The Ben Shapiro Show - UNTHINKABLE: Charlie Kirk, 31, Assassinated

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Sept. 11, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:44

UNTHINKABLE: Charlie Kirk, 31, Assassinated

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	My friend Charlie Kirk yesterday was gunned down in Cobla, dead at the age of 31.
	And you know, it's incredibly difficult to broadcast on days like this to talk about this.
	We talked about it yesterday, live as the aftermath was happening.
	It's truly horrifying in every possible way for it to be horrifying.
	It's horrifying for the country.
	It's horrifying for people who knew Charlie.
	It's horrifying mostly for his family.
	And of course, you know, the there's nothing to say about the horror for Charlie himself.
	Charlie was a religious person, which means that he's with the Lord now.
	He's with God right now.
	But for the rest of us who have to deal with the fallout and who have to witness the pain left behind, it is truly horrific.
	I'm I'm gonna read you what I wrote on Twitter yesterday about Charlie.
	I wrote, like all of you, I'm utterly stunned and heartbroken and sick to my soul today.
	It's unimaginable to write these words.
	I met Charlie Kirk when he was 18 years old, a young man so eager and determined.
	I immediately turned to a friend and said that kid is gonna be the head of the RNC one day.
	Charlie became even bigger and more important than that.
	It was a privilege to watch this principled man stand up for his beliefs and create the single most important conservative political organization in America.
	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.
	I can't imagine the pain of his beautiful young family.
	We must all pray for them.
	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 in 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.
	The horror of the videos, which we are not going to show, because Charlie should never be remembered the way that his killer would like for him to be remembered as a victim of a bullet.
	He should be remembered as fully alive as he was.
	I'm not sure I've ever known a more energetic human being than Charlie Kirk.
	As I say in that post I met Charlie when he was 18 years old.
	I was working at the David Horwitz Freedom Center at the time.
	I was 28.
	Charlie was 18, and he was walking around, meeting with donors, trying to gin up support for an organization, a little organization called Turning Point.
	And I remember, as I say, turning to Jeremy Boring and saying to Jeremy, that kid's gonna be the head of the RNC because Charlie's energy was infectious.
	And one of the things that that I saw in Charlie that was really amazing is how much better he got at things over time.
	When you watch somebody progress from an 18-year-old high school graduate, I mean never went to college, to become one of the most important political figures in America, the creator of the most important political organization by all rights in the country.
	You get to watch somebody develop.
	And I watched as Charlie got better at everything.
	He was an autodidact.
	He is somebody who taught himself how to become a great speaker.
	I'm not sure that Charlie was naturally a great speaker.
	He became a great speaker.
	I'm not sure that Charlie was naturally an amazing debater.
	He became an amazing debater.
	Charlie was always very good at fundraising.
	He became the best fundraiser literally in the country.
	He went from an activist to an activist leader, somebody who inspired literally millions of people across the country.
	They're legitimately tens of millions of young people today who are in mourning because they feel like they knew Charlie, or they did know Charlie.
	One of the amazing things about Charlie as a human is because Charlie was so energetic, because he was so garrulous and outgoing.
	Everyone I know was friends with Charlie.
	And that doesn't mean we're all close friends with Charlie.
	And I knew Charlie for 13 years, and obviously he had his close circle of friends.
	And you would never want to put yourself, you know, in that category unless you actually were.
	But Charlie was friendly with everyone.
	He was energetic with everyone.
	There's not a person who interacted with Charlie who came away not liking Charlie as as a human being.
	I mean, his energy was so infectious, it was it was exhausting at times.
	And more than that, he just never stopped.
	And he never stopped because he cared deeply about the country.
	He cared deeply about the fundamental principles of the country.
	And he tried to enact that in his daily life every single day.
	That's why he was on a college campus in Utah when he was shot to death at 1210 PM Utah time yesterday.
	He was doing the thing that made him famous.
	He was talking to people who disagreed.
	I mean, Charlie did a thing that I think is wonderful.
	He would always tell people who disagree to go to the front of the line, so that he could have conversations and discussions.
	This is the video of Charlie just a few minutes before he was shy.
	You can see the joy at this event.
	There were 3,000 people in this outdoor space.
	He's throwing hats to them.
	Everybody's excited to be there.
	Everybody's smiling.
	Everybody's having a great time.
	Charlie built this organization ground up.
	His seminal figure in the American conservative movement, in the Trump MAGA movement, for sure.
	And it was shortly thereafter that he was sitting there.
	He was asked a question about trans shooters.
	And as he picked up the microphone to answer, he was shot in the neck.
	It's pretty clear, again, we're not going to show the video here because nobody should truly, nobody should watch the video.
