Charlie Kirk’s Legacy & Brutal Honesty on Candace Owens & Tucker | Andrew Kolvet
Andrew Kolvet reflects on Charlie Kirk's legacy six months post-assassination, noting a surge in religious activity while addressing controversies involving Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. He defends maintaining a broad coalition for the 2028 midterms despite disagreements with figures like Nick Fuentes, recalling Kirk's caution regarding the "Midnight Hammer" strike on Iran to avoid alienating voters. Kolvet also critiques Megan Kelly's response to Erica Kirk's allegations, emphasizing that winning elections requires grassroots door-knocking and statesmanship rather than online feuds or mere entertainment. Ultimately, the discussion urges the movement to prioritize higher virtues over controversy to secure political success. [Automatically generated summary]
What I can tell you from Midnight Hammer, because that actually happened, I actually saw it, is he was very nervous about that.
He was nervous about it, not because he loves Iran.
He thought Iran was a tyrannical regime and an evil regime that sowed terror and chaos and destruction and death.
He was nervous about it from a coalitional standpoint because he knew that kids on campus don't like war.
And they were one of the things that was he would tell kids and they would react very positively about on campus was that Trump is the peace president, that he's got to know new wars, that this is, this is, you're not going to get drafted into World War III.
And so when Midnight Hammer came, he was nervous, right?
He was nervous that we're losing the young boat that had come so far our direction in 2024 to things like Epstein, the, you know, the files and the binders with Pam Bond.
And he was worried that we're going to lose it because of Iran.
So Charlie worked privately behind the scenes to try and push for restraints, for peace.
Is there more of a diplomatic option that you could pursue?
Ultimately, we know what happened.
Trump set the B2 bombers.
They hit Ford O and some other sites.
And Charlie looked straight in the camera.
I remember he was on Fox with Jesse Kelly or Jesse Waters at that point.
And he said, listen, this is why we worked so hard to get President Trump elected because we trust his instincts not to get us into a forever war, not to get us embroiled in another quagmire in the Middle East.
And he can do this with precision strikes and he can do it this way and that way.
There's a lot of leprechauns in this house right now.
He'll find me something.
Okay, so let's dive in.
There's a lot to talk about, but I thought before we do any of the politics, any of the headaches and all of the other stuff, we are just over six months since the assassination of both of our friends, but you're very, very close friend and your colleague.
You know, I've known you for years.
I always, I didn't know exactly what your title was, but to me, you were always just kind of Charlie's right-hand man.
If I saw Charlie, you were just within feet of him always.
Give me something six months later.
That's not about the political fighting and everything else.
Give me something about Charlie just to set us off on a nice tone and then we'll dive into everything else.
I think the silver lining to that is just that he was just that incredible.
He was just remarkable.
And I wish I could tell you that I fully understood how remarkable and amazing he was when he was alive.
I knew he was great.
You know, obviously, I spent eight years of my life, you know, doing everything I could to make him successful.
And my meager contribution to that, because he was going to be successful, didn't matter.
It didn't matter that it was me that was fighting alongside him or anybody else.
He was going to find a way.
So it was really an honor that I got to see a truly historical figure so up close and a martyr, a Christian martyr, an American martyr, a free speech martyr.
And I got to just see the way he lived his life, the way he chose his people, the way he chose his words, the way he navigated a den of vipers that's known as American politics.
It was truly a man of integrity, a truly a man of great conviction, of great energy, and great patriotism and great faith.
And, you know, I mean, we're about to get into the messy part of this conversation in just a bit.
And I, you know, it's hard not to draw a direct line between Charlie's assassination and some of the craziness that we've all seen.
And it's weird even that we both feel that because we spoke for a minute or two before we started recording here.
And there obviously is a whole bunch of messy stuff.
And I, you know, I'm sure you've seen it, but there's that meme now, which is showing Charlie as the damn.
And, you know, basically, if when Charlie left us, that we've just been flooded with insanity from a lot of quarters that we didn't think insanity was going to was going to come from.
How is that?
So we'll get into some of the details on that, but how is that just the general state of craziness from probably people you considered allies and friends?
How much is that made it more difficult to continue Charlie's legacy over the last half year?
Yeah, you know, it's this weird dichotomy between the online lived experience and then just the IRL, right?
And, you know, the in real life, you know, interactions have been amazing, honestly.
