Charlie Kirk Dead at 31 - Assassination on Utah College Campus During Turning Point Event

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Welcome everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

We're going live right now with special coverage on the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Charlie Kirk's been shot at an event in Utah, one of his student events that he does all over the country.

And we are awaiting word on his condition.

It happened earlier and we got word we did not want to come to air with the news until we knew whether it was true.

We knew that a shooting had occurred

but now everyone from President Donald Trump on down has confirmed he's been shot.

Charlie's been shot.

He's been shot.

It appeared in the neck.

There is video of the event.

of the shooting that took place from far away.

We're going to show you that, Utah Valley University.

This is graphic.

It's not as graphic as some of the films that is being represented as out there right now and having been taken more close up.

So we're going to look at just this one, which is from a distance.

Here it is.

We don't know his condition.

We're trying to find find out.

We've contacted all of our friends with Charlie's organization,

of course, Turning Point, which you know I do a lot with.

We have a lot of friends over there.

I've texted Charlie myself.

I don't know how he is.

I don't know if he's okay.

I don't know what the state of his injuries are.

But he has been shot, as confirmed by the President of the United States, the FBI, also confirming.

And

as we await further updates on his condition, all we can do is pray.

We can pray, pray, pray, God,

that he survived this.

Pray for his family, pray for his children, his two young children,

and ask ourselves what our country is coming to.

How does this happen?

How does somebody whose only job is to comment on political matters wind up a target for an assassin.

This is the United States of America.

We have commentators.

We have provocative commentators.

This is what we've been doing since the dawn of time.

We are told online at least that a man has been detained, that he's in custody.

There's video of a man being taken into custody.

He is older.

I'd say he looks in his 70s to me.

He's mostly bald with white hair around the rim of

his head.

He's on his knees in this video we're about to show you getting arrested.

Let's watch it.

We don't know whether that man is in fact the shooter, but we do know we are told someone is in custody.

Megan Basham, who was on this program earlier today, who works for the Daily Wire,

and also has many friends at Turning Point, just tweeted out.

Sources tell me the situation is critical.

Pray, pray hard.

There is video circulating online, which we are not going to show.

And my only prayer is that it's fake.

I pray to God it was fake what I saw.

And there is no way I am showing it on this channel or on this feed.

If it is real,

it will be a miracle if Charlie survived.

I

can barely get my arms around the enormity of this.

Charlie is such a dear man, and he's such an important cultural figure.

He is one of the bravest people I know.

He's been so unfairly demonized by his detractors.

At every turn, he's been villainized by people who disagree with him politically.

And that messaging can sink sink in.

I'm not blaming anyone.

I don't know exactly who did it, and I don't know the motivations are, but I know that a lot of hate has been stirred up for Charlie that is grossly disproportionate to the messaging he's bringing to this world.

He does these events because he wants to reach out to young people.

You know, the forgotten conservatives on college campuses who the right has basically seeded to the left, who up up until Charlie were being totally ignored by most people.

Stephen Crowder would go on college campuses and do his prove-me-wrong thing.

But most people just don't even go there because they don't believe there's a window for conservatism on college campuses, and Charlie just wouldn't accept that.

Charlie, who started as Don Jr.'s bad boy in 2016, literally carrying Don Jr.'s bags, and rose to head up one of the most powerful, influential, and important political organizations in the country, all self-made, not a college graduate.

His life was his college.

His interactions with all of you

from campus to campus and show to show, that was a better education than any college could ever have provided him.

And he's got deep, deep thoughts and deep, deep beliefs on many issues.

And thank God is a God-fearing man.

He's deeply religious and a person of faith.

And I pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, that's helping him now and helping his wife and his two babies.

He has become so influential,

you have to assume that's what this is about.

That

he was considered a threat.

This is just pure speculation.

I'm not putting it on any particular person.

I'm just saying that he was so influential, is so influential that he would be considered a threat by some pockets.

out there.

And

whatever the outcome is here, this perpetrator must be held to account.

There must be justice for what happened today.

We cannot live in a society where, whether you're a pundit or a president, you cannot appear in public to say how you feel, to say how you think the government should be run.

This is not some third world banana republic.

This is the United States of America.

What is this, 1968?

Are we back there where where it's an assassination or an assassination attempt every couple of months in the United States?

Charlie and I are set to go on the road together in two weeks.

We're going down to Virginia Tech together to do one of these events

in about 14 days.

And

I...

I'm looking forward to it.

I've been looking forward to sitting side by side with him and having

a window into what Charlie does because it is brave.

It is brave.

It's different from what he does on the air and what I do on the air behind the microphone talking to a black camera.

You know, it's just a black screen when I'm looking in.

I don't see, if I have a guest, I see the guest face.

But other than that, I just see black space.

When you can see the people out there and a lot of them can't stand you, it's very brave to go out there and do what he does.

And he does it.

He does it courageously and he does it regularly, and he takes on people who disagree with him, and he does it respectfully.

Respectfully, he actually is changing hearts and minds, which is what makes him a threat.

I've got a bunch of people who are going to be joining us as we await word on his condition.

And I want to kick it off with Rich Lowry

of National Review, Rich, and sorry, Mark, and Mark Halperin

of Next Up with Mark Halperin.

And I know, Mark, you talked to Charlie, was it yesterday?

Was it just yesterday?

Now, I've covered stories about people who've been shot or sick.

And never in my career have I had trouble talking about it.

But I'll have trouble with this one, at least for a little bit.

I know him only professionally.

He's not my friend, but I've been on his show many times.

He's such an incredible figure.

He's an historic figure, even if you strongly disagree with him.

What he accomplished in the last few years in particular, there's nobody like him.

And I've talked to him about it over, he's come on next up.

There's nobody like him in either party because he's a content creator.

He's a strategist.

He's a thinker.

He's a doer.

And he's on text chains with the vice president and

Don Jr.

and others.

He's so involved.

He works around the clock.

Great dad and cares a lot about his kids.

Just come back from Asia, first trip to Asia.

And we talked yesterday about how he was looking forward to this tour because he draws such strength from being out on the road with the young people who he's inspired in an historic way.

And he's so interested in what they have to say.

And we talked about going to a Mondami rally together.

I think I was more serious than Charlie was about it.

But

he wanted to go to a rally and see Mondami and see the people.

He said, I don't want to troll the people there.

And we talked about, again, part joke, part serious, going in disguise because we didn't want to be a spectacle.

We just wanted wanted to go and see what are these young people inspired by.

And that to me is the essence of this guy.

He's so interested in the world, making the world a better place, and understanding particularly what his specialty has been, which is young people.

And no one, and I think the president would agree with this,

no one has done more to bring the hearts and minds of young people to be open to or enthusiastic about not just Donald Trump, not just MAGA, but the conservative movement in the last, I don't know how many years than Charlie has done.

It's an extraordinary organization he's built

and his capacity at a relatively young age to do so many different extraordinary things

is testament to his hard work, his intelligence, and his curiosity.

You know, Rich, I was looking back on some texts between the two of us, me and Charlie, and

looking back to after Trump won.

And Charlie texted me, Glory be to God.

You know, he's a very, very faithful guy.

And I think he's been driven by that.

Forgive me for the upset.

I saw a video right before we came to air that I don't know whether it's real, but if it's real, it's really dark and it's really bad.

He is a person of faith, and I have to hope that's helping his family.

in

a perfect world helping him right now.

Yeah, it's absolutely devastating.

You guys know him better than I do, but I remember eight or ten years ago, he came to me, get a cup of coffee in New York City, looking for advice.

And I very quickly realized he didn't need any of my advice.

I mean, what he's been able to do in terms of his advocacy, in terms of his podcast, in terms of his

organization building, in terms of his

political organizational work is just massively consequential and speaks to his personal talent and personal drive.

If anyone had said five or 10 years ago, oh, you know,

a kind of a hard-edged populist presidential candidate is going to make major inroads among young people.

No, that's not going to be possible.

But

Charlie saw it.

He saw the opening,

not just saw it, embodied it in certain ways, and then gave it political effect.

I can't tell you, I'm sure people told Mark the same thing.

You'd have a lot of operatives or opinion makers saying, oh, Trump's turnout operation, I think it's going to be a debacle and he's going to lose because of it because he's outsourced it to Charlie Kirk.

Now, that was an exaggeration.

He didn't outsource the entirety of his crown operation to Charlie Kirk.

But I heard that over and over and over again.

And lo and behold, he delivered.

Charlie and these other guys delivered.

They had a different theory of the case.

So that's extraordinary.

And just this

event is so devastating i not just personally

charlie and his family people know him well friends friends of his but and civically right to have someone who's going and doing it the right way you know he doesn't have to go there he doesn't have to sit there and in a chair take all questions and and look that just shows how a bravery and openness to debate draws people a huge huge crowd at a university none of us had heard of before about 45 minutes ago He's doing the right thing, right?

We need more of that, right?

That's good for our society.

That's what the bedrock of our republic, that's what it's built on.

Argument, persuasion, clash of ideas.

And a rifle should have nothing to do with it, obviously nothing to do with it.

And you asked, you know, is this 1968 again?

This might be an event horizon where

we've passed, we've gone from

the poisonous rhetoric into acts against people who are just advocates, right?

Who are just out there expressing their point of view.

And that's a really, really disturbing thing to think about.

Mark Halperin, the amount of security that Ben Shapiro has to travel with now, that Matt Walsh has to travel with now, that I know Charlie has had to travel with, I travel with security too.

This is not normal.

This is not normal.

We're all news personalities.

That's what we do.

We comment on the news.

The level of threats that now public figures are having to put up with in order to just talk about the news is irregular.

It's wrong.

There's something deeply un-American about this.

And

I don't know if we can take the loss of Charlie Kirk.

I don't know if we can take the loss of him.

I really don't.

I just think it's going,

pray God, it's not happening.

Pray God he survives this.

But this

is an abject disaster.

I mean, this is going to have a far-reaching, deeply resonating effect on the political right,

even as we know it as of this moment, what's happened here.

Well,

just to be honest, based on the text I'm getting,

we need to be prepared for the worst here.

This will deeply impact the president and the vice president.

This will deeply impact so many public officials on the right.

And,

you know,

it's going to be personal for a lot of people, right?

It's going to be a personal loss, but it's also going to be a gateway to a bigger conversation about how such a thing could happen.

Not only the issue you raise of the safety of people who want to be on the town square, but the question of why such a kind person

who said provocative things could be targeted in such a way.

I am certain that

this shooting will do some good.

I'm certain of it because he was such a kind person.

But I'm going to be vigilant myself in making as much as sure as I can that this brings the country together rather than divides us more.

That is what Charlie

was all about

in a way that the left didn't understand.

He was not a hater and he was not a divider in his work.

And he has always been and will continue to be, I pray, someone who sees a united America through correcting some of the things that he's always felt were done.

Mark, Mark, as I listen to you,

I know I hear you.

I totally hear you, but I'm so fucking angry right now.

I'm so angry.

And I agree with you.

I'm getting similar messages that we need to prepare for the worst.

The official word right now is that he was taken away by his security team after being shot, and that a suspect is in custody per Utah Ballot University, and that Charlie has been brought to the hospital with his condition unknown.

Though earlier a report was that he is in, that it's critical.

It is critical.

But I'm so angry.

I'm so angry.

I don't know what the man's motivation was.

I don't know.

whether that's the guy, the bald guy, saying, I have a right to remain silent,

but I want someone to suffer.

like

the right doesn't generally riot with burning buildings and gas cans in the street.

You know, that's a leftist thing, that's an Antifa thing, that's like an astroturf thing that leftists get going when they don't get their way.

But this is the kind of thing that makes me want to riot in the street.

I'm not encouraging people to do that.

I don't want people to do that.

More people will die.

More people will get hurt.

But

I know I speak for millions when I say I'm so angry right now.

Yeah, I mean,

there's a level of anger and upset that anyone he touched is going to feel, regardless of the motive, regardless of

the biograph, the biography of the person who did this, regardless, there's going to be anger and upset.

And believe me, as I said, I'm pretty upset about this.

And

I know a thousand people who know Charlie better than I did, but

I'm just saying that

this must be

whatever happens, a manifestation of the faith that

animated Charlie's life.

It's going to be an opportunity, no matter what his fate turns out to be, it's going to be an opportunity to make the country better, which comes from love

and aggressive understanding and not anger and hatred.

And again,

again.

I know, I know everything you're saying is right.

I just resisted.

Yeah, the president and the vice president will lead us because they'll have to, because they're so close to him.

They're so close to him.

Former Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz was at the event.

He watched as Charlie fell backward after being shot and says he hopes that, quote, somehow, some way he survived.

Rich,

forgive me.

We're going to take a look at MSNBC.

They're actually speculating that this is going to be, quote, used,

used.

I haven't seen the SOT yet.

Let's watch it.

SOT 5.

After one of the Doge employees was allegedly attacked in Washington, D.C., that's what Donald Trump used as a justification to send in

federal troops into Washington, D.C.

to get things under control, the carjacking situation, he used that.

And I know it's hard to predict the future, Mark, but you can imagine the administration using this as a justification for something.

I must admit, I'm at a loss to guess as to what happens next.

I'm sorry, but Katie Tur is a sick, sick person.

She's a sick person, Rich Lawry.

Fuck that.

Fuck that is right, Mark Halper.

Fuck that.

Yeah,

apparently it's just not enough to say, dear God, God help us.

