Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Remembering Charlie Kirk & 9/11

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Sept. 11, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

23:55

Remembering Charlie Kirk & 9/11

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dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, everybody, we're going to do something a little bit different today, and obviously you know why already.
		My friend and a great American, a father, a husband, a damn good fighter in the war of ideas, is dead.
		Charlie Kirk died.
		yesterday.
		You may note that this is a pre-tape.
		So as I'm taping this, this is actually, it's now 5.36 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
		You're watching this live on Thursday morning, September 11th, because I'm supposed to go to New York tomorrow morning to be at the Cantor Fitzgerald 9-11 Memorial.
		Now, with so many things changing so fast and so much breaking news, it's unclear whether I'm going to go or not.
		So we wanted to tape this either way.
		And I'm only going to do two things today.
		The intention for our 9-11 show is to do what I usually do, what I've done for at least 10 years on this day, which is to recap 9-11.
		I was in New York City during 9-11.
		My father was working in New York City in Midtown and was in his office and saw the second plane hit.
		I can recap some of that story and some thoughts, and we'll share a couple of video clips.
		And we'll do that in a moment.
		It's going to be a bit of an abbreviated show today.
		But obviously, it's with an unbelievably heavy heart that I'm doing this today.
		Charlie was a good man.
		Charlie and I met about 10 years ago and we were on opposite sides of the political aisle and I was kind of waking up to some of the craziness going on on the left and Charlie and I just kind of immediately hit it off.
		I actually can't remember.
		I was really racking my brain to try to remember the exact moment that we met and I don't remember the exact first time that I was introduced to him.
		But I do know that in those first few times we were kind of always measuring each other up.
		Like it was like, can I trust this guy?
		He's like a crazy right-winger.
		And Charlie was kind of like, can I trust this guy?
		He's a wackadoodle leftist.
		But there was something there.
		There was some desire to have conversation and debate and all those things.
		You're in the thick of a lot of the things, obviously, that we talk about here.
		So first, I just want to talk briefly about how we met, because I think it's kind of, it kind of shows sort of how you operate and why Turning Point has taken off.
		So we had met about a month and a half ago at the Horowitz Freedom Center event in Palm Springs.
		Were you a panelist there?
		Yeah, I was a panelist, so just kind of helicoptering around.
unidentified		I have a lot of friends that attend that conference.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you were there and everyone was like, oh, you got to meet Charlie Kirk.
		You got to meet Charlie Kirk.
		We met for two seconds.
		You said a couple of nice things about me and you're like, you know, we're doing this, our gig in Palm Springs in a couple of weeks.
		Why don't you come down and talk?
		And immediately we worked it out and your guys sent me the paperwork the next day and it was done.
		And I think that does illustrate something because we're going to get into some of the issues that we agree on and some of the things we disagree on.
		But basically you were like, look, you're down for free speech.
		That's the main thing here.
		And I want my audience to hear you talk about that.
unidentified		Well, you're a rational thinker, which is really rare to find in California.
		I'm kidding.
		But no, I mean, I'm a big fan of the show and I watch a lot of your interviews.
		And I know you have a huge following amongst young people.
		And I mean, I met you.
		I was like, yeah, let's get you on board.
		I've always been a gut player, for better or for worse.
		It's got me into a little bit of trouble at times.
		But I think Net, it's been positive.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Charlie's been on this show, I don't know, probably two dozen times over the years.
		I've been on his various shows and radio show, probably equal amount.
		We spent about a year and a half doing those college tours, just like the one at Utah Valley yesterday where he was, where he was murdered, murdered in cold blood.
		I never saw Charlie be not respectful to a single person.
		You know, he'd get up there and he'd, you know, might say some controversial things, right?
		The truth is often controversial.
		He would have his opinions, never shied away from his opinions, but I never saw him be mean to anyone.
		Never saw him put anyone down.
		As a matter of fact, I would see when things would be getting hot, maybe with some students or there would be a Q ⁇ A and it was getting out of control and people were hurling insults.
		He was always reeling it back.