And Charlie, you feel just, you know, the legacy that Charlie leaves behind in those interactions, interpersonal, and people just how much they loved him, how much they are trying to support us and want to support his mission and keep it going and want support turning point.
And that's been amazing.
It genuinely has been heartwarming.
And I wish people on the internet could feel what I feel and see what I see because it's overwhelming.
And then there's the internet, right?
Then there's social media.
And you get like a whole different perspective and you feel the venom.
And I think that's a sort of a casualty of our modern world is that the incentive structure online is so much different than it is interpersonally.
And I think it skews realities, it skews perceptions.
And I think that's a real danger.
So it had, you know, some of the messiness has certainly made things more difficult.
And that does end up translating into IRL, right?
It does end up translating into what our students experience on campus.
It does end up translating into, you know, I think a perceived political moment that we're in.
And that's hard.
But, you know, to think that Charlie could have been the damn forever, especially on things like foreign policy, I think is naive as well.
I want to make sure that, you know, Charlie was not Jesus.
Charlie loved Jesus.
Charlie worshiped Jesus.
Followed him.
So, you know, he was not God here, right?
And we were looking at these coming tsunami, whether it be the Epstein stuff, whether it be Israel foreign policy in Iran.
We knew that eventually this stuff was going to come to a head.
And Charlie, a few weeks before he was killed, sent me this list of the Greek virtues.
And I think about it all the time because it's a guiding light for what we're still trying to do at Turning Point and what I think the movement needs.
And at the top of that list was philosopher and statesman.
The bottom of that list was performer, you know, carnival.
And I think, you know, when I look around social media, like I look, I look to see what people are trying to be the statesmen and the philosophers and what people are really just being entertainers, right?
Because podcasting and doing a show, it could be both, right?
You could be trying to really elevate the discourse.
You could be trying to get the right people elected.
You could be trying to make things better, or you could just be, you know, burn it all down so we can recreate the GOP and our image people because it's all doom and gloom and there's no point in it because we have to share a party with Lindsey Graham or something.
So, so I don't relate to those people.
I don't respect those people.
Charlie wanted to be the higher virtues, which is philosopher, statesman, coalition builder.
And that's, you know, but I'm not naive to think that Charlie alone could have kept back the, I think that the meme goes, the retardation so many of us are experiencing.
Well, it's also one of the reasons why, you know, we've watched all these people share text messages with Charlie and private communications with him, which I have plenty of those things.
And I would never share them.
It's just so extraordinary that people would use them for their own political purposes on, you know, basically dancing on someone's grave.
So let's just do the hard part of some of this right now, real quick, and then we can finish on the messaging side, which is some of the people that not only Turning Point has been associated with, but that I personally have been associated with.
And as you know, I used to go on the tours with Charlie.
But some of the people that I've been associated with, that Charlie was associated with, that Turning Point was associated with, have really taken this thing to a very evil place.
And obviously, at the top of that list is Candace.
You know, you, I'm sure, were on some of those tour stops with us.
No, I know you were on some of the tour stops with us and subsequently other events with them and things of that nature.
I mean, what do you want people to do with her at this point with everything she has done?
We don't have to dissect the entire, we don't have to do the entire autopsy on everything that she's done here.
When we first ran into each other, it was in Florida a little while ago, which kind of led to me being here right now.
You know, we I think we spent, I don't know, five, ten minutes about, you know, all the things we disagree on, and it was, you know, it was fine.
And of course, I understood, you know, listen, I've got, we've got lots of deep-seated disagreements, but I can then turn around and say, but it's okay that we're having this conversation right now.
And I remember we took a ton of crap for having like Chank at the Jank, however, you say his name, your former colleague at the Young Turks at Amfest in 2024 after we won.
Took a ton.
It was like this huge controversy online.
And so I just want to start off there because Turning Point is under such incredible pressure by so many different people.
Much has been made about the conversations Charlie was having with Jewish folks and some were donors.
I think it was really only one that was a Jewish donor before he was killed.
And he was getting frustrated by the pressure that they were putting on him to get rid of Tucker at Amfest or whatever.
We're getting it from both sides all the time.
And one of the things that I'm going to be adamant about in this conversation and in any subsequent conversation is that, yes, that's a fair conversation.
I'm not saying you can't have the conversation, but just everybody needs to understand that we are getting from all sides this pressure.
You can't have this person, you can't have this person, you can't have this person.
So, I just want to state that at the outset here because it's a reality that I've become very accustomed to, that Charlie had become very accustomed to.