Pray for Charlie.

This is God-awful.

Should never happen, right?

And they can't bring themselves to do it.

And this is why I hope Mark is right that this brings us together to some extent or lowers the temperature, as people say.

But I'm skeptical because I can hear that I'm not, that's shameful, but not unexpected.

But I can also hear the yes, but commentary.

coming, right?

This shouldn't have happened, but Charlie said or did X, Y,

and Z.

And

I think we'll have that fairly rapidly.

And it'll be a medic, you know, and it'll be difficult to take and disgraceful.

But

if past is prologue,

we're going to hear a lot of that.

There's,

it's just, I don't understand how any of us are supposed to go on just functioning and living our lives and doing what we do for a living.

What we do is exactly what Charlie did, does.

does

you know we comment on the news mark it's what we do we comment on the news sometimes it's provocative sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's confrontational.

The stakes before have never been your life, your life.

Charlie, everybody knows he's a man of faith.

Everybody knows he's a husband, he's a father.

Like

the event was outdoors, and I can't help thinking about the Trump event in Butler, Pennsylvania, which was outdoors and raises a greater risk.

You know, Charlie took that risk, but you're not thinking as a pundit that your life is on the line.

There's a reason Charlie kept doing that after Butler.

You know, Mark, we all do these public events.

I've been to countless turning point events with Charlie.

You don't worry about getting shot.

You worry about the great crowds who might make parking difficult.

That's the biggest worry you normally have.

And that's what's, that's what's real.

That's what's normal.

But we're crossing right now into a new reality.

So,

look,

you have of late been something of a hybrid, not just a journalist, not just a commentator.

You've appeared at some events, right?

Charlie was much more of an activist than he was a commentator.

So he was

a different thing.

But

he was in service

of his vision of making the country better.

And

he was already an historical figure.

What troubles me is what you're saying, which is if the price to be paid for being on the national tenant squares, you can be killed, that's shilling.

But

if he does not make it, and again, I'm just being honest with folks, my inbox, it's not good.

If he doesn't make it, we've lost not just an incredibly special person and a dad and a husband, but we've lost someone who was determined to change America.

So it's not just you pay a price as a person for being on the National Town Square and trying to change things.

they've taken away,

if this goes the way it may,

someone has tried to take away, let's put it that way, someone has tried to take away someone who was really fighting every day to change America for his kids to have a better future as he saw America.

That's chilling to me.

You know, that's chilling to me.

I think the left will chronicle his more hyperbolic and inflammatory statements.

And

I think that,

you know, is it, is it comparable to the, if he does die, to the death of Martin Luther King, the assassination of Martin Luther King?

I think there's parallels there because I think there are parallels too.

Charlie was a visionary for his vision of America and

screw people who said he was in it for money or in it for fame or in it to own the limbs.

He was in it because he believed passionately about how to change this country to make life better for his kids.

Have you guys seen the video I saw?

Yeah, I've seen it.

I find it hard to believe it's fake because I know the sick mind that would not only fake that, but fake it instantly.

So, yeah.

If that video is real, there's no way he can survive this.

No, no,

no.

He's an extraordinary guy,

but no.

The shooter shot him from 200 yards away.

A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, this is tweeted out by Michael Levinson.

Eleanor Traynor said that Charlie was struck by a suspect who had fired from the Lo C Center, a building about 200 yards away.

The suspect had been taken into custody.

was not a student.

Again, we don't know if it was this man.

Let's play the video one more time

of the man who is in custody asserting his rights to remain silent

the moment that trump won

you know we all had our experiences like some of us were together and

it was extraordinary for everybody who wanted trump to win but but it was really extraordinary for Charlie, who had left nothing on the field, nothing on the field, Rich,

in trying to get Trump over the line.

And the youth vote did turn out for a Republican.

It just, you know, it just, we'd never seen the margins when it comes to Republican presidential candidates like we saw in 2024 with Trump.

And it was in large part thanks to Charlie Kirk.

And

he came on the show a couple of days after, and we celebrated together.

And we talked about that moment when, you know, the networks call it, and, you know, it's real.

And we played this soundbite of what happened on Charlie's show.

Charlie, who had been all over the nation on every college campus, just fighting and fighting and fighting to get every last vote, handing out MAGA hats, and his reaction when Trump won.

And here it is.

Let's go.

There it is.

Everybody should remember this moment.

Look, I'm going to echo Charlie from earlier.

Remember where you were when this happened.

Remember where you were when you realized that the uniparty and all of these, you know, just the establishment, you said it's time to actually participate.

And look what you guys have done.

And if anyone deserves to get tears in his eyes, it's Charlie.

I think we all agree.

I think Erica is just one of his onions or something in the break room.

No one has worked harder than Charlie.

We got to hear some words here from you charlie you put all this together my man let's hear it i i am just humbled by god

it's all good

it's all good

it just says everything that that's exactly that's charlie kirk in a nutshell thanking god smiling you know hands on his face like the the emotion right he's he is an emotional guy in a great way in a way that shows his fire his passion and it's rare you see that kind of emotionality coupled with that level of

just being able to articulate your views in the moment passionately and soundly and compellingly.

Yeah, again, if he had just seen this opening and had advocated for Trump trying to exploit it, that'd be pretty notable, right?

That'd be a significant insight.

But he didn't just see it.

He helped open it up himself, with his organization, with his appearances, and then helped Trump

run through

opening.

So it was a massive contribution.

And again, perspective 10 years ago, Republican candidates made inroads among the youth vote.

Oh, okay, Paul Ryan has kind of softened our socially conservative message and appealed to young people that way.

No, this is totally the opposite of what conventional wisdom said for a very long time was the way to appeal

to young people.

So it's just a massive contribution.

But I just fear again, Megan, that

the clips you watch of this horrific shooting, one moment we're in one world.

He's sitting there, he's taking questions.

He's answering them.

There's a crowd.

They might agree.

They might disagree.

They're there.

It looked like a little incline, like a hillside.

This is how democracy started in Athens.

Literally, you sit on a hillside and you argue things out.

That's the way it's supposed to work, right?

This is a thread that runs through Western civilization for millennia.

And then the next moment, a shot, he's slouched

behind that chair and people are running in fear.

And I fear that we're now in the running in fear world.

And if nothing else happens, if there are no repercussions from this, if there's no retaliation, if there's no copycat, it still means every

commentator with some significant prominence has to do events with security like

a principal, you know, like a vice president or like a cabinet official, the mags and the security lines and the whole thing because they're,

we talked about this with the Charlotte killing, because now there's that whisper of fear that in a free society, in a society true to our ideals, no one should have, it should never enter your mind that you can be out there openly, fiercely, you know,

making your case and you have to worry about a hideous act of violence being perpetrated against you.

But now everyone has to think about it.

Mark, I can't help but think as I see these videos online about the parallels parallels between what just happened to Charlie and what happened in Charlotte.

You know, like the video of that poor Ukrainian refugee after this random stranger stabs her in the neck and

she's confused and she goes down.

She crumbles down to the floor.

And then you see just

a ton of blood spill out

on the subway floor and bright red, just copious amounts.

Charlie got shot, it looked to me in the same spot.

It looked like it was on that same, it was the left side of his neck.

And the blood that poured out in that video, I will never forget as long as I live.

And I hope I never have to see it again.

And I don't recommend people look it up.

And it's the same thing, in a way, in that it's a

it's not exactly a random act of violence, but it's a senseless act of violence that takes someone so young and promising.

And the case of Charlie Kirk, a truly important national figure, entirely of his own making, 31 years old, no formal education, no connections to anyone, nothing, nothing to give him a head start, just pure tenacity and willingness to work hard and a God-given ability to communicate and express himself in a way that literally drew the attention of millions.

I mean, I...

I'm worried about my kids.

They love him.

He's so important to

young voters, yes, but young kids, high schoolers.

You know, my middle schooler knows who Charlie Kirk is and totally admires him.

My kids were dying to go with me to a turning point event.

You know, they're a little young, but we were definitely going to do it.

They looked up to him.

He's a hero to so many genuinely young kids.

I mean, teenagers.

This is going to have

such an effect on so many people from 80 years old

to our 80-year-old president on down.

Yeah, you'll recall that Gavin Newsom said at the beginning.

I was interviewing Charlie.

Gavin Newsom said, my son's all excited that I'm interviewing.

He's an historical figure already for the reasons you said.

But think of how many years he has left.

Think all the opportunities he has to help continue to change the world.

And I've joked with him before that.

He's just young enough now for teenagers to think he's cool.

But what would like a 50-year-old Charlie Kirk be like?

Would he continue to appeal to young kids the way he has?

But no one's like him.

There's no one like him in either party.

And I

did a long interview with him about that topic.

And he's a modest guy, so he didn't really want to cooperate.

But I dragged him into it.

And we talked about how there's no one like him.

There's no one like him, not just in the Democratic Party, there's no one else like him in the Republican Party in his capacity to

be multidisciplinary, to do content, to travel, to write, to

organize, and to

work in coalition with the president of the United States.

There's also the fact that although he was so mature, we all, you know, he regularly called

an old person in a young person's body.

In my interview with him yesterday, we talked about South Park, which has just done a send-up of Charlie.

And I wondered whether it'd be okay to play for him.

You know, I didn't want to piss him off if he didn't like it, but he wasn't that big a South Park fan, but he thought it was funny.

He thought it was hilarious.

He loved the recognition of it.

And

this is someone who

understood politics and campaigns and the minutiae of those things, but he understood the culture.

As well as anyone I know, he understood the culture of America.

And he continues to be a leading figure.

Regardless of age, he understands culture.

And that's so powerful and wise beyond beyond his ears in understanding American culture.

He must live.

I'll say this.

He must live.

He must live because his loss would hit too many people too hard.

I'll just say one more thing.

You talked about the pictures from Charlotte.

Psychologists and others, philosophers have studied this for years, is the impact of

upsetting visual images on all of us.

I've just been so taken in the last 48 hours.

by how people have reacted to that video from the bus, from the light rail.

These videos of Charlie,

it's going to have a monumental impact on people.

It's going to have a monumental impact, incalculable.

But they're going to be, those two images are going to be linked in history.

Yeah.

I don't,

you know, in

the early moments of a shooting like this, an event like this, information is constantly circulated that is bad, and we've all been burned by it.

We don't have any official word on how Charlie is doing.

I will say, for whatever it's worth, Glenn Beck just tweeted out that he's getting word Charlie's been stabilized and says he prays it's true.

I do not know whether that is true.

If it's true, it is a miracle.

As Glenn writes in his tweet, if it's true, it's a second miracle, first Trump.

And then, God willing, Charlie.

I don't, I don't know.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah, please go ahead, Mark.

Sorry.

I've twice now talked about him in the past tense, and I pray and look forward to the day when I can joke with him about that.

I'm sorry about it.

Yeah,

we're hoping.

We're hoping you have that moment.

I mean, he was brought to the emergency center or to the hospital.

I don't know how close it was.

Utah,

they definitely have some level one trauma centers in Utah.

I know this from having skied out in the area.

So

there's a chance, you know, there's a chance with security right there and being on a university campus with potentially

ambulances not too far away or emergency kits not too far away, there's a chance.

I don't know.

We just don't have the answers and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

We're praying for him.

That's what we can do right now, Rich.

We can pray for him.

There was an eyewitness to it.

His name is Justin Hickens.

He spoke with NBC News.

He says he was 20 yards away.

He also witnessed the arrest of the suspect.

We're going to take a look at that testimonial here.

By yourself, yes, sir?

I was about 20 yards away on Charlie's left.

I had gotten there probably just a few minutes before noon.

There were thousands of people there.

Unfortunately, there was no metal detectors.

There was no, I mean, there was security by Charlie, but you know, anybody could have shown up with whatever, unfortunately.

And I happened to kind of maneuver my way down close on the side.

And the first interaction probably took about 10 minutes it was a religious related exchange and then there was someone who stepped up ironically coincidentally who asked a question about mass shootings and about 60 to 90 seconds in we just saw we heard a big loud shot I saw a bunch of blood come out of out of Charlie.

I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp and everybody dropped to the ground.

And luckily there were no other bullets sprayed into the crowd because nobody was really able to go anywhere.

It was just like a big, you know, open pavilion, amphitheater, outdoor venue.

And, you know, lots of screaming, lots of yelling, you know, lots of bodies on top of each other.

And after a couple minutes, people got up and started kind of running, you know, getting out of there.

There were some gates, some barriers that had been pushed aside and knocked over, and people were able to move.

And

I started to move quickly and then kind of realized that I said, you know,

I think we're okay.

And I kind of

stopped walking away.

And I kind of turned around.

And all of a sudden, I saw officers walking with this very elderly gentleman with white hair.

And they had him arrested, had him on his knees.

He was screaming about

his rights and all that stuff.

And they cuffed him and put him away.

And

about 20, 30 other people just said, yeah, that's the guy.

That was the the shooter.

And

people had said that they had seen him there early.

He got to the event really early, was kind of walking around, talking to a lot of people, just this elderly gentleman.

But that's all I got.

There was a lot of information in there.

I think he said that one of the things they discussed was a mass shooting at the top at the event.

I do want to update that the Associated Press is reporting that Charlie's in critical condition at a hospital after being shot at Utah Valley University.

Pray God, that's true.

Pray God he has not died and that he's in critical condition and comes out of critical condition.

The thing is, Rich, one thing you can say about Charlie is he's tough.