	It is horrifying in the extreme.
	And it is, I think, an element of our infectiously evil social media apparatus that people watch this, they become inured to it, they glorify it.
	We'll get to that in in a little bit on the show.
	Something terrible is happening in the country.
	Truly terrible is happening in the country.
	A wave of violence, a true wave of violence.
	We've seen it before.
	We've seen it happen in the 60s and in the 70s.
	And honestly, I didn't think that we were here.
	We've obviously seen violence.
	We've seen the congressional baseball shooting.
	We've seen twice people attempt to assassinate President Trump.
	We've seen the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. We've seen the murder of the United Healthcare CEO on the streets of New York celebrated by people over in the blue sky left.
	But I didn't think we were here.
	One of the things that I've been grappling with, obviously, on a sort of personal level, aside from knowing Charlie and believing that Charlie was a wonderful human being, is the fact that for 10 years, more than that, I went to college campuses, did the same thing that Charlie did.
	And I always said to my wife and the people around me, they would say, well, you know, is it safe?
	And I'd say, of course it's safe.
	This is America.
	And sure, security would tell you to put on a bulletproof vest, but do you need a bulletproof vest to speak freely in America?
	Do you need hundreds of- I always thought it was overkill.
	I always thought it was overkill.
	I do not think it's overkill anymore.
	I think that we've entered into a new world, a world where huge percentages of the American public by the polling are okay with violence against one another based on speech.
	Where excuses are made, permission structures are created for murder because you disagree with the political position of another human being.
	I'm not sure how we get back, except by appeal to the exact values that Charlie stood for.
	Open debate, normal discussion.
	The thing about all the videos of Charlie is he's unfailingly polite in these videos to people.
	When he is having these discussions, he is polite.
	He was having polite, normal conversations with people who disagreed on these college campuses.
	And for that, he was murdered.
	For that he was shot down at the age of 31 with a young wife and two extremely young kids.
	He has a daughter aged three and a son aged one.
	President Trump announced Charlie's death yesterday.
	I mean, this is one of those moments in American history where, especially if you knew Charlie, but even if you didn't, you're going to remember where you were when you found out that Charlie Kirk had been murdered by a gunman.
	I was at lunch with somebody, and I mean, it stopped us cold.
	There's nothing to be said.
	It's it's honestly.
	I'm very as a human being, I'm very rarely at a loss for words.
	I'm I'm at a loss for words now.
	President Trump put out a statement.
	The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.
	No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States better than Charlie.
	He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now he's no longer with us.
	Milani and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erica and family.
	Charlie, we love you.
	It's unthinkable.
	It's truly unthinkable.
	31 years old.
	And what he accomplished in his 31 precious years of life on this planet, unmatched by virtually anyone in the history of modern American politics, as we will get to as we pay tribute to Charlie today.
	President Trump announced that the American flag would be lowered across the country at all federal properties to half half massed until Sunday evening at 6 p.m.
	The White House flag last night was lowered in honor of Charlie Kirk.
	It is unthinkable to talk about Charlie in the past tense.
	It truly is.
	President Trump last night made a statement from the Oval Office, which will play in its entirety.
	Here is the president of the United States talking about the murder.
	It wasn't just the death, it's just a tragic death.
	It was an overt act of assassination against Charlie Kirk, directed at the mechanisms of free speech in America.
	That's what this was.
	Charlie is by all by all rights a free speech martyr.
	He literally was killed for having discussions with people who disagreed with him.
	He was murdered for that.
	He was murdered for doing the thing that makes America unbelievable and different from virtually every other country on earth for having the discussions that allow us to achieve some semblance of truth that allow us to conduct ourselves as fellow citizens.
	And for that, he was shot in the neck and murdered in legitimately the prime of his life.
	Here's the president of the United States last night.
	To my great fellow Americans, I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah.
	Charlie inspired millions, and tonight all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror.
	Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and the country that he loved so much, the United States of America.
	He fought for liberty, democracy, justice, and the American people.
	He's a martyr for truth and freedom.
	And there has never been anyone who was so respected by youth.
	Charlie was also a man of deep, deep faith.
	And we take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at peace with God in heaven.
	Our prayers are with his wife, Erica, the two young, beloved children and his entire family who he loved more than anything in the world.
	We ask God to watch over them in this terrible hour of heartache and pain.
	This is a dark moment for America.
	Charlie Kirk traveled the nation joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good faith debate.
	His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever.
	To share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense.
	On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace.
	It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
	For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
	This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
	My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.
	From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others.
	Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.
	Tonight I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died, the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.
	Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country.
	An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his Message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.
	Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before.
	And it's not even close.
	May God bless his memory.
	May God watch over his family.
	And may God bless the United States of America.