		He would always try to calm everybody down.
		Sometimes I would try to joke my way out of it.
		And he was like a little more of the straight man trying to just calm everyone down.
		I think that's why we liked being on stage together beyond just a sort of mutual respect that we were trying to like heal some of this stuff, even if we disagreed on things.
		And we disagreed on an awful lot, particularly at the beginning.
		You know, over the years, we kind of came together politically in many ways.
		And I think there was probably not much daylight between us, probably some, doesn't even matter.
		But, you know, we debated abortion and we debated death penalty.
		We'd debate taxes and universal health care and marriage equality and all these things.
		And then after the debates and after the QAs, one of the things we always did, and I always started doing this at all of my shows after I saw Charlie do it once.
		He always invited people that disagreed with him up first during the QAs.
		He would always say, hey, listen, if you agree with us, we don't need to just have like a, oh, you're so wonderful chat.
		And he always would do that.
		So we would take part in that together.
		If someone disagreed with either one of us or whoever else might be on stage with us, they would get to come to the line first.
		That's something that I've incorporated into all of my QAs since then.
		I'm much more interested in hearing someone that has a counterpoint or another view.
		And Charlie was very brave at that.
		Brave at a time when it was very hard to be brave.
		You know, thankfully, the culture has shifted a lot, in large part because of Charlie.
		And it's gotten easier to say certain things.
		Political correctness doesn't have the calcifying effect over all of us that it's had over these last couple years.
		But it wasn't always easy to do that.
		Charlie and I would do events where there'd be police escorts and we'd have to basically hide in rooms and have police bring us to the stage and we'd have to know where the emergency exit was and people would pull fire alarms and throw things at us and got hot coffee thrown at me once and chant crazy chanting and just all of this craziness.
		And he just kept, he would always double down.
		He would double down and say, I'm going to go back.
		I'm going to go back and I'm going to go back.
		I don't do as many of those events anymore.
		I do other things.
		My fight is a different fight.
		But Charlie really relished that fight.
		And outside of the political part of this, like this was a guy who, you know, even if you look, I'll do just a tiny bit more on the political part and then I'll do the human part.
		If you look at even some of the things that I've been concerned about over the last, you know, six or eight months, some of the fighting on the right, Charlie was one of the guys trying to arbitrage that.
		He was trying to make sure that the right wasn't going to snap in half the way that I'm trying to do it.
		He was trying to find, and he was someone that people on both sides of a lot of the fights would listen to.
		He really was trying very hard.
		He loved this country deeply.
		I only met his wife one time, actually was at a wedding.
		We sat next to them at a wedding.
		I only met her once, but he was a, I have no doubt, I just have no doubt that he was a great husband and a phenomenal father.
		And that has nothing to do with politics or public life or anything else.
		And he did not deserve to meet his maker this way.
		And we will see what lessons people take from this.
		There is a chance that we'll get a little more healing from this thing.
		And some of us, like some spirit will speak to us and we'll be able to be a little bit better at all the things that we do and how we treat each other and everything else.
		And then, of course, we know.
		We know that that's not going to be everybody.
		And there'll be people that use this for their own political purposes or whatever else.
		But I think we lost a good one.
		We lost a good one.
		And I don't know how many good ones there are.
		A lot of people don't want to get in this fight.
		You know, people always say to me, like, oh, you're in the fight.
unidentified		It's so brave.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's so brave.
		You're doing it.
		You're saying all these things.
		It's so great.
		And it's like, I don't know.
		I'm doing it.
		I had this idea and I'm doing something.
		And I think Charlie kind of viewed it that way, but maybe a little bit on steroids.
		Like he really thought that he could start and ignite a movement that would get the country back on the right track.
		And in some ways, I think he did help do that.
		And for whatever, I can't, honestly, at the moment, I can't really think what our remaining political differences are.
		It's like it just didn't matter.
		Break bread after those events.
		Get into it on stage.
		Put it aside afterwards.
		And that spirit, I hope, is something that I'll continue here and that you will continue in your own life to honor this man.