He's as tough as they come.

He's young.

He's healthy.

He's on the road all the time.

You know, he...

He, if anybody has a chance, it's Charlie.

You know, he's strong.

He's strong in character, in will, in his mental fortitude, and he's physically strong too.

And so maybe there is a chance.

Maybe he does come out of this.

Yeah.

Well, we'll hope and keep praying.

I mean, prayer is the most powerful tool we have.

I was just struck in that clip, Megan.

Again, thousands of people on a on a Wednesday afternoon at the Utah Valley University.

It's amazing.

And everyone on either side should be glad it's happening, right?

That's civic engagement, right?

That's civic dialogue, whatever euphemistic kind of goo-goo phrase you want to use for it, but it's good, right?

It's a profoundly good thing.

And then also struck in the same vein, 10 minutes on the first question and answer.

What is that, right?

That's give and take.

That's argument.

That's persuasion.

It's how it's

supposed to happen.

So

it's just, again,

there are almost no words.

It's just devastating in every respect.

Rich, we're getting together too frequently to talk about people we care about in the public eye getting shot.

And I think just, you know, Mark was making a comparison, you know, the late 60s.

In today's terms,

what would be a more politically resonant assassination attempt?

You know, Trump, Vance, a couple cabinet officials, top cabinet officials.

I'm not sure there would be another one that would have the sort of political resonance

this act does.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll let you go.

Thank you so much, Rich.

Always appreciate you coming on.

You're such a good friend of the show.

Lots of love.

We'll round back up when we have more news.

We have Victor Davis Hansen coming on.

We have Glenn Beck here, too,

both friends of Charlie and friends of the show.

And

this is just everyone's feeling what we're feeling, just absolute devastation at this news as we know it.

Charlie Kirk has been shot, shot in the neck at an event on a university campus in Utah, taken away to a hospital.

The AP is reporting he's listed in critical condition, which is something because we worried that he was dead on the spot.

If you take a look at the videos, it certainly looks like that could have been an outcome, but it's better.

It's better than that, at least.

Glenn,

start with you.

Thank you for being here.

I just read your tweet to the audience.

Are you hearing that from people who are in a position to know that Charlie

is in that he's alive and that he's in critical?

I am.

Spoke to somebody in a position who knows who said he has a pulse.

So that's good news.

Good news.

I have to tell you, Nate,

my daughter was at the tent.

She's 19 years old.

Oh, God.

And

she's on her way home now.

But

this is.

You know, I know you can relate to this.

I have two friends now that have been tried, that people have tried to assassinate.

We don't live in those kinds of times.

You have to go back to the 60s to live in those kinds of times.

And quite honestly, I am, you know, my first reaction to this, besides

the profound sadness for Charlie and his family,

is

strangely forgiveness.

And I, boy, I don't want to.

I am so angry.

And, you know, when I saw the guy who apparently did it, my first thought was, you effing hippies.

You have been destroying this country for so many years, and you still are hanging on and trying to control everything.

And I am so angry

at those people,

if that is the shooter indeed.

But

we have got to get serious about um

the significant enemies that are within our country um yeah and uh we we need information about this man and we need it immediately immediately immediately there and we and we'll get it with this fbi victor thank you too for being here we'll get it with this fbi victor davis hansen yes

your thoughts on this

it it i don't want to be partisan but when you look at the Scalise shootings and the two attempts on Donald Trump and Luigi Mangione,

you get the idea that the left feels that they're so morally superior and intellectually superior that almost any means necessary, and especially the reaction to these things.

When Trump was almost killed, you looked at the social media, and when you

when the Luigi Mangioni was canonized after he killed a man who had worked his way up from the middle class to be a CEO.

So

I think it doesn't do any good to just say this is violence and we've got to just stop the violence.

This is coming from one particular side who's justified it because they think that Trump and his supporters represent an existential evil.

And then if you keep telling everybody that Trump is a fascist and he is a Nazi, then they feel that they're going to be heroic.

I think we saw that with a second assassination attempt on Trump.

The other thing is, Megan, very quickly, it marks kind of we crossed the Rubicon because it was sort of known that journalists or people who were in opinion journalism on both sides were exempt.

And we didn't, I know all of us, you probably more than I, but if you go to an airport, one out of 20 people wants to confront you.

But there wasn't anybody really of a

It's not common in the United States to go after journalists.

That's what Charlie was.

He wasn't just an activist.

He was a journalist.

And he wrote, and

he was very good at it.

But the idea that now you go after the people who deliver information, that's kind of a new thing that they have.

And I just know in the last three months, I live out in kind of a rural area.

I've been swatted where sheriffs that armed said there was an intruder.

There wasn't.

They came armed to my door.

I've had $90,000 drained out of all my bank accounts by hackers.

And I think we're reaching a level now with the vituperation.

And we saw that with the shooting on the rail, I mean, the killing of our young immigrant,

yes.

And when you start to collate all the things that people have said,

white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, whether it's on The View or Jory Reed or all of those crazy people, that language of deprecation and vituperation, it filters down.

And they're the ones that have always told us that words matter.

It's everywhere.

Believe it or not, I'm reviewing right now a book on classics, and the professor who's on the left has used the word whiteness and white in a book not concerned with race 258 times in a 148-page book, I count them, all about anger and hatred.

And until we say to people, we don't really care what ethnic group or racial group or political group, but there is a zero tolerance for that type of unadulterated hatred.

And I just remember after the campaign, after the election, Sonny Hosten got in the view, and the first thing she said is she blamed uneducated white women.

I remember that.

White women.

Nobody should.

stereotypically collectivized.

So I think part of it is we're collectivizing people and we're putting them in this demonic category on the right.

We're saying these people are the equivalent of Hitler or the new republic with a picture of Trump with a Hitler mustache.

And we've just lowered the bar so much, it's inevitable that people are going to come out of the woodwork and consider that the violence they use against people on the right, or right, whether they're officials or now journalists, apparently, is going not only to be

exempt, but it's going to be canonized, and they're going to be heroic.

And I think I will, I don't want to make any Macabre predictions, but I bet you, and I haven't looked at the news, there there will be people immediately that will cheer this on on social media.

Well, there already has been.

Yeah.

I know that, Victor, you got to run, but do you have time for me to just ask you before you go,

what do you expect the reaction is going to be?

I mean, what's going to happen next?

Well, I think when you ask that, it's going to become

the two sources of reaction will be obviously from political officials and from the media.

And the media knows that you don't want to have a counterreaction.

So I would expect all of the officials

left and right and all of the major journalists left and right will condemn this, if not for the right reason of morality, then for their own self-interest, because you don't want to get into a spiral.

But

again,

I have been listening to stuff that's been said on podcasts, on major TV shows, that I cannot believe.

It's just pure racial hatred, ethnic hatred, and the targets more than ever are the so-called bogeymen of the white male MAGA, right-wing fascists.

And that's got to stop.

When you have that vocabulary of disparagement from Joe Biden, that they were garbage, that they were chumps, that were dregs, and from Hillary, deplorable, irredeemable, clinger.

It's just too much, finally.

And it's all been predicated on the idea, well, this is a privileged group, and

they have a special category.

You can say whatever you want.

Conservatives,

that's over with.

I mean, this is the first time in my memory that a major

journalistic figure has been targeted for assassination that I can think of.

And let's hope it doesn't start something.

But this is really new.

This happens in South America.

It happens in Mexico.

It even happens

as we saw with Salomon Rushdie and in Europe, but it has not happened here yet.

And I'm afraid that this is something the left in their desperation, if this person turns out to be that way, has embarked on.

It's time I think for everybody to cool it.

Yeah, cool, cool.

The left.

The latest from the New York Times, just in, is that the police have determined this person who was taken into custody after the shooting was not actually the shooter.

According to Scott Trotter, a university spokesman, the university had earlier said a suspect was in custody, and videos online showed this older man being detained by police officers.

And therefore, I don't know at this hour whether the person who shot Charlie Kirk is in custody or not.

I don't know.

Say again, Glenn?

Oh, I'm sorry.

I was just telling my wife because my children are there.

They don't know

how to suspect in custody.

BDH, I know you got to run.

Thank you for making the time for us today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

Thank you, Glenn.

Good to see you.

Thank you.

I'm glad.

We love you.

Glenn, so we don't know.

This is ambiguous.

That guy, that white guy with the balding head is not the shooter, according to the New York Times,

citing Scott Trotter, a university spokesman.

But the university had earlier said

a suspect was in custody, not just a person.

So we don't know whether they were speaking of this man who they've now determined is not the shooter.

So we have no fucking clue whether the shooter is in custody or not.

And we have no idea how Charlie is.

All we know is he's been shot and that it was a brutal shot to the neck that we saw too much of.

Megan,

you know, when I,

you know, when I was talking today about Charlotte,

you know, on the video, you can hear the killer say, I,

I guess I killed that white woman or whatever it was, that white girl.

And I was in Washington, D.C.

just a few months ago, a couple of months ago, and my wife and I were walking down the street.

And there was this big black guy on a bike, and he kept circling us and he kept pointing right directly at me and looking me in the eyes and said, Today's the day I'm going to kill me, a white man.

Oh, I'm going to kill me, a white man today.

And

he finally just, well, he saw my security and then he went away.

This is

this, this, we are not addressing the key issues here, and the media is making everything worse um we we really

we really are in a place where we will not get our republic back if

if the

if the administration doesn't um

act

forcefully but not

um but constitutionally

And if we lose our heads, I mean, people like you, Megan, are so important

because people are going to look to us on how we react to this.

And I don't know how to react.

There's no lesson on this one.

I don't know how to react to this.

My friends are being shot.

My family is in danger.

I mean,

I don't know how to react to this other than,

you know,

I know that God is a God of miracles.

If Charlie is alive, that's a miracle.

If you saw the video,

there is no way he should be alive.

There's no way he should be alive.

And if he's alive, that is an absolute miracle.

And we have to be worthy of those miracles

because something

evil is happening, but something glorious is also going to come out of this.

You know, you can't help but look at it in our position and say

he does to a large extent what we do.

You know, we're all largely in the same business.

We comment on the news.

We try to help people understand the news.

And yes, now in at least my new iteration and the one you've been at for a long time too, we also try to shape opinion around the news, the issues that are important to us and try to encourage people to maintain their sanity and react sanely to a news cycle that can drive you mad.

You know, I've heard you do it many times.

I've done it.

Charlie, this week, what has Charlie been doing?

Charlie has been speaking truth about what happened in Charlotte.

He's been very frank, as he always is, even when the chips are down.

He says the hard thing and he called out the racial issue in the stabbing in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And

because he heard what we heard, which was the black assailant walked up and down the train afterward and appeared to say, someone said, and it's very clear to me, it was him.

We haven't had the forensic evaluation from cops yet, said, I got that white girl.

I got that white girl.

And Charlie.

There is no penalty for this.

There's no penalty for this.

Look at when you impose penalties in Washington, D.C., look how fast crime goes away.

There's no penalty for saying these things, encouraging these things, or doing these things.

The press and the

academia and the media has taken very sick and vulnerable people,

the transgender community, and whipped them up into a frenzy.

where the Nazis are going to come and round you up.

What do you expect people to do?

What do you expect them to do?

So now the shootings are happening.

We've had five shootings.

I wonder if it was a coincidence that the question that was being asked of Charlie was the LGBTQ, the trans shooters that have happened, bang.

I'm wondering if that's a coincidence or not.

I'm hoping that it is.

But nobody will even talk about it.

Nobody will talk about there is serious mental illness on our streets.

and a lot of it is coming from the media and the politicians they are pushing people who are mentally ill into very dangerous situations and nobody says anything about it i mean i tell you donald trump has his work cut out for him jd dads pray for those let me just finish about so so charlie this week was making the point he was making about that about that stabbing totally valid point totally fair point and a brave point to make publicly, because of course you know you're going to get blowback.

And what happened?

Blowback happened.

Van Jones went on CNN that night and attacked Charlie and suggested he was somehow racist for introducing that question into it.

Meanwhile,

the stabber, the accused murderer, is someone we can hear on tape.

It's very clearly coming from that train, and he's the guy who's front and center.

We've looked at it 25 times.

And while you cannot see his mouth moving, his face is not on camera, it seems very clear it's him.

At a minimum, there is a prima facie basis to say it appears to be him.

That's a very comfortable place to be if it turns out not to be fine.

But Charlie was not ahead of his skis and suggesting there's reason to believe there's a racial motive here, or at least that race played a role.

And this is what happened.

This is how Van Jones responded on CNN.

We don't know why that man did what he did.

And for Charlie Kirk to say, we know he did it because she's white when there's no evidence of that is just pure

racemongering, hate mongering.

It's wrong.

Then he says that if something like that had happened the other way, there'd be sweeping changes imposed on society.

Where is the George Floyd Policing Act?

It didn't pass.

You mentioned the thing about cashless bail.

I think this is a big challenge that we have.

Would you have felt better if there had been cash bail and the mom had come and put down $1,000 to let him out?

It's not about cashless bail or no cashless bail.

It's about the fact that we don't know how to deal with people who were hurting in the way this man was hurting.

Hurt people hurt people.

Look, I'm not blaming this on Van Jones.

I'm just trying to show what Charlie was up against in his very brave and very frank social commentary, Glenn.

And Van is right.

No, there's no love loss between me and Van Jones.

But Van is right.

I know the history.

Hurt people hurt people.