	Thank you.
	And we'll get to the ideology of the alleged shooter in a moment.
	The shooter at this moment has not yet been found, but we do have some evidence on that.
	President Trump has announced that he will posthumously award Charlie the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award that Charlie should have earned five decades from now, after maybe being president himself.
	I mean, this is just it's yeah.
	Here's here's the president of the United States.
	Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people.
	Our prayers are with his wonderful wife Eric and his beautiful children.
	Fantastic people they are.
	We miss him greatly, yet I have no doubt that Charlie's voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people Especially young people, will live on.
	I'm pleased to announce that I will soon be awarding Charlie Kirk posthumously the presidential medal of freedom.
	The date of the ceremony will be announced, and I can only guarantee you one thing that we will have a very big crowd.
	Just um absolutely horrifying.
	I mean, well deserved for Charlie Kirk, that presidential medal of freedom.
	J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, who's very close with Charlie, put out a tweet as well in honor of Charlie, praising him for his emphasis on dialogue.
	The Vice President of the United States said, if you actually watch Charlie's events, as opposed to the fake summaries, they are one of the few places with open and honest dialogue between left and right who would answer any question and talk to everyone, which of course is true.
	Yankee Stadium last night held a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk, which I thought was quite beautiful.
	Here's what it looked like at Yankee Stadium last night.
	The two children is 31 years old.
	The two children is 31 years old.
	Again, well, well deserved.
	Meanwhile, the manhunt continues yesterday.
	Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced it was a political assassination, which of course you knew the moment that the bullet hit Charlie.
	The moment the shot was fired.
	Of course it was a political assassination.
	It was not.
	Just a murder.
	It was it was clearly politically oriented.
	Charlie Kirk was murdered.
	He was killed by a subhuman piece of debris for the great crime of speaking truth in debate.
	That is why he was killed.
	Here was Spencer Cox, the Utah governor.
	This is a dark day for our state.
	It's a tragic day for our nation.
	And I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination.
	Thank you.
	Well, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting based on original reporting via Stephen Crowder.
	Stephen texted me this morning because Stephen and I go a long way back when it comes to campus events.
	Actually, it was an event at Utah University of Utah back in, I believe 2017, where Stephen and his team actually infiltrated the Antifa crowd and found weapons among them.
	There were 300 protesters outside that particular event.
	There were several arrests made at that event.
	Stephen reminded me this morning that he actually found a an Antifa protester who had brought a sought-off shotgun.
	This has been a serious problem for a while.
	Again, you know, for those of us who do this sort of thing on the regular, you tell yourself that this can't happen in America.
	This is not a thing that happens in America.
	You don't get shot for saying things in America.
	That's not an American.
	It's the it's the essence of anti-Americanism, the essence of it.
	Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, investigators found the ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and anti-fascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk that was first reported again by Stephen, who deserves the credit for the breaking news.
	He had gotten a piece of leaked information from the ATF.
	The older model, 30 caliber hunting rifle, which By expert testimony is essentially what people thought it was because it didn't sound like an AR, was discovered in the woods near the scene of Wednesday shooting at Utah Valley University, wrapped in a towel with the spent cartridge still in the chamber.
	There are also three unspent rounds in the magazine, all with wording on them, which has become a traditional mode of communication for some of the world's worst human beings is to engrave the cartridges of the bullets with political statements.
	Here is law enforcement announcing the finding of the rifle.
	We have recovered what we believe is the weapon that was used in yesterday's shooting.
	It is a high-powered bolt-action rifle.
	all.
	That rifle was requivered in a wooded area where the shooter had fled.
	And again, the bullets were apparently engraved with transgender and antifa writing.
	The violence that is growing upon our nation is enabled by a permission structure that says that your political opponents are not just your opponents, they are your enemies, that they are a threat to you personally, that their views are a threat to you personally.
	The ideology of the shooter, if this report is correct, rooted in the basic idea that has been promoted for literally a decade, that if you say a man is not a woman, that you are engaged in eliminationist erature, a form of genocide, results in a permission structure for murder.
	That is what it does.
	In the same way that there has been a permission structure created by many on the left that suggests that healthcare CEO is about to be shot on the streets of New York, and that the shooter Luigi Mangion was some sort of righteous martyr against the capitalist system.
	In my book, I have a whole section about violence performed by what I call the scavengers, people who seek to tear down the person who shot Charlie Kirk, is the worst that humanity has to offer.
	The worst that somebody who wished to destroy the fundamental institutions of free speech, the fundamental basis of the country.
	That is what this person was.
	And the people who do this sort of thing, they do so because they believe that they are acting righteously.
	They believe that they are acting in order to destroy those who, in fact, are somehow after them.