And it's a fair conversation about what the coalition is: what is in the realm of acceptable, what's in the realm of unacceptable.
Okay, so to the Candace question, obviously, you know, I'm on team, you shouldn't be attacking widows.
I don't think that gives somebody blanket immunity forever.
I've never suggested that.
The Bible's very clear, just for people that are curious, that you know, going after widows is a really bad idea.
And I just want to state up front that Erica, I've known Erica since they started dating, since Charlie and Erica started dating.
I remember the first time I met Erica, it was actually at Politicon in Los Angeles, many, many years back.
Yeah, and I was like, who is this gal?
Like, you know, and Charlie was like, oh, she's just, she's hanging out with us today.
You know, you could tell there was something different, though.
Like, I logged it.
And Erica has always been tremendous.
And she never sought the limelight.
She was always very happy to sort of be doing her own thing and just be supportive of Charlie.
And she's never been anything but just high character, just warm.
She was a total asset to Charlie in the sense that, you know, Charlie was so missional.
He was so direct.
He was so kind of on just, you know, energizer bunny and direct about what he needed to get done.
And Erica was this humanizing presence just for the staff, for whether it was donors or politicians or whoever he was meeting with.
And she was just so but content to be in the background and be the mom.
And Charlie told us multiple times: you know, if anything happens to me, you know, Erica is going to be in charge.
Said that to said that to us on the staff, said it to his board.
So it wasn't a secret when Charlie was killed, what was going to happen next.
We all knew that he had been very clear about that.
And so the attacks on Erica I find to be obviously abhorrent.
I find them to be diabolical.
I find them to be gross.
They're beyond the pale.
They're unprecedented.
And the only thing I can think of to make any of it make sense is that there was a huge outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
There was a huge outpouring of God's presence and light in the aftermath of Charlie's assassination.
There was prayer vigils, candlelight vigils, vigils.
There was the memorial that was seen by hundreds of millions of people.
Bible sales shooting through the roof, reports that church attendance spiked and baptism spiked.
This moment that the enemy meant for evil, God was using for good and is still using for good.
And I firmly believe that what God has unleashed, man cannot stop.
And that means that that includes Candace.
That includes anybody else that's going after Erica or trying to attack Turning Point.
So I rest very easy knowing that God has this under control and that God is going to see this through and that we have a role to play in that certainly that doesn't absolve us from responsibility, but that God is going to see this through, that this, that it's going to run its course whether people try and get in the way or not.
And I would, I just truly believe that when Charlie went to go be with Jesus, that Heaven rejoiced at a martyr coming home, and that the light unleashed under the world was so tremendous that the devils and the demons were shrieking in terror and they realized they'd screwed up.
And so, what you're seeing is this dark reaction to a light unleashing upon the world that we've never seen in our living lifetimes.
And so, I just rest easy knowing that God's got it.
That being said, you know, I obviously find it to be discussed.
And I think without dignifying so much of what's been leveled, because so much of it is just complete garbage and full of lies and mistruths and misrepresentations, that I believe that it will all shake out in the end and we'll see very clearly in hindsight.
So, let me ask you about the moment that I think everything kind of really went haywire, which was when Tucker, and obviously, there was already Tucker had already sort of made an ideological shift or whatever that was causing some problems when Charlie was around and is what it is.
But when within three months of Charlie's assassination, Tucker had Nick Fuentes on.
And as far as I know, but you could correct me, the only person that I saw that Charlie actively wanted to keep out of Turning Point, out of the movement and everything else, was Nick Fuentes.
I was at Turning Point events that Fuente showed up with his crew and they were trying to get in there and create chaos and chase people down and all the usual shenanigans and everything else.
What do you make of the fact that Tucker had him on within three months of Charlie being assassinated?
Again, the only guy that I know of that Tucker that Charlie wanted to keep out and really just glazed him for an hour, like did not offer any substantive pushback or anything else.
And listen, there's like kind of the Ben Shapiro approach to this where, you know, where you don't need more friends, and I'm not going to interpret politics through the lens of friendship.
And, you know, and then there's kind of Charlie's lens where Charlie, you know, the friendship quotient here still means a lot.
And so I say that just at the outset because I have had a friendship with Tucker.
I have remained in communication.
I've told him that I didn't love the way that that interview happened.
Obviously, I don't think Charlie would have loved the way that interview happened.
But knowing what I know about Tucker, first of all, nobody's going to tell him what to do.