		As of this recording, we don't even know who did this or why they did it.
		I don't feel like getting into all of the political part around some of the things they were saying about Charlie on CNN and other places just in the last few days related to the Charlotte thing that had nothing to do with Charlie.
		Like there will be time for all of that.
		But to put a bow in it, and then we'll talk a little bit about 9-11 for a minute.
		We lost a good man for no good reason.
		And we should all think about that and see if we can take a horrific, horrific tragedy and spin it into something better.
		So let's leave that there.
		I hope I did you're right, Charlie.
		And let's talk about 9-11 for a minute because what a weird, this is probably the strangest show I've ever done.
		So I was in New York City during 9-11.
		It was 24 years ago.
		And I remember waking up.
		I had just got a little cell phone for the first time.
		I'd never had a cell phone before.
		It was early days of cell phone.
		I had a little Nokia black and white cell phone that I really never even used it, but it had snake on it.
		That's what I was mostly doing.
		Remember that old game Snake?
		And my dad called on my cell phone.
		And I remember thinking that was very odd because I had just got this thing.
		Nobody really called me on it.
		I didn't use it.
		I thought cell phones were kind of ridiculous.
		and my dad called me must have been around 930 in the morning.
		I had just got laid off.
		I was doing stand-up at nights in the city.
		I had an office job.
		I don't even remember what I was doing, but I just got laid off, so I was sleeping.
		And my dad, who worked in Midtown, saw the second, they knew that the first tower that had been hit, but at that point they didn't think it was a terrorist attack.
		Then when the second tower hit, then everyone started realizing what was happening.
		And my dad called me, told me what was happening, and then the world changed in that moment.
		And I guess in some ways, that's kind of like what just happened with Charlie.
		It feels like the world changed.
		There are moments that the world changes, whether it's one man being assassinated or whether it's a horrific terrorist attack that kills, you know, 2,000 plus people, there are moments in life.
		So I thought we could spend a few minutes just diving back into some of the memories around that with a little bit of hope at the end.
		And I'll tell you a little bit more of my story.
		And I've heard so many of your stories around this too every year when we do this.
		But here is the CBS News Live breaking coverage as one of the planes hit.
unidentified		It's 8.52 here in New York.
		I'm Brian Thumbel.
		We understand that there has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan.
		You're looking at the World Trade Center.
		We understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
		We don't know anything more than that.
		We don't know if it was a commercial aircraft.
		We don't know if it was a private aircraft.
		We have no idea how many were on board or what the extent of the injuries are right now.
		We have, I understand, an eyewitness on the phone right now.
		Sir, good morning.
		This is Brian Gumbel.
		Could you give us your name?
		Yeah, my name is Stuart.
		Stuart, where are you right now?
		I'm working at a restaurant in Soho.
		All right, so tell us what you saw, if you would.
		I literally, I was waiting at Table and I literally saw a, it seemed to be like a small plane.
		I just heard a couple noises.
		It looked like it like bounced off the building and then I heard a, I just saw a huge ball of fire.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, so there were obviously a lot of clips we could have showed you there.
		I think what was interesting about that one is it's hard to remember that even on that day when it first started, people didn't realize it was a terrorist attack, right?
		And we now know the stories of people that were told to stay in the building and everything else, even stay in the other tower because there was no reason to think anything else was going to happen.
		Subsequently, not too long, I think it was less than a half hour later, the second plane hit, and then the world was changed forever.
		I lived on 90th and 1st in New York City, so that's like Upper Upper East Side.
		And the tower is obviously downtown.
		So we were sort of at polar opposite ends of the city.
		But I remember over the next few hours, first off, the soot and the smell and the burning and the ashes and everything just wafting up town.
		It's hard to imagine because it almost sounds like a sci-fi movie or just like a zombie movie or something.
		But the ashes and all that moving up the city.
		And I remember I walked out.
		I was glued to the TV like everybody else, trying to make phone calls and everything.
		And then I remember, must have been maybe around 11.30, something like that.