	That that is that is the way they excuse this.
	And anyone who makes excuses for this sort of stuff is making it significantly more common.
	One of the things that I write in the book is that the philosophy of the scavenger says your grievances are justified.
	You're the center around which the rest of the universe turns.
	If you suffer, you suffer unjustly.
	If you suffer unjustly, that must be the result of systems designed purposefully by a cadre of others.
	The only way to fight the great conspiracy against you, say the scavengers, is to seize power.
	Once you have power, you can destroy the great conspiracy and free yourself and those who fight alongside you.
	All you require is power.
	And power requires violence.
	Violence is the corrective.
	The philosophy of the scavenger, I say, is a variety of phantom conspiracies.
	The racialist conspiracy theory of a dominant white supremacist superstructure in the United States, or the Marxist conspiracy theory of an economic elite seeking to rig the economy to the detriment of the working class, or the transgressive conspiracy theory of a heteronormative society using its power to fascistically enforce traditional sexual mores.
	The international conspiracy theory of a settler-colonialist West using its power to promote its ethnocentric ideology.
	Every conspiracy theory carries with it the implicit promise of violent opposition deemed morally praiseworthy by the conspiracists.
	And that's what this is.
	That's what this is.
	It is growing, it has been enabled, it has been massaged, it has been championed by major figures.
	And when you add in the sickness of social media, where people who are naturally predisposed to violence, people with dark triad personalities find each other and find common cause and pat each other on the back and boost each other up to do murder, you will get more murder.
	You will.
	The reaction to Charlie on social media in particular is a reminder of a sickness growing inside of our nation.
	A true sickness growing inside our nation.
	Blue sky accounts were celebrating Charlie's death yesterday, celebrating it outright.
	Yesterday, when I was broadcasting live, I saidn't want to bring that to you because it's fringe.
	But the truth is that fringe is dangerous.
	And the broader permission structures that allow that fringe to grow and to marinate.
	That is making our country unlivable, truly unlivable.
	It is making it so that you cannot walk in public if you have a strong political point of view publicly expressed.
	It is making it so that people require 24-7 security for them and for their children.
	That Charlie Kirk, even with six security people, can still be murdered in cold blood in front of the entire world.
	And then snuff films of his murder passed around the internet like candy.
	Blue sky is replete, not just with celebration today, but of people calling for more of this against anyone on the right that they deem to be part of the conspiracy theory against them.
	TikTokers yesterday were celebrating Charlie's death.
	I mean, here's here's what some of these TikTokers the only reason to play this is just to show you a sickness growing, a cancer that is growing inside our nation.
	And it's not enough, as we're going to talk about in a minute, for Democrats or even Republicans to just say we need to lower it with the violent rhetoric.
	It's not just about that.
	It's about creating thought structures that give permission for murder.
	And here's what it looked like on TikTok yesterday.
	TikTok People celebrating.
	Thumbs up.
	Happy smiles.
	People cheering.
	And the only reason you do this is because you will receive plaudits for it.
	The only reason you do this is because you believe people will celebrate you for doing this.
	That you will get likes and clicks.
	And this is being exacerbated.
	Yes.
	Yes, it is being exacerbated by people who do the systematic algorithmic tweaking on TikTok and X and Blue Sky.
	Yes, it is.
	Facebook accounts were celebrating Charlie's death yesterday.
	On Telegram, people were celebrating Charlie's death yesterday.
	There is a sickness that is growing in our nation.
	A true sickness.
	And that sickness needs to be extirpated.
	It needs to be extirpated.
	I want to go more into that, but I want to draw back, and I want to talk about my friend Charlie Kirk, because I think that truly, in order to understand what the world lost yesterday, you have to understand who Charlie was.
	And I've said this many times on the program before.
	To be a great man very often just means you have an impact on the world, that you change people's lives, that you create structures that make the world a better place.
	To be a good man requires you to put yourself last and your family first, to believe in the promises of the Bible and its values, to believe that there is a good and there is a bad.
	This is, and that's what Charlie was.
	Charlie was a good man.
	Charlie was a good man.
	And I think as he got older, Charlie focused more and more on being a good man.
	Again, he's a husband with two babies, three, one.
	As a father of four with very small children, I cannot even imagine.
	I cannot even imagine the feelings of Erica today, or the children that you will have to raise without their father there.
	And all the words that we tell ourselves about how Charlie died for something meaningful, which is obviously true, isn't going to replace him in their lives.
	It isn't going to fill that hole because nothing can.
	July 27th, 2025, Charlie tweeted, quote, get married, have kids, stop partying into oblivion, leave a legacy, be courageous.
	Happy Sunday.
	God bless all the parents out there.