He's right on that.

But there is a group of people that are preying on hurt people and encouraging them to do unspeakable things.

And when they do, they encourage them by either their silence or lionizing these people.

You know, this is not going to stop until Americans on both sides stand up and say, enough.

This is not acceptable in our society.

It is not acceptable.

But I know people,

I know people I counted as reasonable people who actually celebrated when Trump was shot.

And if they know who Charlie Kirk is,

they'd be celebrating today.

That's unacceptable.

If this would have happened to

the women on the view, I wouldn't be celebrating.

I would be warning.

I'd be warning.

This is is dangerous.

What are we doing?

Stop it.

Never.

And not only that, but if I've been at these events with you, if you and I actually bumped into Whoopi or Joy at some event and we were introduced and we were drinking it, whatever, sitting there, we'd be kind and they'd probably be mildly kind back to us.

Like, there's an understanding mildly.

We wouldn't be, you know, insincere, but we wouldn't walk in there like, I hate that person and I want bad things to happen to that person.

Absolutely.

They feel they are entitled entitled to say that.

We would never do that.

We would never, I think the right understands that you, you're a player on the field.

And then when you remove yourself from the field, there's a level of civility that's required in order for our fucking society to function.

And it's just, I just want to, I want to update with this because this just came in.

This is news.

from the university.

We can confirm Mr.

Kirk was shot.

We do not know his condition.

The suspect is not in custody.

Police are still investigating campus is closed for the rest of the day said the university spokesperson scott trotter your is your daughter out of there glenn

oh

is she safe

yes he's nodding his head oh i'm so sorry that's another level of worry

And obviously, the extra level of worry is she's Glenn Beck's daughter, and you have to worry about that.

I understand that acutely myself.

It makes us targets, and it makes our kids targets.

And I really hope Charlie's wife and his two children have security on them right now because the level of threat is higher.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

That's

for coming on to talk about this.

Well, you have your own worries.

about your own family, Glenn.

It's so on brand for you.

You're such, you're also so brave and you've been under it yourself.

I've seen, when we were at Fox News,

you came to see me one time, we had a chat and you had six bodyguards around you.

It was insane, the level of threat that you were under, again, just for talking about the news.

They're going to pick,

if this isn't stopped,

they're going to pick people off one by one.

You know,

they did it to us first, Megan, by picking us off, by trying to pick off our sponsors and trying to isolate us.

And thank God for the internet.

We could go to the internet and we could be heard.

We didn't need their big network systems anymore.

We chartered our own course, but they tried to destroy us that way first, financially.

Then they smeared us and

tried to end us by just saying horrible, awful things.

And now that that doesn't work, they're just going to pick people off one by one.

You know,

we have to get serious about

the soros of the world the people who fund these radical groups we have to get serious about our our university campuses they are hell holes they there is real evil that is happening and people are turning a blind eye and too many in washington are just thinking this is business as usual.

This is not business as usual.

The republic is at stake.

And I'm sorry, I do not want and I do not like extra constitutional powers.

I do not want any of those.

But every single tool at our disposal that is constitutional should be employed.

And people who are breaking the law, people who are trying to overthrow, people who are trying to influence to overthrow or to get people to kill, they must pay a price by law, not from us, not through violence.

They must be arrested and stopped.

George Soros, at the very least, his NGO should be banned from doing business in the United States.

He's banned in several countries.

I don't know why everybody else knows that he's a threat.

We know he's a threat, but we'll do nothing about his NGOs here.

We'll just let them operate.

We'll let all of these NGOs take all of this money and infect our DAs,

our district attorneys, our

attorney generals that

will just let them go in and

undercover at night.

Did you see about the, what is it, the Ray, it's not the Ray.

Oh, I had it in our show prep today.

I talked about it.

The first time I had ever heard of it, it's an old Soviet group that tried to do things during the Soviet era that is still around.

And now they are in charge of 40 different prosecutors in our country.

Is that the Wren group?

W-R-E-M?

Yes, the Wren group.

I'd never even heard, you know, me.

I am on top of all of these.

I had never even heard of that one.

There are so many of them now.

It was in City Journal yesterday.

Right.

And what are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

There needs to be, we need to have our FBI and our DOJ

go follow the money and take the people down that are funding all of this stuff.

Because this is not just crazy people on the streets.

This is coordinated.

This is planned.

This is a color revolution.

I can't help but feel that like

the left

went crazy.

They drove the country crazy on the trans thing and on the race thing, to name two.

But those are two huge ones over the past five, 10 years.

They took us to a truly, deeply insane place.

And it took the right half of the country to rise up over the course of years to say, no, no, this is immoral.

It's evil what you're doing, dividing us by race and transing children, cutting off healthy body parts, sterilizing minors.

This is fucking insane and evil.

And Charlie's been a part of that counter-messaging.

And now

Trump, who's the avatar of the whole counter-message, Charlie, who's like a mini Trump.

I mean, there's nothing, there's no daylight between them.

Even when, you know, people got mad at Trump over Epstein, Charlie had Trump's back.

You know, he's just like, there's no daylight between those two.

He's a die-hard fan, supporter, loyal to the core towards Trump.

But he's also,

you were right when you said he's also the future.

Charlie is

more than, because can I just say something?

Yes, because I was thinking about this, and God bless the Trump children.

I pray for them every night.

We don't want anything to happen to them.

But at least the Trump children have security.

They have Secret Service.

And with all due respect to them and their important voice in the national conversation, they don't have the same role as Charlie.

Charlie is more important politically.

He's young and he's organized and he's powerful in his own right.

My security chief called me when this happened.

And

obviously our security, and I hope your security people have changed their position as of today.

But

he called me and I said, look at this video.

Look at the, this is insane.

And too many people in our position do not take security seriously.

Finally, Ben Shapiro, I saw him.

Finally, he's got serious security.

But, you know, I've seen Charlie

engaged in things where I'm like, Charlie, where's your security?

I've talked to him a million times.

Where is your security, Charlie?

You have to take these things seriously now.

And I mean, I know I've called you at times, Megan, when you flared up and I'm like,

got security, you need anything, you know?

Nobody takes it seriously.

I hope our side begins to take this seriously because

you know, Glenn, he had security.

Of course, he had security.

But as a newspaper or a commentator, or in Charlie's case, also a political organizer, you don't travel with presidential level security.

You don't have sharpshooters clearing the buildings.

No, but

you don't set things up.

We shouldn't talk about this on the air, but trust me, I've been doing this for a long time.

There are things that you do have to do.

And

it didn't appear to have those things happening there with Charlie.

And Charlie is

in this world now, if you are making a difference, you are going to be a target, period.

And it could come from any side, any side.

And

I just

pray for Charlie.

I pray for the Republic.

But I also pray for people like you, Megan, and everybody else who is in this industry that they please

pray for protection and take the time to learn about protection and spend the money.

Spend the money if you have to, but stay alive.

You know,

we've lost Dennis Prager, one of the greatest voices

for God, I think,

and to the youth with Prager University.

What do you mean we've lost Dennis?

I mean, he had a terrible accident.

He was hurt, but the last report I heard was he was doing a little better.

I shouldn't have said

Dennis.

I pray he comes back and he is able to do the things that he can.

I know he can write books,

but,

you know, I don't know if.

You mean we lost him in the way we used to have him?

Thank you.

We've lost him the way we've had him.

And he is an important, important voice.

If, God forbid, we lose Charlie,

we can't afford to lose voices.

And these people are serious about stopping voices.

They're serious about it.

If they have control of the government, they ban all of us.

If they don't have control of the government, it's clear they just kill all of us.

This is a very dangerous death cult we're dealing with.

We have to start taking it seriously.

I am not ready to go to air with what I'm reading, Glenn, but

I don't feel hopeful.

Okay, I'll just say that.

Do not feel hopeful.

And I haven't felt hopeful since I saw the video before I came on the show.

If that was real,

there's just no way one can survive it.

That video was real.

I heard from an eyewitness that

said it was like a water fountain coming out of his neck.

So that video is real.

And I don't know how he survived.

I don't know how he survived that.

I pray so hard for his family and for everybody at Turning Point 2.

I mean, he's their leader, you know, this young, upstart, strong, fun, funny, spicy

guy who would go anywhere, would talk to anyone.

You know, I said earlier, he and I have

an event together in two weeks in Virginia.

I was going to one of those campuses with him.

Me too.

I don't know.

I feel like

everyone over there must be so traumatized.

And I, again, I worry for our children.

You know, my kids love him.

I know that

they're praying that right now, too.

My husband, I saw, we have a family text chain.

My husband texted saying there's some upsetting news.

Please come right home and do not look at the internet.

And unfortunately, their kids, they're teenagers and they'd already seen it.

It's this, these videos, it happened in a public place.

There were millions of cameras.

Everybody had their iPhone.

It's what you do at a Charlie Kirk event.

It's what Charlie wants you to do.

He loves it when the clips go viral and his messages and his exchanges with people get as great a circulation as possible.

And if this is the ultimate exchange that he had,

I don't know.

It's like I got a,

I found out from my daughter on the phone.

And I, and

she's not the same.

She'll never be the same.

Right.

Right.

This is a level of trauma for everyone involved, every eyewitness, everyone who loves Charlie.

You're exactly right.

It's like,

he's a friend.

Like, for me, Glenn, I remember, you know,

there was this weird period.

And you kind of, you can relate to this too, because I was on the outs with Trump, you know, or so.

People thought, you know, he and I had made up, but I definitely wasn't his favorite.

And when I launched this show, it was that way.

And for the first year or so, you know, MAGA definitely had some questions like, I don't know, I'm not sure, you know.

And even I at that time didn't know.

I knew I voted for Trump and I was like supporting him, but I still had questions.

You know, I was still kind of licking my wounds.

And

Charlie reached out and asked if I would go on his show.

And I remember thinking,

that's a big risk for him because he doesn't know whether his audience is going to like me you know like that's he's actually taking a risk here and i appreciated it because like charlie doing that was in a way like a kindness to me can i tell you something megan yeah it's more of a kindness because i think you're being

i think you know he did know you would not be good for the audience

he knows his audience he knew it was going to cost him a price to put you on at that time.

But he did it anyway, because he believed in you and he believed in different voices and

bringing people together.

I mean, I think he's,

it's very gracious the way you're saying it, but I think it's, it's even more than that.

It's even more than that.

Well, I mean, at that moment, you know, a

unexpected, beautiful friendship was formed because I didn't know anything about Charlie.

Can I tell you you something, Glenn?

You know what I knew about Charlie?

I knew about what, I knew what the right wing says about Charlie, these more established right wing, which is they didn't like him.

They did not like him.

In the same way, they did not like MAGA.

You know,

they just thought he was terrible.

So many more establishment Republicans were like, oh, Charlie.

And I'd begun listening to him.

And in the same way, it's not dissimilar from Mike Davis, who was also like crapped on by so many more establishment types in the GOP.

And I was like, no, this guy's brilliant.

I'm telling you, like, as a lawyer, I can tell you, this guy's actually really smart.

By the way, he's been right about literally everything.

And I started listening to Charlie.

I'm like, this, he's actually quite special.

This guy's combination of talents is very rare.

And you can see, I've said it to him.

You're going to be president someday.

You're definitely going to be president.

He's only 31 years old.

What could he possibly do for us?

The list is so long.

Endless promise, endless fulfillment, endless influence.

And it's been thrilling to watch his rise over the past couple of years.

And I've been honored to be any small part of his show.

He's become a part of mine too.

It's been symbiotic and it's been wonderful.

He was coming on my tour with me.

I was going to the campuses with him because it worked.

We had a mutual have, have respect for one another.

There's a love.

There's kind of a love and a respect.

And behind the scenes at these turning point events, we'd laugh and we'd make fun of each other and everybody and all the untouchable figures in a way you can when you're family, you know, in a way you can when you're family.

You can say anything about anything, you could, and you do anything for the person as he would for me, and I would for him, and I would for you, and you would for me and him, too.

And I know that.

So it's just so bizarre.

It is right.

You're right.

Two of my friends have been shot.

Look at him here on stage with his wife and his two beautiful children.

He just had, that's Erica.

He just had a son.

His daughter is now about two.

This just came in from the New York Post.

The reporter reports: I asked Trump how Charlie Kirk is doing.

Not well.

He's not doing well.

Quote, it looks very bad.

How Trump is feeling, not good.

Using the past tense, he was a very, very good friend of mine, and he was a tremendous person.

I will say, Gavin Newsom tweeted this out.

The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.

In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in every form.

That's right.

There are news outlets reporting the worst right now, Glenn.

I don't know what I'm waiting for before I report it.

You know, I trust just the news.

I trust Deseret.

What are we waiting for like the AP to say it?

We don't trust them more than we trust these.

But they're reporting that Charlie has died.

That he's dead.

At the age of 31.

Which he would have to be if that video was real.

There's no way he survived that.

The only good thing is

it had to have happened quickly.

Right.

Right.

If you see the video, you do not see any suffering.

No.

He appears to have been spared the horrific moments after that the girl on the Charlotte train wasn't when she knew she was dying or she knew something terrible had happened.

I don't think Charlie.

It's clear Charlie went down.

He went down quickly.

I talked to a surgeon friend of mine and I sent him that video and I said,

you know,

what can be done?

And he said,

that looks like the

artery was

completely decimated and there's just, it would have been over.

It looks like JFK.

That's what it looked like to me.

