Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Dave Rubin Reacts to Charlie Kirk Being Shot at College Speaking Event

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 10, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

16:27

Dave Rubin Reacts to Charlie Kirk Being Shot at College Speaking Event

Participants

Main voices

dave rubin

15:12

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, so we are live.
		This is probably going to be the strangest live stream I've ever done.
		Blank piece of paper in front of me.
		A little bit of information that's breaking right now on the prompter.
		Obviously, you guys know why we're doing this out of nowhere.
		Charlie Kirk, my friend, the head of Turning Point USA, radio show host, father, more importantly, husband, was shot at an event at, where was it, guys, Utah, Utah Valley University, just about an hour ago.
		It looks pretty horrific.
		There's a lot of stuff breaking.
		I'm not even exactly sure why we're doing this other than I was in the studio right now because I'm going to New York early in the morning for a 9-11 memorial.
		So we're not going to be live tomorrow.
		I'm going to pre-tape some stuff for that.
		And I obviously have to address this, not just because it's news, but I know Charlie well.
		And he's been to this house multiple times.
		So we've broken bread multiple times.
		And we've done dozens of the exact same type of events that he was just shot at.
		We've done them together over the years.
		There was about a year or so where we probably did about 50 of them.
		The culture wars were very different at the time.
		The world was very different at the time.
		So I don't know exactly.
		I just quickly did something with Russell Brand for our actual friends podcast because we were on air as it happened.
		And what I said to him was, it's like, I don't want to narrate the end of the world.
		That doesn't seem that great to me.
		But something has shifted, I think, in the ether here.
		And it's not good.
		And we're going to have to figure out how to get out of this.
		I'm being told right now that apparently he has been stabilized and he's in the hospital receiving blood.
		There were two videos, I suppose, I guess, that were going viral immediately after.
		There was one from a distance where you see him get shot, but you can't quite see it up close.
		And then there was an up close one, which I heard a moment ago may have been AI because there's just an unbelievable amount of blood.
		And hopefully that one is AI.
		I know that Charlie is strong.
		I know that there are literally millions of people around the world that are praying for him right now.
		I don't know that there's anything else that we can do besides that.
		I have no doubt, I already started to see it.
		You know, some of the people online that were either celebrating or MSNBC sort of excusing it.
		You know, he's a flamethrower and he says controversial things.
		It's like, yeah, you know, if we're at the point in society, in American culture, that we can't say controversial things without the threat of being killed, or not just the threat, the actual, without actually being killed.
		Well, then it's over, right?
		Like then the experiment as we're about to roll into our 250th year is over.
		So it does not matter, obviously, if you hate every single thing that Charlie Kirk stands for, you can't go out and kill him.
		There's plenty of people that I criticize on this show every day that I find their ideas absolutely abhorrent, that they are trying to rehash the time-tested failures of societies that are long gone and they want to import them here.
		You can't kill them.
		This feels like, in some sense, like the culmination of everything that's been going on for at least a decade.
		It's been going on way longer than that, but a decade in the sort of modern sense of where the internet's out, that a decade ago, there were some of us that were talking about safe spaces and trigger warnings and why this stuff was going to damage a young generation of people who would be afraid of everything.
		And then we had people that were telling you the world was going to end in 12 years, six years ago, and telling you the country is systemically racist and all of the stuff that you're just hit with on the phone all the time.
		And young people were just born into it and handed it.
		It appears, if it's correct, that the guy who did the shooting doesn't seem like a young man.
		It appears like it's an older guy, if that picture that I saw was correct.
		It doesn't even matter.
unidentified		I don't even feel like doing the autopsy on all of that yet.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But what I can tell you about Charlie, maybe that's a better way to do it, what I can tell you about Charlie is that, you know, Charlie and I met when I was kind of leaving the left, right?
		And then our world started colliding.
		Charlie was this conservative influencer with Turning Point USA and I was kind of leaving the left.
		And then suddenly we were at events together.
		We would say hi a couple of times.
		We definitely had big political differences because I was still a lefty in a lot of senses, you know, and he was a conservative.
		But there was an immediate mutual respect there.
		And we did a lot of events together and we've debated death penalty.
		I mean, we've debated serious stuff.
		We've debated death penalty multiple times on opposite sides.
		We've debated abortion.
		We've talked about gay marriage.
		We've done all of the stuff and we've done it publicly and we've done it privately.
		We've sat next to each other at weddings.
		Coffee in my house about a year ago came by for coffee.
		What I know about Charlie, I'm trying to think of the last time I saw him was probably, I saw him, I think about four or five months ago.
		We texted a couple weeks ago.
		I saw him about four or five months ago actually at Mar-a-Lago for a Prague event.
		And Charlie, you know, look, he liked being in the fight.
