back at OMB.

And, you know, I think one of the things that stood out to me about Charlie is just the extent to which

he was always in the fight.

He was always pushing as much as we could get.

He was always...

cognizant of all of the different things that might cause you to be unsuccessful.

He was always pushing truth in the midst of whatever complicated, almost simplifying it from the standpoint of what's right, what's wrong, what's truth, what's false,

and having a good cheer about it.

The notion that this is coalition ball, we're trying to make sure that we're successful, we win, and to have a good time about it.

And honestly, I think it's something about your show that I love is just the extent to which you guys embody

his ability to have fun talking about the issues of the day, getting the message out, and ultimately winning and attracting a whole movement of people that are going to come along with his legacy of standing on behalf of truth, come what may.

And that's something I took from yesterday, the extent to which Erica was articulating to the whole movement, the turning point movement, all of those new chapters, all of those

new activists, people who are hitting the books for maybe the first time and rejecting what's in their liberal schools and saying, I'm just going to be a self-learner in the

mode of Charlie.

They now have this legacy in their heart

and that's exciting.

And the future is going to pay incredible dividends as a result of that.

Yeah, well, and I think that's really well said.

Charlie was a proud autodidact.

People would say, oh, you didn't graduate college.

And he'd be like, that's a badge of honor.

First of all, I think at first, early on, maybe it hurt his feelings a little bit, but by the time he's 25, he wore it as a badge of honor and realized that because of that, he hadn't wasted all his time and he was so much further ahead than so many.

But just so, Russ, so you know that I'm not lying to you, let's go ahead and put up image 202.

This is where Charlie says on February 7th of this year, he says, people have yet to fully appreciate the significance of Russ Vogt at OMB.

It's seismic.

And then another, this is August 29th, so pretty recent.

Charlie said, Director Russ Vogt is one of the most capable and accomplished, steady hands in Washington.

Russ is the perfect pick to once and for all close out USAID, which had become a corrupt, woke, and bloated rogue agency, and congrats Secretary Rubio on having one less job.

So that was, I mean, he really, he would do it privately and publicly.

And you are now,

in many ways, with this government shutdown, apparently, what are we, 14, 15 days into it?

You went pretty viral for a tweet.

So you haven't given many interviews or none, but you said, you know, riffs, explain, they're coming, right?

Explain what that is and tell us what your plans are in the shutdown.

Sure.

So first of all, riffs are reductions in force.

And this is something that we honestly did not do in the first term.

We did a lot of things in the first term.

We had a ton of paradigm shifts.

But one of the things we did not do was reductions in force.

And we honestly learned about it in our years of exile.

And we came to this administration and we've done riffs earlier earlier in the year.

But the Democrats have put us in a position where,

against the American people's interest, they've put us in shutdown.

And obviously, there's impacts on the American people as a result.

But one of the problems of a government shutdown is it slows down the administration.

So the administration can't do as much of what it was doing on behalf of the American people because it's in a shutdown.

And we, to the best of our abilities, want to minimize that slowdown in momentum.

And I think the the president is kind of doing that himself with, you know, solving Middle East peace and all the manner of things that he spends his time in.

But, you know, one of the things we want to do is if there are policy opportunities to downsize the scope of the federal government, we want to use those opportunities.

And if I can't do things, because you can't do everything you would normally do in a shutdown, right?

It has to be generally related to life and protecting property.

And if I can only work on saving money, then I'm going to do everything I can to look for opportunities to downsize in areas where this administration has thought

this is our way towards a balanced budget.

And I think you've seen some of that in the President's messaging.

So, are we talking 10 people?

Are we talking

a thousand people?

We're talking about

people.

We're definitely talking thousands of people.

Much of the reporting has been based on kind of court snapshots,

which they've articulated is in the

4,000 number of people, but that's just a snapshot, and I think it will get much higher.