It looked like when JFK was assassinated, the violence with which he

keeled back, was hit was the thrust of it it was very clearly a direct hit it was obviously

i don't know some sort of a rifle or shotgun it had severe velocity

200 yards away obviously this person had been practicing this fucker had been out there practicing to take his life

and if these reports are correct he his children have lost their father.

Erica's lost her love.

And we have lost one of the most important voices that we've had in my lifetime on the right, one of the most important messages, someone sent by God to change minds and hearts on the most important,

divisive, difficult issues of our time.

May I just say something

positive?

Yeah.

I've made a pact with myself to start my day every day

with

before

I get out of bed, before I do anything else, just

say three things that

I know are true about God.

I know he lives.

I know he's not neutral.

And I know he protects us.

If you know that God lives and he is not neutral and that he loves all of us, he is our dad,

something good is going to come of this.

It always does.

It always does.

I don't know how, but something good and glorious is going to come from this.

Because God is not neutral in the affairs of man, but neither is Satan.

Neither is the darkness.

That is real.

And we are battling that.

And the sooner people understand

that you are not fighting flesh and bone, you are fighting evil,

the sooner we'll be able to

dismiss evil and go back to God.

If they don't find this person,

then you're right.

It's going to feel like open season.

Then there is not a person on the right who is going to walk comfortably anywhere in public.

This shooter must be captured and must be brought to justice.

And more than that, Megan,

the left must, must speak out against this.

They must.

All of them.

All of them.

All of them.

The media must make this into a big deal.

If they bury this in two days,

that's going to keep happening.

It's going to keep happening.

Our FBI, our DOJ, must do an investigation and must open investigations on all of those revolutionary groups that are pumping this poison into our system.

We must get legally serious and have legal consequences for

these revolutionaries who are just planting this poison all throughout our society.

God hope

people that are in our police departments in Salt Lake.

God

protect those

who are in our DOJ

and FBI.

Thank God they're there.

Thank God.

Thank God.

Thank God it's Trump.

Thank God it's Cash and Dan.

Thank God for Pam Bondi.

Thank God we have this team in there.

Do you know what our country would be like if today, if he hadn't have won i don't know if we can still have a country

and and you know one of the reasons why we got trump is charlie kirk a no you know we all play our part in some some small way but there is no denying the effect charlie kirk had on this election big reason that's why he was a target Can I tell you he came on the show, I mentioned this earlier, and we played the soundbite from his show when he, the night Trump won, when he came on my show just days after Trump won.

I loved the clip so much.

I played it for him, and we had an exchange about it.

I want to play it now.

I was humbled and blown away because I, throughout this entire thing, I'm getting emotional thinking about it.

And I'm sure you agree, Megan.

I said, there's no way they're going to let us do this.

Something's going to happen, right?

And again, call it paranoia, call it

just trying to be ahead of the curve.

And I'm sitting in a seat right here where I saw Trump got shot.

And

like they tried to kill him and indict him.

And it's like at every turn, I'm like, here we go.

The regime is striking back.

Right.

And it's just, you don't think you're actually going to get there because we've been programmed to just say that like powerful people get what they want.

Right.

And

it's,

yeah, he was one millimeter from this whole country just going into Bedlam.

And what if one of these trials would have went differently right what if jack smith would have rushed his cases and the i mean like a million different things right

and there you go and you hear the words that donald trump is president elect i just um again glory be to god is all i can say because i i believe there's a divine element i asked the question is god done with this land i don't think it what he is i think that

the evil that it would seem you've covered of this butchery of children is going to come to an end.

This evil of allowing men and female sports is going to come to an end.

And

we were blessed to play a small role.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

Is God done with his world?

I don't think he is.

I don't think so, says Charlie,

having no idea about the true sacrifice that he was making in order to make this happen, that the true sacrifice, becoming a public figure, putting himself out there, taking these risks would require of him.

You know,

how could he possibly know these are not the stakes for which we are typically playing?

He,

I don't know, he was a faithful man.

That brings me a lot of comfort, Glenn.

I feel like he's home with his maker.

He is home, and there is a

celebration

on the other side, bringing him home.

He is,

He has done his work

and he did it well.

I know him as a man of faith.

He was a good, decent, honorable man of faith who is growing in his faith.

He has been

welcomed home with open arms.

Megan, I have to go.

But I thank you for talking to me today.

Thank you so much, Glenn.

All the love in the world to you.

So much respect.

Stay soon.

Talk soon.

For the audience just joining us,

Charlie Kirk was shot today

on campus at Utah Valley University.

The reports coming out of Deseret News and Just the News, that's John Solomon's organization, former AP reporter, very solid on his government sources in particular, are reporting that he has died.

It is not being widely reported yet,

though the shooting is confirmed and understood.

The university has said we can confirm that he was shot.

We don't know his condition.

The suspect is not in custody.

That was an amendment to what was earlier reported, where they did have an older gentleman in custody saying, I have my right to remain silent, and was being handcuffed.

They now say it wasn't him.

His wife, Erica, and their two children must be in some agonizing pain right now.

I can only imagine.

This is from.

Oh.

Oh, good God.

Yeah.

He's dead.

It's official.

It's from the COO of Turning Point,

who just tweeted out.

Dear Turning Point USA family,

it's with a heavy heart that we, the Turning Point USA leadership team, write to notify you that earlier this afternoon, Charlie went to his eternal reward with Jesus Christ in heaven.

We're still gathering more information

and will come to you soon with updates.

However, in the meantime, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action will be closed for business until Monday the 15th, likely longer.

If you're in the field or traveling,

please cancel everything and return home immediately.

All internal, external meetings, etc., are canceled.

Please pray sincerely,

Justin.

And then they offer grieving

services, counseling services for their team.

I am so sorry to be bringing you this news.

I am so sorry.

I'm sorry for what it means for for

our country, for Charlie.

Poor dear Charlie and his family.

Sorry for what

it's going to mean for the debates that we have yet to have that he would have won.

He would have put everyone to shame on as he had been.

And I'm angry, really fucking angry, about how this happened, why this happened, and why we don't have

a person in custody.

Okay.

Donald Trump,

just weighing in.

The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.

No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.

He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now he is no longer with us.

Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica, and family.

Charlie, we love you.

Emily Jashinsky is with me.

It's really too painful to really comprehend right now, Emily.

You know, it's like it's too big and it's too severe a loss.

It's too profound a commentary on who we are as a country.

It's overwhelming.

Megan, I've been watching your whole broadcast and I don't know how you've done it.

We can find comfort in Romans 8, 28.

All things happen for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.

All things happen for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.

And that's not always immediately obvious to us, but we can take comfort in it now.

You know, I didn't know Charlie as well as you did, but we did come up together.

Charlie was 31.

I was 32, or I am 32, I can't believe I'm using past tense to talk about Charlie Kirk right now.

But,

you know, he, Glenn Beck just said something right before he left that I thought was really important.

He said Charlie had been on his faith journey, he had grown in his faith journey.

And I think that's something that's really abundantly obvious as people have watched his career.

Not only did he evolve with the culture, and I think start to really dial in to the deep and evil roots of some of the cultural sicknesses that we experience, in fact, that we're experiencing right now.

But I think also he

nudged our culture along with him and he did it.

He's been a part of this revolution technologically that we've seen.

And I think of, you know, you've mentioned this a couple of times over the course of the broadcast, all of the people who have seen Charlie on their little screens, on their iPhones, almost every day,

sometimes multiple times a day, just as they're scrolling through TikTok or YouTube shorts or Twitter.

And those people, Gen Z, I mean, he's almost as close to monoculture as Gen Z gets.

Everybody felt like they knew Charlie Kirk.

Even if they didn't like Charlie Kirk, they felt like they knew Charlie Kirk.

They felt like they knew Charlie Kirk and they saw him grow up.

And so I think you've mentioned this a couple of times.

We are, if anything, underestimating

as a society right now

how profoundly this will reverberate

on the culture.

Yeah, yes.

This,

I don't, I don't know if the left fully comprehends how important he was to us.

I really don't.

I'm not sure they appreciate they tried to marginalize him and make him into this fringy character who was just some sort of nutcase who would go on campuses and stir up shit.

And that is such a misrepresentation of this noble person.

And I, like, I don't have my team sending me

the nasty fucking things that people are posting on Blue Sky and the idiocy happening on MSNBC.

I can't tolerate it right now.

I just don't, I don't have any, I can't handle it right now.

All I can handle is figuring out who did it, who fucking did this, and bringing them to justice and making sure they don't hurt anybody else, and then doing everything we can to do two things, supporting his family, including his work family,

and making damn sure that every message he brought is screamed from the mountaintop in in greater volume on more college campuses in fact i'm i'm prepared to go i will go i'll go anywhere that the turning point team wants me to go i will say exactly what charlie would have said anywhere they asked me to and all of my conservative friends need to do the same and say it the way charlie would have said it boldly and unafraid That's the only possible way through this

to

live up to his legacy, continue his messaging, and support the enormous family that loved him.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

He would be so angry at us if he thought that even one of us cowered now, if even one of us cowered or stopped.

Yeah.

Yeah,

This is over the course of his career, his faith grew, and we were just talking about this, but it was really something that you could see happening in real time.

And I think he

really came to understand

that this is not just about

this is not just about red team or blue team, but this is about a deeper crisis of meaning and a deeper crisis of purpose.

And Charlie and I disagreed on things over the years as recently as a couple of weeks ago,

never publicly that I can think of, but

he developed such a, I think, a rich appreciation for

his faith and for the importance of seeing politics and faith as being intertwined, but also as a bravery.

And that gets missed.

I mean, I feel like we've gotten so used to the America that you grew up in, Megan, that I grew up in, you know, after it felt like the dust had settled from the 1960s.

And we have this, we've been so blessed to live in the sliver of human history that's relatively peaceful, the sliver of human history that's relatively peaceful.

And I think that has,

I sadly think we're looking at that in the rearview mirror every single day more and more.

And I think to your point about conservatives going out and being brave now,

I think we're going to have to get used to legitimately being brave, not being brave

for posting something controversial on X, X, but really, I mean, we're talking about historical bravery, historical bravery, probably.

Absolutely right.

The recent, like the last month or two, I don't know, Charlie had been dabbling with going on Fox here and there, which, you know, was kind of breakthrough because they wouldn't have Charlie Kirk for most of the time.

I give them no credit for this.

They finally caught on to the fact that Charlie was a genius, an exceptional talent, and decided to, oh, give him a chance on Fox.

I'm sorry, I'm just feeling bitter right now.

It's no offense to Fox.

They gave him a platform and he took it, and that's a good thing.

He went on Fox and Friends.

He subbed as a host on Fox and Friends.

And it was just last month, and his daughter came on the set.

He allowed it, and he was fine with it airing, so we're going to air it here.

Here it is.

That is the best.

Oh my God.

Emily, that poor girl.

That poor family.

You know, so he's never going to walk her down the aisle.

He's never going to see them grow up.

He's never going to have another child with his beautiful Erica.

Like, he would bring them on the road, you know, whenever I'd go to these events, they'd be there.

His family was everything to him.

And that fucker shot him down in the prime of his life without a thought, without a thought for those children.

You know, and right now he's at large.

We have no idea who it was, what the motivation was.

We played a soundbite earlier of an eyewitness

whose name is Justin Hickens, speaking at NBC.

I'll just summarize it if people weren't with us.

But he said he was 20 yards away.

He got there a few minutes before noon.

This is in Utah, Utah time.

There were thousands of people.

Unfortunately, there was no metal detector.

There were none.

There was security by Charlie, but anybody could have shown up with whatever.

He said, I maneuvered my way down close on the side, and the first interaction probably took 10 minutes.

It was a religious-related exchange.

And then there was someone who stepped up.

He says, ironically, coincidentally, who asked a question about mass shootings.

And about 60 to 90 seconds in, we heard a big, loud shot.

And he describes the pandemonium that followed next.

The

former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

He's now a Fox Newser.

He was on Fox and

he said he was there.

And he added that the question that they were actually discussing when Charlie was shot was about trans

shootings, about trans shootings in particular.

Hold on.

I have a long text thread with my team.

I'm trying to find.

Oh, you have this?

Is it Chaffetz?

Yeah, okay.

Here he is.

Let's play it.

Yeah, that happened like 35 minutes ago.

I was there.

I was up kind of on the second level because I wanted to be in the shade, but our daughter was there, our son-in-law was there, my wife was there, friends.

This is our community.

And, you know, there's 2,000 or so people.

The Utah Valley University is our largest university, 40,000 students.

And people came out to hear the dialogue, the back and forth.

Ask them anything.

That's what Turning Point and Charlie Kirk's all about.

Ask them anything.

First question was about religion.

He went on for about 15, 20 minutes.

Second question, interestingly, was about transgender shooters, mass shooters.

And in the midst of that,

the shot rang out.

Now, I happen to be watching Charlie.

I can't say I saw blood.

I can't say I saw him get shot.

But as soon as that shot went out, he fell back into his left.

And

everybody hit the deck.

A lot of people started screaming.

And then everybody started running, as you might expect.

All right,

and now we have a transcript of the question, what was happening.

Question from someone in the audience.

So do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?

Charlie, too many to cheers.

Question.

It's five, okay?

Now five is a lot, right?

Now I'm going to give you some credit.

Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?

or not counting, counting or not counting gang violence, asked Charlie.

And that's when he was shot.

We have this awed.