	And I think that that's what overall, that's really what Charlie was at the end of the day.
	Yes, obviously, he's a public figure.
	A hugely important public figure, a transformative public figure, particularly for young people.
	Transformative in allowing them to open their minds about politics and consider things from a different point of view.
	But what he Really was is this video of Charlie with his daughter on the Fox set.
	Fox and Friend set.
	This is just a few weeks ago.
	His very small three-year-old daughter running to daddy to give him a hug.
	Here's the footage.
	That is not that.
	I have kids this age.
	I know what this is like to feel this.
	I know what it's like when you, you know, get home from speaking at a university or speaking in a very fraught place and hug your children.
	And the fact that Charlie won't be able, he won't be there to hug his children.
	Is a sin.
	It is a satanic act, truly satanic.
	Here is Charlie reflecting on his career with George Janko, which I think is again.
	Charlie was a good man, and his goodness came out when he spoke.
	You know what I would love?
	I would love to be a very popular radio host, podcast host, great father, great husband, and live a very happy life where I can run a major organization that influences the country, and I could pick up the phone of the president answers on the first ring.
	That would be awesome.
	But I feel like you're doing that right now.
	So maybe I'm living the life of the thing.
	What Charlie will be known for through the clips for an entire generation of people is, of course, the exact debate that he was doing when he was struck down in cold blood by a murderer's bullet.
	Debating issues that really matter.
	Here, for example, is Charlie debating some of these students at again, one of his events, asking, you know, talking about marriage and family.
	These again are traditional, normal conservative values.
	And don't believe a media that tries to sell you soap about how Charlie was some sort of extremist.
	It wouldn't matter if he were, you don't get to murder people for having extreme views in the United States.
	That's not an American.
	But Charlie wasn't even that.
	Charlie was a mainstream normie conservative who believed traditional American things about family and about liberty, about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
	And he said these things in public and he debated these things openly, and for that a murderer killed him.
	And that is a turning point for the United States.
	That is a turning point for the United States.
	We can turn it for good or we can turn it for ill.
	Here is the kind of thing that made Charlie Kirk famous.
	Here he was talking about marriage and family with a with a student in the audience.
	If you want to have a privileged life in America, very simple.
	Why do we what do you mean act a certain way?
	Get married to one person and stay married to that person and don't abandon them of what 75% of black men do.
	So, okay, we have two black men right here.
	By that statistics, one of us is not gonna get married to one woman.
	So I hope you guys defy the odds.
	Okay, so D. Were you raised by a two?
	Were you raised by two parents?
	Yes, I was.
	Okay, good.
	And that's why you are probably here, because that elevates my argument.
	Our belief system is that you come down to the most foundational family unit.
	And when that breaks down so severely, don't be shocked if that group, when it acts that way, stays in poverty over a longer period of time.
	Again, it's this sort of thing that made Charlie a phenomenon.
	Charlie, again, I watched him over his career.
	He got so good at this.
	When he started off, he had kind of a strangely awkward persona, and he turned himself into an incredibly charismatic speaker, a terrific debater.
	Here he was debating college students about the trans issue.
	An issue that may very well have gotten him killed, speaking the truth about basic human nature.
	Basic, the most the most basic.
	What is a woman?
	What is a that's a stupid question?
	That's a dumb question.
	It can't answer what a woman is.
	It's not a trick question.
	What is a woman?
	What is that thing?
	You can't answer the question with the question.
	Define woman without saying woman.
	It's a social soul.
	What is a woman?
	This is not a trick question, everybody.
	You're in college paying for an education.
	What is a woman?
	You don't need media training.
	It's not a trick.
	What is a woman?
	You can't answer the question with the whole thing.
	What is a man?
	The college kids of America going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt who think it's a trick question when you ask them what a woman is.
	The college kids of America are a lot of people who think it's a trick question.
	The world lost something in Charlie for sure.
	Here he was debating students about abortion.
	If you killed a baby, that's murder.
	But killing a fetus isn't murder.
	What species is the fetus?
	Human.
	Then how is it not murder?
	Because it hasn't been born yet.
	Why does that make it human?
	Because that's when like it's not dependent on the mom, and it can be like its own thing.
	If you have a pacemaker, you're a dependent.
	If you have a ventilator, you're a dependent.
	Babies are in NICU units, neonatal intensive care units, they're dependent.
	Dependency does not equal its degree of moral worth.
	And so I need to understand the moral consistency.
	Here is a baby at 31 weeks that can survive outside of the womb.
	It has its own brain waves, its own consciousness, its own heartbeat, its own ability to clean its bladder.
	How is that not a human being?
	It just happens to be in a mom.
	Because it hasn't come out yet.