And we're going to keep those riffs rolling throughout this shutdown because we think it's important to stay on offense for the American taxpayer and the American people in getting a government that, if there's an opportunity to have less bureaucracy, and think of Green New Deal programs at the Department of Energy.

Think the Minority Business Development Agency at Commerce that divvies up business grants on the basis of race.

Think environmental justice at EPA.

Think about CISA.

CISA was an area that we riffed, which was participating in censorship of the American people.

We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding, but the bureaucracy, that we now have an opportunity to do that.

And that's where we're going to be looking for our opportunities.

So you're saying there's been a snapshot of 4,000 jobs cut.

Correct.

Is there a special but it could grow much higher?

I think we'll probably end up being north of 10,000.

Now, is there some special mechanism that allows you to do this during a government shutdown, or are you simply saying, hey, while everything stopped, I'm going to turn my attention to this?

It's a combination of both in the sense that Congress is saying we're not going to fund these programs

by not passing the Republican continuing resolution.

So if there's no funding for these programs, then what would you have us do?

Is it not to make an assumption that you don't intend to fund these in the future?

And so, we are then doing the normal

legal authorities that are given to us and our focus time and attention to be able to go after and prioritize the RIFs as opposed to the deregulatory agenda or any of the things that we're normally tasked with at OMB.

Well, this, I mean, just so you're aware, our audience, there's probably people doing, you know, high-fives and jump kicks out of just pure excitement to hear you talking about this.

Meanwhile, legacy media, corporate media is probably writing

hit pieces about this.

But the base is hungry for cuts, is so hungry for reductions in spending.

But

we talk about this, the government shutdown.

I'll be honest, I didn't feel it at all until I got to Washington this week.

And then it wasn't until talking to staff that I would normally communicate with and saying, oh, I can't come in because I'm furloughed or whatever until the shutdown's over.

Is there a concern that this will start rippling outside of the Imperial Capital, outside of the swamp?

Because I don't think Americans feel it, and that's kind of probably a good realization because there's a lot of government we just simply don't need.

But

is there a concern that we might start to feel it?

And in which ways will average Americans across the country begin to feel it?

So I think part of

the catch-up effect is that the people that are doing essential services are not getting paid.

So you may have border patrol, you may have air traffic control, the military obviously, although we're fixing that by finding a plain budgetary twister to find a pot of money that has a similar purpose that we can pay them.

And so it does have an impact on how long this can go without having severe repercussions.

And we don't want air traffic control to start staying homesick.

So we want to get out of the shutdown.

We want to do what's necessary to get the government open.

We've put forward a very simple proposition, which is continue at current levels,

and which is a CR.

And they have put forward $1.5 trillion in demands.

I mean, they've said, all right, the entire title of the one beautiful bill has to be repealed.

And then we want all manner of expansions to continue of Biden health care policy that have largely been riddled with fraud.

And they said they also want us to repeal our rescissions, which would get us back in the public broadcasting business with Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And they want us back in the foreign aid business so that we essentially reopen USAID.

And so

the magnitude of their demands is madness.

And so we're trying to get that out to the American people.

And I think it will start to bite, unfortunately, in the days ahead.

But thankfully, we've paid for the military, law enforcement, and border, and they'll get their paychecks.

Oh, okay.

So you did get law enforcement and border.

Okay, good.

Border is incredibly important as well because I think, you know, and Charlie believed this: that the one,

you know, you can argue about some of the other accomplishments, are they good or bad?

It's like, no, the border is this historic accomplishment.

And what you guys got done with the Big Beautiful bill to augment that force, first time that I believe ICE personnel has been increased, the number of ICE personnel has been increased in its history, was a historic, important, tremendous accomplishment that fulfilled a mandate from the American people that they said they wanted that in November.

So the fact, and they wanted, by the way, they wanted all the illegals out.

I mean, there's a lot of polling that shows that.

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Russ vote, director of OMB, one of the most important people in government that's not named Vance or Trump right now because they're in a separate category, is how I say it.

Is USAID gone?