Second of all, the way he does these interviews, usually there's like a dinner the night before, before the interview.
And it's almost like when I heard this was happening, I just in my head knew that there was time spent and there was a relationship built and there was really no hope of a truly adversarial interview because of just what I know of of Tucker.
And listen, I feel like, you know, when we talk about things being messed up, by the way, Dave, you know, in the aftermath of everything that was going on, you had these attacks from Candace and from others.
And then you had people like Fuentes, weirdly enough, calling it out as obviously not true.
It was very convoluted.
It was disorienting.
Everything that was up is now down and down is now up.
But listen, I happen to be, you know, I've talked with other, I think, our mutual friend Steve Dace about this.
You know, he said it on our show.
And he too remains in contact with Tucker and is trying to understand where he's coming from.
But I tend to still remain in the camp that this coalition, if we have any hope of it surviving for the midterms, especially towards 2028, is it big enough?
Is it stable enough?
Could it survive if you pushed out Tucker?
And that's a huge question.
And everybody's got a different answer to that.
I don't think that that is the right approach.
I think that interview aside, which I agree was not adversarial enough.
And like I said, I told him as much.
I still think that Tucker is wildly popular.
He has a huge platform and a lot of influence.
And there are questions that are being raised about America's involvement with Israel that I think are fair.
I think there are times where it goes too far.
But yeah, I mean, listen, there's no doubt Charlie, you know, Fuentes and Charlie had a history where they were trying to infiltrate turning point.
Charlie didn't like that, didn't like the anti-Semitism, didn't like the Jew hate, thought it was a brain rot.
I agree that it's a brain rot straight from the pit of hell.
And we need to make sure that it does not take root in the conservative movement.
It cannot take root in the Christian evangelical movement as well.
I think there is, yeah, I mean, I don't think you're wrong.
I think, you know, without putting words in Tucker's mouth or, you know, I'm just observing.
But I do think there is a concern that the strong ties between the United States and Israel, I'm not saying me, I'm saying from Tucker's side and people in that camp, is that that lynchpin is really the evangelical right.
And there's a whole theological debate.
We don't necessarily need to get into it right now between dispensationalism and replacement theology and all of that stuff.
So there are actually, you know, it's okay to disagree about dispensationalism and replacement theology, but it's but when it devolves into the scapegoating of Jewish people, that's where we actually have to just purely draw the line.
Our savior, you're a Christian, was a Jewish man that walked, you know, in Jerusalem and walked in Israel.
Let me just ask you one more about one other person, and then we can just try to get back to the idea for the remainder, which is obviously there's been some strange stuff going on on the Megan Kelly side of stuff.
And most of it seems to be that a lot of people for months were basically just saying to her online, hey, could you basically call out Candace because of what she's saying about Erica?
And she didn't for months.
And she said she didn't want to go after a young mother, even though she goes after everybody.
That's her job, basically.
And now it's really devolved into something else.
Again, it's sort of an annoying question in some sense, but do you wish that some of the people that Charlie embraced just would have defended his legacy better?
I mean, I've really tried to defend his legacy to the best of my ability.
I'm not patting myself on the back.
I did what I think is right.
And I think others have as well.
But to watch some of the people not defend the legacy, even ones that Charlie was a star maker.
Yeah, I mean, Megan Kelly would not be one of the stars that Charlie made.
But yeah, listen, more broadly, yeah, of course.
I wish everybody was rallying full-throated defenses of Erica Kirk, but I'm not also going to, I'm not going to demand that everybody in the influencer show, podcast sphere make this their war.
I'm not going to demand that they make this their war too, right?
Megan, I think, you know, again, she's a friend.
She's somebody I just did her show.
I've talked with her offline.
I feel like I understand her perspective on things.
Do I disagree with it?
Certainly.
I wish she would have been more, you know, yeah, the young mother line, I think, was regrettable in a massive way.
Do I think that she is somehow believing some of the stuff about Erica or turning point?
No, not at all, actually.
You know, she is a, she's kind of got like a bent like Charlie had, where if the pressure comes in to push her to denounce or disavow or to do certain things, it's almost like you're going to drive her in the other direction.
That's just the way that she's kind of wired.
You know, do I wish that she had made this her fight too?
I would love that from her and Tucker and from others.
But they've chosen not to, and I can't control them.