		It likes being in the fight, I should say.
		He likes arguing.
		He likes making the point.
		He likes pointing out the hypocrisy.
		He likes doing all that.
		And sometimes he does it with a little bit of a flamethrower, not as much as many in the media portray him as.
		But he likes fighting for America.
		He likes fighting for what he believes in, his values, and all of those things.
		And he did it honestly.
		And that's why I always liked him.
		At that time, doing this wrong.
		That's why I've always liked him.
		Because we would always put our differences aside at the end, right?
		And we would go to these events at these colleges.
		And mostly when we were doing this around 2019, 20, something like that, there would be massive protests outside.
		There would be people throwing things at us.
		We'd have police escorts.
		Like for Charlie, he was doing it a little bit before me.
		So it was kind of like old hat to him.
		But I remember one of the first ones that I did with him.
		And I wasn't used to showing up somewhere.
		I was a good guy on the left.
		So I wasn't used to showing up to a college where I was going to be protested and people, somebody dumped hot coffee on me on one of these things, or we'd have to literally be dragged out back doors because they were pounding on the doors or venues had to be moved.
		There's a famous video that I did, I think, at the University of New Hampshire that's been seen millions of times.
		I was supposed to be doing an event there with Charlie and Candace Owens, and the two of them canceled for whatever reason that day.
		So it was just me there and like thousands of protesters.
		They were really there, I think, to protest Charlie, but then, and they probably didn't even know that much about me.
		I wasn't as radical at the time.
		But thousands of protesters there, like shouting me down and pulling firearms and throwing things and interrupting.
unidentified		And what has this all led to?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, what has it all led to?
		I suppose it has led to what we just saw this afternoon, just moments ago.
		So I'm just praying for, and I think all you can do is pray for a human being right now.
		It does not matter if someone has polar, completely polar opposite views than you, right?
		I do it every day on this show.
		I make fun of these people.
		I try to do it with a little bit of humor, right?
		Because if I was to just like analyze all of their bad ideas over and over, I'd kind of go crazy.
		I don't think I would want to do this.
		So I do it.
		I do try to do it with as much like hits and over the top and sarcasm and all that stuff as possible.
		But it was always the danger.
		It was always the danger if you called everybody Nazis.
		What would you do if you call that guy Hitler enough?
		What do you think somebody might do if they actually started to believe that?
		And that's the dangerous position that we have put ourselves in.
		We live through this with Trump, who thankfully lived through his assassination attempt.
		And we can only pray that Charlie will live through this assassination attempt.
		But if we don't really start thinking about how we're going to do this better, and I know there's a lot of forces that don't want it to be better.
		There are forces that are outside of this country that don't want it to be better here.
		There are forces in this country that don't want it to be better here.
		I can only speak to those of you who want it to be better.
		And I think, and I actually do think that's most people.
		But how you reach them, how you really, you know, if most of us are just kind of, all right, let's live and let live, you know, let's try it that way.
		And let's accept that there's some differences.
		And that's why we have states' rights.
		And that's what individual choice is all about.
		And that's what the pursuit of happiness, that's what the whole thing is all about.
		Like, that's great if a certain amount of people believe that.
		And then what do you do when there's this other set of people who have been so broken into believing that you're evil for that and that you want, that they want your stuff now, or they won't let you alone?
		Like, live and let live is great, but it's a mutual exchange.
		There has to be something common, common.
		It has to be common enough that enough people will say it and then operate within that.
		But if you and your people say live and let live, and then there's another force that's out there that's unrelenting in trying to take that away from you, I don't know what you do about that.
		But I know that Charlie fought for the things that he believed in honestly, imperfectly and honestly.
		We still have our political differences.
		And who the hell cares?
		Who the hell cares?
		Is there anything else breaking at the moment?
		I don't know.
		Yeah, there's a video.
		I don't think we have to bother with any of the videos.
		You guys can see all the videos.
		So there's a video of him being shot.
		There's a video of him being rushed to the hospital.
		Last I saw right before we started, a friend who has some insider knowledge said that there was a heartbeat at the hospital.
		Yeah, I don't know.
		All right, Phoenix is going to text me something.
		We got to figure out how to be better at this thing.
		That's everybody.
		You know, when I go away in August, you guys know I really try not to think about politics, and I usually don't.
		Like weeks could go by where I don't even think about Donald Trump.
		Like I just get away from the entire thing.
		But the thing that I think about sort of in like the blue sky sense, something that just kind of pops in my head randomly throughout the day would be how can I be better at what I do here, right?
		Like how can I actually communicate this stuff in a better way?
		Because I do want the world to be healed.
		I do want the world to be better.
		As I said at the top, I don't want to just narrate the end of the world.