	It's still living in the mom.
	It's still part of the mom.
	Right, but it's living.
	It has a heart.
	If it's not living, how does it have a heartbeat?
	Because a fetus is like a parasite.
	It lives off the mom.
	You think babies are parasites.
	Fetuses.
	Right, but a fetus literally is just a word for a human being.
	It's a stage of development.
	Before it's born.
	Right, but have you ever been to a fetus shower?
	Why do they call it a baby shower, not a fetus shower?
	Well, yes, it's a baby, but it depends on what the mother was.
	Oh, so it is a baby, not a fetus.
	Got it.
	Again, Charlie got really, really good at this.
	One of his best debates recently, he spoke at Oxford on DEI.
	He was terrific.
	Even though America's constitution explicitly forbids racial discrimination, our government ordered people to do it anyway.
	People were denied jobs and denied promotions.
	Kids were shut out of universities based on the color of their skin rather than their ability.
	Companies were denied federal contracts because their owners didn't look a certain way.
	People who didn't discriminate enough in hiring could be sued by the government.
	Every company in America lived in fear of their government deciding to target them for offenses against DEI.
	Trump has ordered DEI to be torn down.
	But I want him to tear it down faster.
	I want every university told that they're losing all federal dollars immediately if they don't stop racial discrimination.
	I want the Department of Justice to start auditing, auditing every federal contractor to find DEI and shut off contracts immediately wherever we find it.
	This is a kind of cancer that cannot be phased out.
	It must be ripped out from the core.
	And of course, Charlie wasn't just an individual.
	He built an incredibly powerful organization.
	CPUSA, when it first started, might have had a budget of a million bucks.
	I believe that they raised 130 million dollars last year.
	One of the most powerful political organizations in America.
	Not just with these gigantic campus events.
	And they were gigantic.
	And I've spoken at a bunch of TP USA events.
	You're talking about like stadium-filling events.
	Charlie could get out of crowd, his organization could get out of crowd like no one else in America.
	Here, for example, is a TPUSA event at Texas AM.
	This is from April.
	Is this kind of crowd?
	is this kind of thing from Charlie's TPUSA.
	Again, This is the organization that Charlie built from scratch.
	And of course, Charlie had a truly massive impact on election 2024.
	Because he got young people out to vote because he changed their minds.
	Young people went Republican, moved toward the Republican Party by double digits, by double, particularly young men, but young women as well.
	One of the most moving videos of Charlie, and I remember he and I talked about this actually.
	We talked about it on air at the TPUSA event a few months ago, was this video of Charlie getting emotional hearing that Trump had won.
	This is on election night, which I think was, you know, one of the highlights of Charlie's life for sure.
	Fox News decides Donald Trump is president of the United States.
	We've got our Republic back, folks.
	Let's go.
	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 unit party and all 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.
	No one has worked harder than Charlie.
	We gotta 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.
	God alone.
	God alone.
	This isn't desk has it.
	Pennsylvania.
	It's gone.
	His beginning.
	Well, fairly recently, Charlie was asked how he wanted to be remembered on the iced coffee hour, and his answer is quite beautiful.
	If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered?
	If I die, everything just goes away.
	How would you if you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered?
	I want to be I want to be remembered for for courage for my faith.
	That would be the most important thing.
	most important thing is my faith in my life.
	Well, what went wrong here in America?
	I think Charlie summed it up well himself.
	There's a tweet, April 7th, 2025.
	And Charlie tweeted that there's an assassination culture that had emerged.
	Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk.
	55% said the same about Donald Trump.
	In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangion.
	The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy.
	Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response.
	This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence in mayhem for years on end.
	The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.
	That is that is not wrong.
	That is not wrong.
	And again, you know, one of my great irritations is when people use the third person plural without specifying who they're talking about and say they.
	They shot Charlie.
	A very specific person shot Charlie with a very specific ideology.
	An ideology enabled by a very specific permission structure, an ideological permission structure.
	And we need to trace all of that so that we can extirpate it.
	It is not enough to just say they whatsoever.
	We need to say who they are.
	It was the shooter.
	It was the people who continue to claim that if you say basically true things about men and women, that you are a genocidal maniac.
	It is the people who say that if you agree with Donald Trump, then you are a Nazi.
	You turned up the temperature on this.
	It is not just a generic turn down the temperature thing.
	It's not enough to just say that.
	Everyone needs to look into their own heart and determine whether the things they say create the kind of structure where you end up defending murder, or incentivizing murder, or giving tacit permission to people who are unwell and who hooked together on social media in networks of scavengers to go and do murder.
	The media response yesterday, large parts of it were predictably awful.
	MSNBC's Matt Dowd got himself fired for this particular take, as all of this was developing yesterday.