We're going to play it.

We are not going to show the

execution that happened, but here's the QA.

So, do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?

Too many.

Now, five is a lot, right?

I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you some credit.

Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?

Counting or not counting gang violence.

And that's when the shot was fired.

No idea whether this is related to the trans issue, but it's one of the many that Charlie's been leading on and very outspoken on.

And it's something that was near and dear to his heart.

And we have seen it too much, as he put it, too many trans activists turn violent.

It's

the reality of the shooting happening exactly after that exchange is beyond chilling.

And again, just absorbing this in real time, this is what people,

it's easy for us to get numbed to this because it was always there for us.

But imagine, you know,

it was always there.

We grew with the technology.

Like the technology has been around and it's grown.

We've seen it it grow.

But if you're a Gen Z, if you're Gen Alpha, and you've been scrolling your phone, seeing this guy

larger than life figure, like Charlie Kirk, larger than life figure,

you know, arguing, mixing it up, he was supposed to be speaking with Hassan Piker at an event in several weeks on the left.

And you've been seeing this on your phone for years.

And then you see a video of him

being sniped, being sniped on a college campus after an exchange, the likes of which you have seen just about every single day on your TikTok and on your Twitter.

This injects a new tone of

a new tone of violence and just this raw violence that, again, I just don't think anybody is prepared for what this is doing to the young minds who are absorbing this today.

This is a very young.

Very young.

And I mean, this is one of those moments where how often is it that, you know, there's Butler, of course, but a single shot, a single shot, I don't even want to talk in the sort of callous detail,

but a single shot from 200 yards back, that feels like a 1960s style execution.

And it's one that we all just witnessed.

If you were lucky enough to not have clicked on that video yet, I imagine you might be in the minority of people who were absorbing this news in real time online.

The whole country just saw this.

I was holding it together, okay, until I saw that.

And then it was very clear to me he was dead.

It was just, there was no way.

You see this video, there's just no way he, he, any human could survive it.

But, you know,

I was encouraged by the reports that he was at least in critical.

He had apparently made it to the hospital, or at least, I mean, he must have for them to be saying he was in critical.

I don't know.

I don't know.

We're just getting this in now here.

Here's more.

New York Times, search activity is continuing at Utah Valley University, where several groups of armed and outfitted agents can be seen making sweeps through central campus on foot and on trucks.

Utah Valley University officials confirmed no one has been arrested, once again, saying there is no suspect in custody.

It is an active investigation, citing the university spokesperson.

The university said four agencies are investigating: Oram Police, Utah Valley University Police, the FBI, and the Utah Department of Public Safety.

This person's not, they're not in custody,

but they will be.

I feel confident they will be, Emily.

There's just on a university campus in today's day and age, that the cameras are everywhere that to get, he must have been on a building.

It seems likely, you know, he was on a building.

Even like the

one shooting, we did show one time.

We showed the video of Charlie being shot from afar.

just at the top of the show to explain to people what we were dealing with.

And the person who's doing the filming,

he doesn't sound far away from the shot.

I mean, I'm just a lay person, but to me, it sounds like he's nearby.

He's not too far from the shooter.

In any event, of course, and even the university is saying it happened from 200 yards away.

So this is somebody who obviously trained for this mission.

And I say this only because if he was on top of a college campus building, whether it was a dorm or a mess hall, you know, a dining hall,

a campus university building like with classrooms in it, you'd have to go through layers to get in, especially given the number of campus shootings that we've seen lately.

You know, there have been multiple campus shootings, and there's been multiple false alarms on campus shootings where, like, the report came out, oh, there's a shooting here, there's a shooting there, and there weren't.

That was a weird spate that we went through about 10 days ago.

So, I'm just saying that the alert level at any campus would have been higher.

And then, when you know Charlie's coming, who's a controversial figure, it would be even higher.

And then, when you know thousands of your students are going to be on the quad, even higher, there's just no way that there's not going to be an eyewitness or a camera that caught this person.

I completely agree with that.

And when I said earlier, Charlie and I came up together, I mean, one of the reasons for that is my first job out of college was

organizing campus events.

And so a lot of the events that my colleagues and I were organizing at the time were Ben Shapiro events.

This back in like 2015,

you know, a lot of people remember the Mizzou eruption of protests back then, and it kept going in bigger and bigger, to bigger and and bigger venues and you know we had students at one point basically be trapped in the venue by leftist protesters on campus and just the volume of threats I mean I'm talking 10 years ago I think before this had got quite as hot as it is now the situation the culture had got quite as hot as it is now the the amount of I think legitimate threats just for hosting these events would shock average people who haven't been behind the scenes organizing them and so to what we were talking about earlier it is absolutely brave that Charlie would stand out there in broad daylight in a tent, under a tent, with thousands of people in front of him.

And there are a lot of questions the school is now going to have to answer.

There are a lot of questions everybody is now going to have to answer because the eyewitness report about metal detectors, I mean, we're looking right now at a 180 to potentially 200-yard sniper shot, essentially.

It sounded like it was from a high-powered rifle, looked like it from the shot without getting too graphic into that.

And what that would mean, I mean, that could mean security was tight around Charlie, as the eyewitness who talked to NBC said.

But if there was, if there really were no metal detectors, that's a huge, huge, huge red flag.

If we come to find that out, to your point, Megan, there were thousands of people all with their smartphones, all with their smartphones out.

Presumably, when you see something like that happen, you don't even think to unclick record, you just start running.

And what you capture, I mean, I'm sure there's CCTV all over that damn campus.

And so, I pray we have seen very odd situations in our history where people get away

or, you know, it just, it feels like we never get close to the truth of different tragedies.

And I pray to God that is not what happens in this case

because

we need that clarity as a country as we digest the execution in broad daylight of one of the most popular young conservatives, really ever.

I really mean that in the history of the country, ever.

Look at him.

Look at him.

Great looking, looking,

super strong, moral, ethical core, incredibly gifted, orator, fearless in his commentary and his positioning, very effective advocate for probably the most consequential president we'll ever have in our lifetimes.

Not an exaggeration to say, directly responsible in some significant measure for getting Donald Trump elected.

Father, loving husband,

dead at 31 by an assassin's bullet.

And for what?

For what?

You know, I mean, truly, you think about it, it's like

the person's not going to stop the messaging.

The right will not be silenced.

They're not going to shut up.

I mean, honestly, it doesn't, Glenn says he's worried they're going to start picking us off one by one.

You know what?

It won't shut them up.

It'll only create more of us.

It's like

anybody who's thinking about getting into the public arena, yes, they will be scared for a couple of days and then they will put their boots back on and go back out there.

That's what they will do.

That's how we are as Americans.

It's not going to shut anybody up.

It's just going to ruin the life of his wife and his children who now will never know him.

That the little girl is too young to even really remember him.

That's what was taken from us today.

But you know, Megan, that little girl has hundreds and hundreds of video video to reflect on as she grows up of her father.

And, you know, whoever did this, whatever their goal was, it's only going to magnify, I mean, Charlie Kirk is now a martyr for his cause.

It's only going to magnify his work for years and years to come.

And frankly, Megan, I think this is what the left maybe misses about people on the right, which is

You can, I mean, like, the violence is to be expected if you are a Christian.

We talked earlier, there's just like the sliver of human history where there's an unusual peace and comfort

in the West, but this is not unusual in the history of Christianity.

This is something that Christians are deeply familiar with.

And if this had anything to do with his Christian beliefs, which we don't know for sure, I think it's a non-insane assumption because his Christian beliefs were.

I mean, they infiltrated everything he said, so in one way, shape, or form, they did.

Yeah, exactly.

It's an inextricably tied, and increasingly so as he grew up and everybody watched it with his politics.

And so Christians

cannot be deterred or silenced by these types of senseless acts of violence.

People can try, but our hope is not in this world.

Our hope is not of this world.

And so you can do what you want to do to us on earth.

And Charlie,

that's obviously what drives and animates the sort of Christian in the public arena.

And I don't think the left fully realizes that.

And I hope people on the right realize that too.

As so many young people come back to faith and to deep, deep faith.

I hope we realize that.

I hope we do.

Megan, one final thought on that point, too, is the medium that Charlie was a pioneer in, and that's social media.

Just these, because he was doing these back and forth videos that were, he learned, I think, quickly, good content.

They made for like really compelling,

a really compelling way for people to digest politics.

As institutional trust catered, People want to see more left versus right so they can make up their own minds.

And he recognized that.

And for him to

be gone,

to be taken in that format, and for that to be broadcast around the world

on social media, on the medium that he pioneered

is just poetic in a sense, and obviously in a very tragic sense.

Emily, I mean,

you're young.

You know, it's like you're basically the same age as Charlie.

There haven't been that many figures who have resonated with the youth the way he did.

I mean, I can't think of somebody on the left who has similar power with young liberals.

I really can't.

Like, it's the issues that animate the young left, you know, abortion,

whatever, take your pick.

But there hasn't been like a figure that I can think of.

Maybe I'm just blanking right now.

There hasn't been like a figure on the left that's resonated the way Charlie was able to resonate on the right.

And the thing about him, too, is that he would speak to the leftists.

The leftists were not forgotten when he went on those campuses.

They were a critical part of the equation and they would show up.

And, you know, the segment's called Change My Mind.

He would change their minds.

You would watch it live on camera.

He went,

he went on surrounded, you know, that show, like taking in all the questions.

He would go into any arena.

He did not care if if you didn't like him.

You know,

he trusted you, even if you didn't like him.

I don't think he thought he was putting his life on the line.

I mean, clearly we all have to factor that in on some level when you're a public figure and you do a public event.

But

I just

don't even know who the heir apparent is.

You know, God forbid that Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania.

You know, the obvious choice would have been J.D.

Vance.

Well, maybe not even because he hadn't named J.D.

yet.

But there were stars and are stars in the MAGA movement.

And God forbid anything happened to Trump now.

I think JD and Marco would be the two obvious most, you know,

next

likely.

But with Charlie, it's like, I don't know, Emily.

I'm not sure who could even pick up that mantle for him and have that same kind of influence.

You know, it's an interesting point.

And I wonder actually if he is his own, he created his own kind of heirs in the hundreds

by what he did, by

giving people the confidence to engage in debate.

And I'm seeing right here, Megan, from the New York Times, he was scheduled to debate Hassan Piker, who people sort of will say is like the left-wing Ben Shapiro or Charlie Kirk at Dartmouth on September 25th.

Charlie was actually going to debate him.

Hassan Piker on his Twitch live stream, quote, reacted to the news with horror, urging some of his followers to stop making jokes about the shooting.

And he expressed fear that he could be similarly targeted.

This is a terrifying incident, Piker said.

The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome.

And I know people will debate Hassan Piker's role in all of that in the days to come.

I know the Luigi Mangioni fandom on the left will be debated, rightfully so, in the days to come.

But everyone should be scared right now because it does feel like a seal has been broken into a different world.

I'm just looking at the New York Times headline here.

Charlie Kirk, right-wing activist, is fatally shot at Utah College.

A close ally of President Trump and one of the most influential young right-wing figures in the United States, Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking in front of a large crowd on a university campus.

He was 31.

It's

something to see it in writing.

You know, it's something to actually see it in writing.

Emily, he,

Turning Point, put out a montage not too long ago of Charlie's campus experiences and exchanges.

We want to run it now.

Take a look at it.

Here it is.

Can you tell me her greatest accomplishment?

No, I can't.

Can you tell me a single accomplishment?

I cannot.

I want to leave.

What is Kamala Harris's greatest accomplishment?

Could you please explain why, under a Trump presidency, it would be more beneficial to me than a Harris presidency?

I want to try to win you over as a liberal for Donald Trump.

Why should I vote for Trump?

There's no guesswork in this election.

We know the type of president that Trump was and that he will be.

There are three things I want you to think about when voting for Trump.

Home ownership, border, war.

Three objective things.

When I decide, just in case, can I have a hat?

You can have a hat.

So which way you lean it?

Can I get a hat?

That's a good answer.

How are you leaning this election?

Well, after what you said, Trump, let's go!

So fun,

so relatable, so non-threatening to those kids, you know?

I mean, somebody really got in his face, he'd mix it up fine.

But

nine times out of ten, those exchanges

showed Charlie being a gentleman, right?

Like, that's what's so remarkable about all those exchanges with him.

He would have fun with the audience.

His goal was to bring them in with love.

If he had to shame an occasional complete moron, he would do it.

But that was reserved for the extreme cases.

He was fun to talk to and actually made a difference.

He could speak to folks on their level without judging them.

You know, like you tell him, so many times he'd say, you tell me, like, what, what's your concern?

Why are you thinking about voting for Kamala?

Like, let me talk you out of it.

And he could, you know, he could.

I'm watching that exchange, and it just dawned on me.

You know, I'm going to miss talking to him.

I'm going to miss him as a guest on my show.

I don't quite have my arms around the fact that that's over, you know, that that's over by someone's intention.

It's not like a car accident.

It's not like an illness.

You know,

it was unnecessary.

And then I think, oh, God, why did he have to go there?

What if he had just canceled the Utah event?

You know, what if he and I had done our Virginia Tech event today instead?

You know, like,

why did it have to happen?

And it's just impossible to answer those questions as mere mortals, Emily.

Thank you for being here with us and for watching and for supporting.

And you know, we love you.

Thank you for coming on.

Thanks, Mike.

I'm praying for you and everyone involved.

Likewise.