		I don't want to do this for another 20 years and be like, boy, everything really did get worse and everyone I know got shot.
		I would prefer that not be the way we do this.
		I do want it to get better.
		So I'll have to think about that.
		I think that's important to think about.
		Let me just see what was sent me here.
	Okay, so it sounds like, all right, so I have to jump to Fox now.
	Is that what we're doing?
unidentified		Sorry.
		Yeah.
		No, you know, no, yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Get my talks.
unidentified		alright He's in the hospital.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's critical.
		All right.
		I don't want to even get into the minus right now.
		I don't know.
		We weren't exactly sure why we were doing this.
		It was sort of like it was going to be a little bit, I suppose, cathartic for me.
		Maybe it's a little bit cathartic for you.
		You know, these worlds all get together.
unidentified		I'll tell you something.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, when I was on tour with Jordan in Peterson in 2018, there was a night, you know, we did, I don't know, 120 some odd shows or something.
		And Tammy, Jordan's wife, came for virtually the entire tour until she got sick.
		But she came for most of the other shows.
		David joined for a few shows.
		And there was one night, I think we were, we might have been in Stockholm.
		I think we were somewhere in one of the Nordic countries.
		Maybe we were in Finland.
unidentified		I'm not sure.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And David and Tammy were sitting in like the fifth row and it was at the end of the show.
		It was a Q ⁇ A, you know, thousands of people there.
		We didn't have security at the time.
		Like think how different the world is.
		Jordan has tremendous security now.
		We didn't have any security at the time.
		It was me, Jordan, and the tour manager.
		It's crazy that we did it like that.
		But Tammy and David were sitting in like the fifth row.
		And Jordan and I were doing the Q ⁇ A on stage.
		And I asked Jordan a question, and he started doing one of his amazing things with his hands and the whole thing.
		And he was talking about some biblical imagery.
		And he was describing something, but he couldn't remember all of the images that he was trying to elaborate on.
		And suddenly we heard sort of like a crash and a scream in the back.
		And then there was all this commotion.
		And we saw someone running to the stage who, as he approached the stage, got tackled.
unidentified		And his phone kind of went flying.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		This might be on video somewhere.
		His phone kind of went flying to the stage and Jordan saw it.
		And I kind of froze.
		Like, I didn't know what was happening.
		I had no idea what was happening.
		Was someone coming to attack us or God knows what.
		I had no idea.
		And Jordan calmly, in a way that probably only Jordan could do, Jordan calmly, he looked at the phone for a second.
		And it turned out that the guy was a young guy.
		And I saw the guy once they tackled him.
		I saw him.
		And he just looked dazed.
		Like he was like a young guy.
		He didn't look crazy.
		He just looked like dazed in his eyes.
		It turns out that the guy actually remembered what the biblical passage that Jordan was talking about and he had pulled up an image on Google.
		And then obviously had like a little out-of-body experience.
		He was not trying to hurt anybody.
		He literally wanted to help Jordan.
		But when that happened, Tammy and David were sitting in the fifth row or so.
		And Tammy said to David that when Jordan and she decided to do this tour that they accepted, like anything could happen, like any horrible thing could happen.
		And David and I have laughed about this many times over the years.
		But David said to her, well, Dave and I never discussed that.
		We never had that discussion.
		I suspect this is going to change a little bit around safety when it comes to events that a lot of these people are doing, myself included, likely.
		So the world has changed.
		And we are now fighting things that are really not good.
		Look at the story.
		I don't want to make this political, so I'll do this in 60 seconds.
		But look at the major story in the world right now.
		It's about this 23-year-old young girl who got killed in Charlotte.
		And look at, if you watched our show today or yesterday, look what the main lead was on CNN.
		I mean, they tried to, for no reason, blame Charlie at the top of Abby Phillips' show.
		They said, you know, this is fodder for people like Charlie Kirk.
		They brought his name into a story that had nothing to do with him.
		And then Van Jones claimed that Charlie was making this about race.
		You can't shoot them either, right?
		Even if you don't like their ideas as stupid, as pathetic and thin and awful as they are.
		But like, what are we doing here, guys?
		What are we doing here?
		We've got the most precious, freaking beautiful piece of jewelry in our hand, right?
		We've got the holy grail right here.
		That's what America is.
		And we're just like, I don't know.
unidentified		Maybe we'll just throw it that way and throw it this way and throw it this way and see what happens.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So we all got to figure out how to be better here.
		I pray for Charlie.
		I know you're praying for Charlie too.
		As I said, we kind of did this on the fly just because I was in studio.
		So tomorrow, I will be in New York for 9-11.
		I'm going to be at the Cantor Fitzgerald building.
		They're doing a big fundraiser.
		Everyone knows what happened at Cantor Fitzgerald on 9-11.
		Four floors of the trade center lost hundreds of employees.
		So we're going to do a little fundraiser over there.
		And obviously, this is not going anywhere.
		So, all right, let's leave it there and throw in an extra prayer.
		You got one more prayer in you today?
		Throw in one more for Charlie.

▲