	But following up on what was just said, he's been one of the most divisive, especially divisive, younger figures in this who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.
	And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.
	And I think that's the environment we're in that people just you can't stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.
	And that's the unfortunate environment we're in.
	I mean, what an awful, awful take.
	He ended up losing his job for that, as well he should have.
	The basic idea that Charlie had it coming, that he does he deserved what happened to him because of the speech in which he engaged.
	That wouldn't even be true if Charlie were saying extreme things.
	But he is not he never said anything remotely like that.
	Not only that, the media infrastructure, which gins up hatred against perfectly normal people, calling them Nazis, as the president said, treating their statements as forms of genocide, suggesting that people who disagree with you are a deadly threat.
	This is why you know I'm I'm seeing some folks on the right who are saying this about people quote unquote on the left in general.
	Before we label people deadly threats, we should be very careful about whom we label.
	The left has not been capable careful about this.
	Many people on the left have not been careful about this at all.
	And they've incentivized what is a rising tide of violence that makes it nearly impossible to speak freely in the country.
	If Charlie Kirk can get shot, anyone can get shot for speaking their mind.
	That is where we are.
	That is why it is empty verbiage when I hear the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, blaming President Trump for a quote unquote new era of political violence and giving us selling us soft words about the supposed increase in in political rhetoric.
	And I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country.
	I think the president's rhetoric often foments it.
	We've seen the January 6th rioters who clearly have tripped a new era of political violence.
	Why don't you condemn the movements that you are creating and facilitating that actively say that people like Charlie Kirk are a deadly threat to them?
	Why do you not do that?
	Why do you not do that?
	And I will tell you, I do not see a reaction that is on the social media right that matches the reaction on the social media left to the to the news of Charlie Kirk's death.
	I just don't see it.
	When two Minneapolis politicians of the left were shot, it turns out by a patronage supporter of Tim Walls, under disputed circumstances, I saw zero celebration from the online right.
	I I I've yet to see tremendous celebration of something similar from the from the online right.
	I just I I'm not seeing it.
	If it's there, it ought to be condemned.
	But to pretend that this is sort of an even-handed problem would be to ignore the ideological underpinnings of violent conspiracism that lead to assassinations.
	Alexander Casar Cortez did her usual routine, she blamed it on gun violence.
	The problem is not guns.
	The problem is evil people who believe they can use guns to kill people because they are engaging in free speech.
	AOC tweeted the scourge of gun violence and political violence must end.
	The shooting of Charlie Kirk is the latest incident of this chaos.
	It must stop.
	We cannot go down this road.
	There is no place for it in America.
	We wish for his recovery.
	That was of course before Charlie had died.
	The um scourge of gun violence and political violence must end.
	Thank you for those absolutely meaningless words.
	Truly meaningless.
	Yesterday, controversy broke out on the floor of the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House asked for a moment of silence for Charlie, which was given.
	Lauren Boebert then got up and asked for a prayer to be settled out, and many Democrats objected, because apparently, if you if you're not going to do that for other victims, other victims of assassination, then you shouldn't do it for Charlie.
	Just ridiculous.
	Here we go.
	The Chair would ask that all members president in the chamber and those in the gallery please rise for a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk and his family.
	What purpose of the gentlelady from Colorado rise?
	shh People shouting, no, what the hell is wrong with you?
	Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?
	Let's let's let's wait a minute.
	Wait a minute.
	The House will be in order.
	The House will be in order.
	Shh.
	The house will be in order.
	Shh.
	We the House will be in order.
	We we will join proof.
	Oh my gosh.
	If he can't stop.
	I mean the chair lays.
	Gavin Newsom, who had done an actual podcast with Charlie, put out a tweet condemning political violence.
	He said, the attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, violent and reprehensible.
	In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in every form.
	Again, that's that's all very nice.
	What I want is a rejection of the movements that create incentive structures that openly call for political violence, that openly create the permission structure to do violence.
	Not every political point of view does that.
	Not every political movement does that.
	Disagreeing on tax structures does not create the incentive structure for political violence.
	Saying that if I say that a man is not a woman, that I am erasing you as a human being and threatening your very existence, or engaging in a transgenocide or erasure or whatever the hell you want to call it, and that speech is violence, and therefore violence can meet speech.
	That is a permission structure.
	And if you back that, you are backing the permission structure for assassination.
	That is what you are doing.
	This is why I'm going to take it under advisement.
	When Zoran Mamdani, who has created so many permission structures for various types of violence, it is beyond reckoning.
	I don't believe you.
	When Zor Mamdani says I'm horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah, political violence has no place in our country.
	I don't believe you believe that.