We're going to turn now to Father Mike Schmitz.

You may know him from A Bible in the Year.

He's been on the program

before.

And our audience absolutely adores you, Father.

Thank you for being back, a Catholic priest based in Minneapolis or Minnesota

in Bozeman, right?

Yeah.

Thank you for being here so much.

Please help us understand.

Like, I, I don't know how to process it.

Yeah.

No, I first, I, uh, I know, I know that you and Charlie have spent time together.

And I was just my first thought when they just asked if I could be here.

I just was like, ah, I cannot, I can't imagine.

I imagine that Megan is going through it right now.

And so, I mean, I'm so many of so many people, so many of us.

But I know that particularly,

you have been in the trenches with him and you have had so many conversations that

probably off screen is as many or more than we've seen on screen.

And so just, yeah, know of not only my prayers for him and for his family, but also for you and for every other person who has loved him and has been touched by his life.

So just know that first of all.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

It's like, I don't know, is it a fool's errand to try to make sense of something like this?

Yes.

No.

I mean, that there's that sense of, I think your previous guest had pointed out, you know, that for Christians, this is,

we know that we live in a broken world and we know that we have this freedom to be able to do horrible, horrible things to each other.

And it's not what God wants.

And so to get to that point where we say,

what,

how do you make sense of this?

Is that

here is

here's what we believe.

I believe that God is good.

He made this world good.

But then simply put,

with our freedom, we chose to break the world and we continue to choose to break the world, even though God continues to break into it.

I mean, just think about Charlie's life as an example.

What is the example?

The example is that he had come to this place of knowledge of and faith in the goodness of God in a broken world.

And what is the symbol symbol of Christianity?

I mean, what's the symbol of Christianity?

As you might know, this weekend, this upcoming Sunday, we celebrate this thing called the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

And the symbol of Christianity, which actually is the symbol of the West, is what?

Is a cross.

And that sense of like the cross is a contradiction, right?

It's the contradiction.

And I think the Catechism says it like this.

It says, there's

no part of the passion of Christ, there's no part of his life, death, and resurrection that is not

in some way an attempt to, God's attempt to answer why suffering.

And so, and we have to know this, we have to know that that faith that Charlie had has in

that God, the God who has broken into this broken world,

doesn't take the pain away, doesn't take the grief away, doesn't take, doesn't undo his, his

tragic murder.

But hopefully in some ways, we can console him and his family by saying, okay, but I'm going to choose to trust in that God as well.

I know, in the same way, I was saying, there's no way Charlie would want a single pundit to hold back on their commentary now.

No way that he would certainly not want this to encourage a crisis of faith.

I mean, he absolutely would not want to see that.

And yet, you know, you just,

I feel so angry.

You know,

I was talking to my guests earlier, and my dear friend Mark Halbrin was saying, you know, we have to try to find a way to react in love, you know, and come together, like as a country, come together.

And I was just honest saying,

it makes perfect sense.

And I know he's right.

But right now, all I feel is deep anger.

And I know I'm not alone.

And how do you process that, right?

That's not a healthy emotion.

It's not something you should stay mired in.

It corrodes you from the inside.

And yet I know millions of people are feeling it.

Well, I think the anger is the proper response.

Really, when it comes down to it, anger is the proper response, that there is a time for everything.

And

grief as well as anger, there's time for acceptance and all those other pieces of moving forward.

But anger is the proper response.

I mean, to realize that this is, I mean, here, let's use Jesus as our example.

There were times when Jesus saw injustice, where Jesus saw evil, and he didn't like, oh, okay, you know, that's too bad.

He was angered.

I mean, there's times where people refused to reach out or refused to say it was good to reach out to help the helpless.

And it says very clearly in the scriptures, Jesus looked at them with anger.

And there's a piece of that that's like, okay, if I can look at evil and I can look at suffering, if I can look at death and senseless, tragic death, like two weeks ago, the shooting in Minneapolis and now the shooting in Utah, to be able to look at that and not experience anger is to have our metric off.

That's to have our barometer off.

That the proper human response to evil is anger, because I would say this, I would say, God's response to evil is anger.

And we say it in many ways.

How do we keep that away from us?

You know, how do we, I think, I look at my kids, I think, I want, I don't want these devils near them.

I don't want,

I don't want the devil near them.

I don't want evil coming for them.

You know, you and I talked, I've thought about it a million times, Father.

We talked when you were on about how does one get into heaven?

And is it just, you know, I'm a good person.

I'm, you know, do unto others.

And you said, no, it is not just that, you know, that Jesus, God, they expect you, God expects you to work to get in.

You have to be actively doing good deeds.

You have to actively be thinking about how to advance his word and live in harmony with him.

And

yes, I want to do all that.

Right now, I also want vengeance.

I'm not sure that's in line.

I really want to hurt whoever did it.

I want them to suffer.

Not sure that's in line.

And then I also want to do whatever I have to do, whatever I have to do to keep the devil away from the next one and certainly from all the people I love.

Yeah, and that's that's why anger can be a positive emotion.

Um, C.S.

Lewis writes about this.

He says that sometimes we look at anger or violence or fighting as the wrong thing.

No, we need to tamp that down.

Well, no, sometimes you need to fight for the right thing.

So when William Wilberforce saw slavery, He was angered by this, not merely grieved, but also angered.

And that grief, but also that anger, moved him to do positive things.

And so you and I know this.

We know that

anger indulged can become vengeance.

It also can become something even worse, which is resentment and bitterness.

And we know that,

so anger, I'll say it like this.

Anger is an active emotion.

Resentment is when things settle.

What I mean by that is

through anger.

You have to process anger.

And it can move, right?

Anger can move us to do good.

Anger can move us to say, this is wrong and I need to do something about this.

Like for you to be able to say, I need to go on the air and we need to talk about this so that others don't experience this, so that people know that they're not alone.

So we can rally and say, okay, you guys, how would Charlie want us to respond to this?

Like that, to use that anger to move forward, to do good, as opposed to, I always think of resentment as like anger is still the quicksand or it's like it's like concrete that is still, you can still move it.

But resentment is like when I set that, and now I've hardened my heart towards a certain group of people, towards a certain individual.

I've hardened my heart to the world.

I've hardened my heart to God.

So we can't afford to go into resentment, but we have to know how to choose what to do with our anger.

And so, your response of anger, it would be a defect of humanity to not experience

anger.

Well, then I'm human.

I'm definitely human.

I'll tell you, my priest just texted me and said in the closing, reminded me of the Gospel of John 1, 5, saying, light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

He was a light.

There's no question about that.

But man, there's a lot of darkness in the world right now.

That's for sure.

I have a feeling your pews are going to be even extra filled.

this Sunday, Father.

I know you always have a standing room only, but they're going to flock in in great numbers because I think Christians are hurting right now.

I think we're losing too many of ours, you know, like the kids in Minneapolis, now Charlie, like,

you know, we just, we don't want to see ours shut down for standing up for core Catholic beliefs, you know, like children aren't born in the wrong body and we shouldn't be divided by race.

These are very, very core, understandable, you know, non-controversial in a normal world beliefs.

Well, and also, what did Charlie say so many times?

He said,

Why does he go on campus?

Why did he go to Utah?

Why does he go to any campus?

He says, Because when people stop talking, then they start becoming violent.

And so, even the fact that he gave witness to the reality that we can fight, but we fight with debate over debate, or not over debate, we fight through debate, right?

We fight, with other words, we can argue.

And again, that's that sense of going back to this: that what would he say?

When we stop talking, then we devolve into

either we separate ourselves ourselves completely or

all we have is violence and and he did not want either of those two to be a reality and that's why I think it's really important again for your show to exist for us to continue to have our doors open in the church and to be able to say okay let's continue to engage these big questions because we have to stand for truth and we have to stand for people who

You know, when people, I mean, in the clip you just showed, people who changed their mind when Charlie went to a campus, a lot of times what he did was um he treated them with respect yes there are some times when there were some harsh words towards each other i mean just because that's a normal conversation we sometimes fall into but that sense of oh minds were changed because they didn't realize they didn't realize what they didn't know and and to be able to care enough for someone to

share something with them and help lead them so we believe as you know this in the corporal works of mercy that comes from matthew chapter 25 i was hungry you fed me i was naked and you clothed me there's also spiritual works of mercy and one of those spiritual works of mercy is instructing the ignorant or helping those who don't know come to know.

And yeah, Charlie did not stop trying to help people come to know.

And if they disagreed with him, what happened?

They walked away and everyone was still intact.

They walked away and they had a discussion and they were treated like a human being.

And that's a model to move forward.

I'll hold on to that.

Father, thank you.

Thank you so much for everything you do, not just for today.

Thanks, Megan.

Much love to you.

Praying for you.

Charlie tweeted out on Saturday, Jesus defeated death so you can live.

On Saturday, Jesus defeated death so you can live.

That's what he did.

That's what he wants us all to do.

That's what we will do.

There's no question we will go on and we will continue our messaging.

But it's going to hurt.

This one's going to hurt.

I told you about President Trump's statement.

Joe Biden, to his credit, also tweeted out: there is no place in our country for this kind of violence.

It must end now.

Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk's family and loved ones.

That's a sweet gesture.

Ben Shapiro, too, just tweeted something out.

He's been under threat, too.

Poor Ben.

It's ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Why?

Why does Ben have to have so many security guards?

You know, he came here to the studio

on Monday, I I think it was a week ago, Monday.

The poor guy has to walk around with so much security because why again?

Why?

Because

he comments on the news and says things people find controversial, all of which are mainstream opinions on the right

because he's a Jew who's outspoken in favor of Israel.

What?

This is where we're going.

This is what he wrote.

Like all of you, I'm utterly stunned and heartbroken and sick to my soul today.

It is unimaginable to write these words.

I met Charlie Kirk when he was 18 years old, a man, a young man, so eager and determined that I immediately turned to a friend and said, this kid is going to be the head of the RNC one day.

Charlie became even bigger and more important than that.

It was a privilege to watch the principled man stand up for his beliefs and create the single most important conservative political organization in America.

Totally right.

But more importantly, Charlie was a good man, a man who believed in right and wrong, who stood by his biblical values.

All of us will miss him, and I can't imagine the pain of his beautiful young family, and we must all pray for them.

And we must pick up the baton where Charlie left it, fighting for the things he believed in so passionately.

And we must fight for a better America, an America where good people can speak truth and debate passionately without fear of a bullet.

I weep for Charlie's family, and I weep for my country today.

Most of all,

I weep for Charlie.

It's hard.

It's really hard.

Everyone's feeling it.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump agree on very little things,

but on the loss of this great American patriot, they agree.

And speaking of great American patriots, the Vaik Ramaswamy joins us now.

He's running for governor of Ohio, and he also has been out on the trail with Charlie, who I know is a dear friend.

He's joining us by phone.

Vivek,

this is really rough, and I know it's rough on you personally.

How are you processing this?

I mean, we're devastated, Megan.

I'm in northwest Ohio.

I was traveling from my home in Columbus when we heard the news, but

we are devastated.

Just got off the phone with my wife.

I was with Charlie here just two weeks ago here in Ohio.

It actually wasn't something broadly broadcasted, but we had some one-on-one time together, had a real heart-to-heart conversation when he was here.

And

even two days ago, was talking to him like I'm talking to you now.

Spent a good part of the last year together, traveling the country, doing actually events like the one he was doing today, intense on college campuses.

And

it makes you about what did he do that was so wrong that earned him this fate.

It was to foster

open conversations with young people who were hungry to figure out what they believed.

And that's what he did.

And I think more than anybody else I know, I really mean it when I say this, I think more than anybody else I know.

He was committed to talking to people who disagreed with him.

To do it openly.

that was his ultimate sin, it turns out, in the twisted world we live in today.

And,

you know, God

blessed him with immense gifts that rarely

a person might have.

And what I love about Charlie is that he was not afraid to use those gifts

to do what he felt was right for his country.

He knew the risks he was taking.

I mean, he had two kids.

They're a a little younger than mine, two years apart, I think around three and one.

Yeah, worse kids' age.

And

he did it.

I mean, those kids are going to grow up without a great father.

They were

kids to a great father, a great man, a great American, and they're going to grow up without him.

But he took those risks for those kids so they could grow up in a country that he believed in.

Yeah, I was just talking about this.

I just was talking about this the other day.

On

it was Graham Linehan, you know, the Irish citizen who got arrested in the UK for tweets on the trans issue.

And he's paid a dear price for his own outspokenness on controversial issues.

And he said, not in the trite way, Vivek, but like in the way that really struck me.

He said, I speak up for my daughter because she can't.

And he meant more than just she's too young to really understand these issues and process them.

He meant there's fear and that our young people today really, they're not in a position like you are, like I am, like Charlie was,

to risk professional reputation or blowback or cancellation, what have you.

Yeah, but no one's factoring that in, right?

Like that's.

Even as a politician now, you know,

you must have seen your risk profile go up.

But do you really think your life is on the line when you're out there talking?

You know,

as a public figure, I've always known it's, you know, it's a risk, but it never really felt like a real one.

Not until, not until the last year.

Not until the last year.

But I think that we've taken a dark and twisted turn in the country where

this has become normalized.

If this were shocking, this would be bad enough if this were an event, Megan.

If this were utterly shocking, that none of us saw this coming, that alone would be horrific enough.

And yet the only thing more horrific is that actually

it's not that shocking.

Charlie saw it coming.