		I walked out to First Avenue and there were just hundreds, must have been thousands of people, thousands of people just walking up First Avenue in the middle of the street, some of them covered in soot and everything else, just everyone trying to get home, utter state of shock everywhere.
		The man who deserves more credit than any human on earth for saving New York City that day and in the subsequent months, of course, is Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor at the time.
		And here he is.
		He immediately, this man had his whole life from being attorney general and fighting the mafia and everything else, his whole life had led to this moment.
		And in horrible times, you need a great leader.
		And that was Rudy on this day.
unidentified		So people should remain calm.
		They should remain where they are.
		Except if they are in southern Manhattan.
		If you're below Canal Street, you should walk out to southern Manhattan and walk north.
		people are doing right here all that we know all that we know right now is the two airplanes struck the two large towers of the world trade center We spoke to the White House.
		There also apparently was an attack on the Pentagon.
		We asked that the airspace around the city of New York be sealed by military aircraft.
		We've been informed that it has been, and we've seen military aircraft in the air.
		So we're hopeful that right now things are secure.
		We need all of the open space we can get to evacuate people, to get people moved.
		And we're going to have to move down.
		I'm going to cooperate and make this cool.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		God bless that man.
		I love Rudy Giuliani.
		I'm so honored that I've become friends with him in my adult life.
		And he was, some people step into it exactly when they're supposed to.
		Like their whole life led to that moment.
		And he was such an endless calming force.
		And you knew that someone was in charge who was competent.
		And he was just absolutely incredible.
		And this is all sort of before social media, but there were still all rumors flying around.
		Had all these other helicopters, had all these other planes, and they were talking about helicopters been hijacked and were there going to be more attacks and what else was happening.
		And had the president been assassinated?
		Like there was all this crazy stuff.
		And again, before social media, it's hard to remember what that is.
		And we got through that horrific, horrific time.
		And then days later, George W. Bush went down to ground zero.
		And this was sort of the moment that America started feeling like maybe it was going to come back.
unidentified		I want you all to know that America Today, America Today is on bended knees in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families of war.
		This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.
		I can hear you!
		The rest of the world hears you.
		Got chills down my spine.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That was the New York that I grew up in.
		That's the New York that I love.
		That's what I wish New York still was these days.
		But that's for another show.
		And George W. Bush, you know, regardless of what you think of him, regardless of what you think of the subsequent wars after 9-11 and everything else, like talk about a guy who was made for that moment.
		I mean, that speech was just perfect.
		There was a sense like something horrible happened, but we are going to be okay and we're all in it together.
		And then just a few weeks later, just one more video, as America was healing and we finally, you know, all the sports games were canceled, all events were canceled for a long time.
		It was just, we were in utter, utter shock as a nation, but we really were coming together.
		And then a few weeks later, after they had delayed some of the baseball playoffs, this was George W. Bush at Yankee Stadium in New York throwing out the opening pitch to World Series Game 3.
unidentified		Tonight's ceremonial first pitch.
unidentified		And please welcome the President of the United States.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It chills up my spine again.
		It's just an absolutely electric moment that it was in New York City and that it really we all started to come together.
		And I guess maybe that's the touch point between the horrific event, you know, Charlie's assassination.
		What a horrible thing to even have to utter and 9-11.
		Like, do we just, will we only really come together after horrible things?
		Now, I don't know that the country will come together because of Charlie.
		Obviously, huge swaths will not, huge swaths.
		And I'm not even going to get into some of the things they were saying on MSNBC before it had even been reported that he was dead between the moment that he was shot and being declared dead.
		But there was a real togetherness in America after that.
		And we probably made some mistakes along the way and Patriot Act, okay, a whole bunch of stuff.
		But I remember that America.
		And that America, I think, was probably a lot stronger than this America.
		You know, if we had a terrorist attack, the likes of which were comparable to what happened on 9-11, if that happened today, would we come together?
		Portions of us would, but like, could we do it again with social media and all of the bad actors on there and the bots and the foreign actors and everything else?