	And the reason I don't believe you believe that is because you are perfectly willing to make excuses for people who do violence depending on the cause that they are pursuing.
	The same person who is fine with globalize the antifada, literally a call for violence, is now saying that political violence has no.
	I don't believe you.
	I think you are just saying the words.
	The FBI in Salt Lake City has released a picture of a person that they are looking for right now.
	They need your help.
	That is why I'm showing this picture.
	They say we are asking for the public's help identifying this person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, 1-800 call FBI.
	The picture appears to be of a young white male wearing sunglasses, a black hat, dark jeans, and a black hoodie that appears to be emblazoned with the picture of President Trump shaking his fist after the assassination attempt, or alternatively, that maybe it's a little vague, hard to see.
	Could be an American eagle in front of an American flag.
	Little bit difficult to see.
	If this is indeed the shooter, um, the goal of that person would be to blend in with the crowd.
	Apparently, the shooter in this particular case had spec'd out the terrain, had plotted an escape point.
	That is why the person is not in custody as of yet.
	That is this person will be found, this person will be tried, this person will be executed, as well they should.
	As well they should.
	I just want to go back to my friend Charlie for a moment.
	Thank you.
	Charlie was, again, a good man.
	I knew Charlie, I watched Charlie grow from a boy into a man.
	I watched that happen.
	I watched him go from 18 to 31.
	We were all privileged to know Charlie, to watch Charlie work, to watch him build.
	He was a builder, he was a lion, a lion of a human being.
	He was engaged in the hardest business, which is the pragmatic growth of coalitional politics, that is super difficult.
	It really is.
	And people aren't going to agree with every decision that's made along the way or every view expressed.
	What they are going to remember Charlie for, the thing that people will build statues to Charlie for, and they should, is the thing that he died doing.
	Expressing truth in public places through open and honest debate with people who disagree.
	That is the thing they're going to build statues of Charlie Kirk for.
	And they should.
	And it's unbelievable we have to talk to talk about Charlie using the past tense.
	It's unbelievable and horrifying in every possible way.
	Yesterday on the show, later in the day, so for those who didn't have a chance to listen, I read Psalm 23 for Charlie.
	I want to do that again here.
	The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
	He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
	He leadeth me beside the still waters.
	He restoreth my soul.
	He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
	Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
	Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
	Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.
	Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
	As I said yesterday, Charlie will be dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.
	He was a good man.
	He's a good man who leaves behind a beautiful family.
	And when people that you know enter the pages of history, which is what Charlie will do, he'll go down as one of the most transformative political figures in American history, Charlie Kirk.
	When a person that you know is a full human being with all of the wonderful things about them and all the flaws becomes a part of history, something happens, and that is the brightest part of them shines through everything else.
	And that's what you're seeing today.
	The bar the brightest part of Charlie, the part of him that was about faith and family and community and biblical values and God and country and American patriotism, and yes, free speech and debate and discussion, and the vibrant bustling democracy that America is, and that Charlie spent his entire life, literally his entire life from the time he was young, fighting for all that shines through.
	And every time you see a picture of Charlie, you can see it in his face, the joy with which he engaged the world, the willingness to go to battle on behalf of the country, the willingness to say things, the willingness to go to places where people disagreed.
	He was what made America great and will continue to make America great going forward because we're going to have to pick up that baton.
	There's a prayer that we do at Jewish funerals that I want to read as well.
	It's called Kelmale Rachimim.
	Not going to read it in Hebrew.
	Grant perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of thy presence, among the holy and pure, who shine as the brightness on the heavens, unto the soul of Charlie, the son of Robert, who has gone unto eternity, and in whose memory charity is offered.
	May his repose be in paradise.
	May the Lord of mercy bring him under the cover of his wings forever.
	May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.
	May the Lord be his possession, and may he rest in peace.
	I mean, now it's still up to us.
	I saw a lot of rumors online today.
	I was made aware of this by my team.
	That I'm that I canceled some sort of college tour.
	That's bullshit.
	I saw those rumors.
	They are false.
	I will be coming to college campuses, many of them this year.
	So will we all, I am sure, because we're Americans, and we're not going to be deterred.
	Charlie's voice is not silent.
	We're going to pick up that bloodstained microphone where Charlie left it.
	And to those who would intimidate, who would seek to stop us, who would seek to end free discussion, who believe that they have ownership over public spaces and can violently threaten and kill people who speak freely.
	We are not going to stop.
	And I have two words.
	Fuck you.
	We will not stop telling the truth.
	We will never stop telling the truth.
	We will never stop debating and discussing.
	We will never stop standing up for what America is and for what she should be.
	And we will never let Charlie Kirk's voice die.
	Goodbye to my friend Charlie Kirk.

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