He talked about the culture of political assassination at a time where people thought he was hyperbolic for saying so.

And

ultimate

devastating irony, it was his clarity of vision that he ended up suffering the consequence of what he saw for our country.

Is it that surprising when you had two assassination attempts on our current U.S.

President, which in his case, thank God, he didn't suffer the same fate?

But I think the thing we got to

understand and wrap our head around here, I mean, I think today is, I mean, there's going to be a long conversation to go around how we turn around the policy, the culture, the environment in the country where we get back to the America you and I know and love, where we can talk to each other, disagree vehemently, have the space to disagree vehemently, but still do so with the confidence that we're going to do so safely and with mutual respect and dignity for human life.

We're going to get back there.

But, you know, today, just in this moment,

I mostly just want to remember

a great man who's, you know, born only so often as somebody with Charlie's talent and Charlie's gifts.

And in,

you know, 30 plus years, 31 years on this earth, he was able to, in a shorter time than most are given, accomplish more than most do.

And

I just pray for his kids that they're able to grow up.

I know they have a wonderful mother as well, who's one of the strongest people out there.

I can't only imagine what she's going through, but

I hope those kids grow up.

Yeah, I mean, imagine, and I don't know this for, for sure, Megan, but I mean, we have a lot of mutual friends and whatnot.

But from what I heard and understand, they were around there

today.

I mean, imagine what,

I mean, the kids are young.

They're 3-1, and I feel for them, but imagine her and what position she's in now having to raise those two kids.

And it wasn't just Charlie taking the risks.

He knew the risks he was taking, but his family knew it.

She knew it too.

And they did it together anyway, because they believed in doing their part, whether you agree with them or not.

They believed earnestly and in their deepest faith that they were doing their part to create that country for their kids

and today paid the price of an ultimate sacrifice that at least in Charlie's case,

he didn't discount that.

He wasn't blind to it.

He talked about it as a risk.

And, you know, today,

at least we should...

For our country, remember a great patriot who in many ways put his life on the line today, literally, to speak what he saw as true and good and virtuous and right for the nation he loved.

And I hope, for his sake and for ours, that his kids are able to grow up in a country that moves on from this sick culture of

violent retribution.

Let's just say at some point we're done with it.

And if it isn't now, I don't know when it'll ever be.

And so people like you are the

answer.

You're the answer.

You out there on the this is not a political ad.

This is not an, I'm not involved in the Ohio race.

It's, I've watched you.

When people disagreed with you on the campaign trail, you opened your door to them.

You walked over to them in friendship.

You extended a hand.

You wanted to hear them out.

You were kind.

You were loving.

You were gentle.

Like, what a model, Vivek.

You know, it's so hard to do when we're so divided and we're so angry at each other over these issues, which are important.

And when you are subjected to as many

negative press pieces and people harassing you on the campaign trail, it's even harder to find that within you.

But that's, you're kind of leading by example these days.

Well, you know, one of the few people we were able to do it with was Charlie.

We traveled the entire country, kind of tag teaming.

We had our own style.

You know, it was slightly different, but it was more fun that way.

And we would,

you know, we're kind of stylistic tag team around the country talking to these young young Americans and these young patriots and many of whom disagreed with us.

And he and I, I mean, we would ride a car together,

take a walk together, ride a plane together, and we'd joke around about different interactions.

And there's one case, he still was

one of his favorite people coming out of,

I forget which campus we were on.

It was somewhere in Pennsylvania.

And

it was some girl with dyed hair who was screaming at him, who he still loved the interaction that he had with her.

He was able to joke around about it and still care about having one country left at the end of it.

And,

you know, there weren't that many of us, there aren't that many of us, Megan, who were willing to do that.

And I think we lost one of our greats today.

And as sad as I am for Charlie, I'm even sadder for his family and I'm sadder still for our country, that this is where we are.

And I don't think that we can just, you know, say the usual pieties and then move on and behave the same way tomorrow i think there's going to be

i feel it right now i feel it i mean there's there's a there's a choice in how we react to this

and you know there's a side of me most of me now that's furious that's angry yeah

but i think that there's also an element in all of us that hopes that we're we're just done with this we're moving on past this dark chapter in our history we've gone we've gone like what what, a 12 and a half month period now?

12 month period where we've had two assassination attempts on a president.

Now, we've taken out one of the most important figures in the political youth movement, let alone in the conservative movement.

Enough.

We're done with this.

And I do think that

we would be justified, perhaps, in a short-term sense in,

you know,

adopting

the kind of

rhetoric that Charlie was himself the subject of, that who knows what the circumstances here, we don't have the facts, but you could imagine at least would motivate someone to act in a horrific way.

But, you know, I think the best of what Charlie was trying to do and the best of what I hope we can do for our country aspires to more than just fighting

fire with fire.

I hope we can fight fire with water, which might be the harder thing to do.

Yeah, well said.

I mean, you talk about what a consequential figure he became.

I'm just watching my producer, Text Chain, here, which has got all the latest news.

Joe Biden has weighed in.

Donald Trump has weighed in.

Donald Trump has ordered the flags to half staff

in memoriam of Charlie.

I mean, I don't remember the last time.

And here's a picture of the White House.

flag atop the White House at half staff now by orders of the president.

We'll be lowering ours momentarily.

I don't remember the last time we've done that for a civilian, not a world leader.

He'll do it sometimes in the wake of mass shootings, but for an individual, it's, I think, rare.

Barack Obama, too, now weighing in

as follows.

We don't yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.

Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie's family tonight, especially his wife Erica, and their two young children.

That's what we need.

I say bravo to Barack Obama and to Joe Biden and to Donald Trump who understand Vivek in these moments.

You know, there's something bigger happening.

There's something really profound afoot today that's more than partisan bickering, even though we're angry, even though we want vengeance against the man who did it.

Like

we, the good, the truly good, like

in our hearts and our souls, good Americans have to unite in standing against this sort of political violence.

Even if we're going to fight about the political issues the very next day, those people who understand how vile this is and who are able to check their politics and hold hands in solidarity against this must do it.

And that's why I accept those hands of friendship.

That's who we are.

Stand with us.

That's who we are.

That's who we are as a people.

It's who we've been.

We've lost our way, but it doesn't have to stay that way.

And

I would never wish for a tragedy like this to be what's required to wake us up.

But

if a tragedy and for me it's not just a national tragedy it's a loss of a friend and somebody who's just personally really dear to me

let something come for the country that he fought for and he wasn't just a civilian he was more than that and i think we can

we can honor him and we can honor

honestly our country the truth of our country as opposed to this alternative

bastardized version of it that we've suffered for this short period of our history we've been in.

We can revive our true country by being a place where, yeah, look, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, yourself, myself, and everyone in between can agree that we're a place where we respect life, where we respect the lives and the dignity of our fellow citizens and our neighbors, that we can disagree like hell at times and still, ideally, we'll get together at the dinner table at the end of it and call ourselves still citizens of the greatest nation known to the history of mankind.

That's who we are.

That's what Charlie Kirk saw.

And I hope that is what his life and now tragically his death can cause us to pause and remember and revive.

And that's the best we can do today.

So anyway, Megan,

thanks for doing what you're doing.

And I know it's not easy for you either.

I tried to resist your

none of us are doing well.

Like we're all letting it hang out.

So it's thank you for joining.

I know it's a challenge, and I really appreciate it.

Vivek, all my love to you.

Take care.

Thank you, Megan.

You know, one of the things I loved about

Charlie,

in addition to everything else that we've discussed, was that in it, he was more than just somebody who would comment, still getting used to the past tense, on the news and you know, articulate his viewpoints and my own, for that matter, on so many issues so effectively and compellingly.

But he also wasn't afraid to talk about

life

and relationships and

a man and a woman and how to be a good dad, like all those things.

He knew that his viewpoints were important, that his opinions on those things mattered to young people listening to him.

And he did not waste that opportunity.

You know, when he was on, was it two weeks ago?

It was very recently, I played for him a clip that I had seen of him online that I loved.

I love, love, love, love, love.

He went on this smaller podcast and something about coffee in the morning.

I can't remember, but forgive me, those guys.

I did say it on the show.

And they got into the subject of paying on the first date and who should pay.

And we re-queued it up.

Here it is.

Women want to be able, they want to be taken care of.

I know this is like super provocative, but like deep down, they want a man to be able to provide for them financially should a man pay on the first a hundred percent like what kind of a wush beta male is splitting the check but like who are you it's like i'm just sorry it's

i would just go and go debt and like

scrub dishes before a woman

i split the check quite a lot so i'm sorry i don't mean to offend you you guys are great i that's incomprehensible to me i think that's to me i thought it was a great financial decision i've just okay so from your prism i totally get that and like you have really good financial discipline I'm sorry.

Like,

I would be so humiliated if I did.

I do.

No, no, no.

I mean, I find that to be like the greatest beta male, like, humiliation.

Save money?

No, no, to like the idea that a woman that you're trying to court now, if it's like a friend of face or as a first date, you don't even know if it's just like quality.

It's just not mad.

I'm sorry.

By the way, that money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise.

See, it is such a big deal.

It's a massive deal.

The money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise.

What a gem.

How does he come up with that stuff?

It was more than two weeks ago.

It was September, sorry, August 6th.

And at that point, he had just a little over a month left to live

when we played that on my show and we laughed about it together.

You know,

none of us knows how long we have.

You lose friends, you lose family.

It happens in slow, gradual ways, and it can happen suddenly and in horrific ways.

And I always come back to the same place, and you guys have heard me say it, you know, the things that really matter in your life are within 15 feet of you.

And those are the things that you should lean into.

And those are the things that Charlie leaned into too.

He loved getting out there on the road and going to college campuses.

He loved coming on camera.

He loved debating with people.

He loved coming on our show and doing his show and doing the turning point events, which are so special and so influential and important.

But he loved his family more than anything.

He loved God.

And that's what we should need to do.

That's all we should do tonight.

Lower your flag to have staff.

Doug just texted me.

Ours is down already.

And hug your children and hug your spouse.

And go to church this weekend, or temple, or synagogue, synagogue or mosque, whatever you do.

Say prayer for everyone who's suffering because of Charlie's death, especially his family.

And then we must move forward with priorities in place, with

love front and center in our lives and connection and not too much time away from those who matter to us, right?

Like

have the family dinner.

Move things around to make it happen.

Don't prioritize only your work.

Make sure sure that valve gets

some liquid in it, you know?

Fill up all of these valves.

And

then move forward.

You can't

live in fear.

He wouldn't have wanted that.

He certainly didn't do that.

You can't allow yourself to be consumed by anger.

As Father Mike Schmidt said, anger is appropriate and we will feel it.

It is righteous anger.

But you can't stay mired in it for too long or you cannot function.

You know,

I said to my my daughter, I've said to my daughter, who's, of course, very empathetic because she's a teenage girl, when other things happen,

don't take on every upset as your own.

You know, don't take on every tragedy that you see in the news or around you as

if it's personal, because it'll break your heart.

Well, our hearts are broken right now.

And for some of us, and many of us, it does feel personal, this loss.

So we need a time to grieve, and we need a time then to feel really angry.

And then we need to move through those emotions and do something about it.

Not violence, not ruining any commentator's life.

You know, for what it's worth, I know Van Jones a little.

And I told you before I wasn't blaming Van Jones and talking about that sound, but I was trying to set the stage for what Charlie was doing this week.

He's devastated too.

Van's a good man.

He's devastated too.

So in any event,

but the perpetrator should be held to account to the fullest extent possible under the law.

And then we must take an honest look at what motivated him, assuming it was him.

What was it?

Was it just some nutcase?

If it was a nutcase, we are not going to skip by yet another tragedy without institutionalization.

I will go, I pledge to go to the White House myself and talk directly to the president about it.

I promise you, that's what I will do.

But what is it?

We need to know what it is.

And to know what it is, we need to catch the person.

So it's all hands on deck.

If you know anything, if you have any reason to believe it's someone you may know or you've heard something or you're in Utah, we have a lot of fans out there, contact the FBI.

I have no doubt the Cash Battalion Dan Bongino will be all over this.

We need to catch the person and we need to find the motivation.

We need to punish the person and we need to punish the people who created the motivation,

the circumstances that led this person to think he probably could walk into an arena and take the innocent life of a good and decent man.

That's it.

I'll give you the last news update before we sign off.

Utah Valley University officials encouraged students who are still on campus or who had taken shelter in university buildings after the shooting to call for a police escort.

Quote, police will come and escort you out of the building, wrote the university on social media.

The kids there are still not safe.

They don't know who committed this crime, and we must know.

And I have faith in the law enforcement to find out.

God bless all of you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for making the show possible.

Thank you for loving us.

And really, thank you for loving us and making me feel loved and

valued in this job that I do.

I know Charlie felt that too.

Gratitude toward his audience for giving him an extraordinary life.

Viveka's right.

What he did in 31 years so far surpasses what most people accomplish in a full and lengthy lifetime.

Something about which his family can be very proud.

I'm sure his mother, I didn't realize his mom was still around, but it makes sense he's young, can be very proud.

And when his kids are old enough, they will get to know their father, as Emily points out through videos.

and through the rest of us who will make sure that he goes on living.

That's how all of our loved ones go on living through our memories and when we share them.

All my love to all of you, all my gratitude as well.

We'll see you again tomorrow on the Megan Kelly Show.

Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

No BS, no agenda, and no fear.