Pretty close to it.

We're in the close-out phase of USAID

in terms of we shifted anything that was legitimate that needed to go to state, and we're now in the business of closing it out, making sure that nonprofits that didn't share our values don't get any money, making sure we dispense of any property, but also, I think importantly, Andrew, the extent to which we want to expose to the American people the extent of the corruption, the waste, the abuse, the horrible foreign policy that USAID was a part of.

And so, my instruction to our kind of small team that has been given this responsibility is we're going to put everything

out there that we possibly can.

We've got all the records, and we'll be mining those.

We'll be bringing in individuals with a specific skill set

to be able to go deep and to find out the different tentacles and connections and connect the dots between

essentially it was bad foreign policy and the extent it was largely money laundering through the nonprofits.

Maybe dive into that just briefly here.

I know it's a short segment, but you know, a lot of people allege that it was an IC carve-out, that there was sort of meddling in foreign affairs and foreign governments.

Mike Benz has done deep dives on this, Data Republican.

Did you see that yourself?

We are desperately testing those theories.

And we know, like, we know, you know, a nation like Hungary will tell you USAID was actively pushing regime change in Hungary.

And we know that

even if they weren't pushing regime change in many of these countries, they were doing it culturally in the extent to which they were pushing woke policies and gay pride events in countless countries.

And, you know, so those are the types of things that we want to bring to the American people's attention, not just the extent to which, hey, we have an inspector general of one aspect of abuse that we can then talk about, but we wanted just the extent to which it was everywhere with USAID.

And that's really what our goal is over the next several weeks and months.

But I think this will be

the final nail in the coffin, the extent to which we put this agency out of business once and for all.

So just in the break, I was like, I asked that question.

He goes, well, it's a husk of its former self.

And I said, why is there even a husk?

And so I love it because you actually have a strategy here.

You're going to expose this and educate the American people on what was really going on and give the American people some transparency into this.

Another agency that you're working on closing, it sounds like, is the CFPB.

Yep, consumer.

Tell us about that.

Because I've heard people say, actually, of all the things, that actually did some good.

But you disagree.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is my third hat that I wear.

Thankfully, it's across the street.

We don't have anyone working there except our Republican appointees and a few careers that are doing statutory responsibilities while we go down the agency.

And And I'll give you the reason why.

People say, consumer financial protection, don't we want to protect consumers?

Absolutely.

This agency wasn't doing it.

It had the DNA of Elizabeth Warren.

So, you know, you can do that.

Okay, that's it.

You come into OMB and our career staff, they want to do what the president wants them to do, and

they're used to working for different presidents, right?

This agency, all they want to do is weaponize the tools of financial laws against basically small mom and pop lenders and other small financial institutions.

And that's what we saw.

I'll give you an example.

Townstone was a lender in Chicago that they weaponized

Disparate Impact to go after them and say that, and there was never any complaints about lending that was racially motivated or not lending, never a complaint.

And they ruined this guy's life for seven years.

And I called them up, and I just said, Look, we found internally that not only did they do this, but they knew they were doing it, and they deceived senior leadership to do it at the time.

And that's what we were opposed to.

And we've seen it everywhere we look.

Oh, gosh.

And so we want to put it out, and we will be successful probably within the next two or three months.

If you hear, and Charlie was big on this, actually, did a whole episode on Disparate Impact.

If you see that word anywhere in government, just know it's a poison pill and it's there to hurt you.

It's not good.

It's not good.

It's not American.

It's basically communist gobblygook that's laundered in through an official-sounding description.

Russ Vote, Director of OMP, you're doing tremendous work.

Your nation is grateful to you.

Charlie was grateful for everything that you're accomplishing and will accomplish.

And we have just the most respect we could and trust in your steady hand to get it done.

So thank you so much for joining us and for gifting this show with a very rare interview.

We appreciate it.

I'm greatly honored.

Thanks for for having me here.

Thank you so much.

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.