		Could we do it with all of the new forces that have confused us about freedom and what America really is, that have emboldened terrorist sympathizers to march in the streets and have made our children confused about their gender and whether the project of America is fundamentally good or not or anything else?
		Like, I'm not so sure.
		And I hope we never have to find out, right?
		Because we don't want something horrific to happen.
		And yet we're stuck in a position where it sometimes seems like the only way that kind of glues us together.
		I'll share just a couple other thoughts about 9-11.
		And I would love to read some of your thoughts if you were in New York City or even not.
		You know, just how it affected you and your family, where you were when you heard about 9-11, all of those things.
		I remember this must be about two or three weeks after 9-11, where we basically were just in our houses.
		Everyone just stayed in their houses and their apartments and just watched TV all day long.
		It was before CNN really went off the deep end.
		And I was glued to CNN.
		And actually, a few years ago on this show on 9-11, I interviewed Aaron Brown, who was anchoring their coverage during 9-11.
		And he was excellent.
		He was a real excellent.
		I don't even know if he considers himself a journalist, but he was an excellent anchor in a really horrific time.
		So we put that up a couple of years ago.
		You could check that out.
		A few years ago, we had Ari Fleischeron, who was George W. Bush's spokesman.
		And we've done a couple of other shows like that.
		But I remember we were all sort of glued to the TV.
		And then one day I was just like, I was going stir crazy.
		I was like, I've got to get out of the house.
		Like the only time I was walking out was to get pizza or something.
		I was like, I got to get out for a little bit.
		And I grabbed my basketball and I walked over to Gracie Mansion.
		And that's the mayor's mansion.
		And about a block from that is there were some basketball courts.
		And I went and I had no idea if anyone was going to be there.
		You literally could still taste the soot in your mouth if you were outside.
		And I remember I showed up at the basketball court.
		It was so weird.
		It was like an eerily weird day.
		It was late in the afternoon, like kind of dusky.
		And there were like a couple of guys playing on the court.
		And we just started playing pickup.
		I didn't know anyone on the court.
		I don't know if they knew anybody.
		And we're playing and it's just kind of normal.
		Like there were like this like fleeting moment of normalcy on the court.
		And then at one point, two guys, one guy fouled another guy pretty hard.
		And they got into it on the court.
		Like they immediately were like ready to kill each other because it was just like all of this pent up stuff.
		And I kid you not, this seems like it was out of a movie.
		They were right in each other's faces and they both started crying at the exact same time and hugged each other.
		I mean, it was, I'm getting chills.
		I'm going to have to tell you that story.
		Like that was what we had.
		I remember one of the things it sort of became a joke in New York City.
		There was less honking of horns.
	You know, you go to New York City now and there's honking of horns all the time.
	And it's not honking of a horn like, oh, watch out, you're going to hit me.
	It's honking of a corn.
	It's just like a guy releasing stress from his life.
	And that's why it's blaring all day long in New York City.
	But that even stopped for a little bit.
	Like something really, something really good came out of that.
	Like everyone was kind of reevaluating everything.
	I suspect a lot of us are going to be in that mode because of Charlie, because of the anniversary of 9-11.
	And my commitment to you, I suppose, is that I will double down on trying to do what I do here all the time, which is communicate the things that are important that free people to the best of my ability, hopefully in a little more of a humorful way than I did today, but in a way that will de-escalate this.
	Because yes, a lot of us are ready to figure out ways to get out of this, but there's a lot of forces.
	Again, some of them are in the country and some of them are out of the country that want to keep everything disastrous and messy for their own reasons, whatever that might be.
	And that's the great challenge for a free society and for free people.
	So Charlie, I will miss you.
	I have a feeling you're going to be with us for a long time, one way or another in this country.
	There's not a feeling.
	I absolutely know that.
	And I'm honored that we played this game of life together while we did.
	So we'll miss you, Charlie, Kirk.
	I hope that the throwback to some of the 9-11 stuff was meaningful to you.
	As I said, I'd love to read some comments about that.
	And we will be back tomorrow.

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