But again, you know, I'm looking at this from a lens of, you know, what do we need to do in this moment of massive maximal tumult and chaos and confusion to be a place and a platform and a rallying point where people like Dave Rubin could come, where people like Megan could come.
You know, so it's like, we've got to, I want to still maintain that.
And the real challenge is now, like, it was in some ways easier before, but how do we do this now?
And it's a real challenge, I'm telling you, because I have my personal emotional response to a lot of this stuff.
And it's not dissimilar from yours, Dave.
And then I have this, what I believe is a sacred duty to try my best, as difficult as it is in the midst of these emotions, to honor what Charlie would have us do.
And I don't know exactly what Charlie would do all the time.
And I'm sure I get it wrong.
And Lord knows I hear about it on Twitter or social media, but I am trying my best, as is Erica, as is the leadership, to try and honor what Charlie would do and put forward that spirit.
Obviously, there's a line.
There is a line.
And I would think Charlie would believe that too.
And you've got to fight back.
And I totally believe in that.
We're trying our best, sort of in the, you know, that famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, right?
If, you know, if you can keep your head when everybody else is losing theirs.
And that's, I think, really the challenge of our moment.
And I am endeavoring to do that every day through prayer.
And I will tell you, like, if you're praying people out there watching this, I can feel the prayers of strangers genuinely.
And I know Erica said the same.
And so keep praying for us for wisdom, for guidance in this time.
It's not easy because everybody's going crazy different directions.
But I want to maintain what Charlie called the higher ideals and that statesmanship and philosopher and do our best to institute that and the way we react to this, the way we respond to this, do it with prudence, do it with wisdom, and keep our heads about.
If Charlie was with us in this moment and putting aside the influencer wars and the flame wars and all that kind of stuff, if he was realizing where we were middle of March, midterms come in, a lot of political craziness, cultural craziness.
What do you think beyond what you just laid out there, the sort of like highest ideal set?
What do you think he would be trying to make everybody understand at the issue level right now so that the midterms don't go awry?
And then Trump, which is who he fought for harder than anybody for 10 years, basically is over six months from now.
It's a question that I ask myself every day, actually, as we kind of keep the Charlie Kirk show going.
And, you know, to go back to your meme, right?
Part of that meme is stay focused on winning.
It's the little town that's about to get demolished by the dam breaking.
And so, yeah, that's kind of what we think a lot about, actually.
And, you know, I think about the Iran conflict and war that's going on.
You know, we took some hot water on the show.
It wasn't me personally.
It was actually some of the guys that were on the show that said it this way, but I was in the clip, so I'm lumped in.
And it was, we're sort of saying, you know, here's probably how Charlie would have reacted, right?
And I think you need to have a lot of humility when you say those things because he's not here and he's not reacting to all of the incoming and all the data points to form his next and newest opinion.
So you're kind of going off what we experienced with Midnight Hammer, for example.
And I saw that up close.
We were white-knuckling together.
We were trying to work through how to message on it, what to say about it, what to think about it, what to feel about it.
And what I can tell you from Midnight Hammer, because that actually happened, I actually saw it, is he was very nervous about that.
He was nervous about it, not because he loves Iran.
He thought Iran was a tyrannical regime and an evil regime that sowed terror and chaos and destruction and death.
He was nervous about it from a coalitional standpoint because he knew that kids on campus don't like war.
And they were one of the things that he would tell kids, and they would react very positively about on campus was that Trump is the peace president, that he's got to know new wars, that this is, this is, you're not going to get drafted into World War III.
And so when Midnight Hammer came, he was nervous, right?
He was nervous that we're losing the young boat that had come so far our direction in 2024 to things like Epstein, the files and the binders with Pam Bondi.
And he was worried that we're going to lose it because of Iran.
So Charlie worked privately behind the scenes to try and push for restraints, for peace.
Is there more of a diplomatic option that you could pursue?
Ultimately, we know what happened.
Trump set the B-2 bombers.
They hit Ford O and some other sites.
And Charlie looked straight in the camera.
I remember he was on Fox with Jesse Kelly or Jesse Waters at that point.
And he said, listen, this is why we worked so hard to get President Trump elected because we trust his instincts not to get us into a forever war, not to get us embroiled in another quagmire in the Middle East.
And he can do this with precision strikes and he can do it this way and that way.
This is a bigger challenge, admittedly.
And, you know, I think about when you back to your question, what is it going to take to win?
And what are we focused on?
You know, I think we have to still, I mean, I am completely uncomfortable every day with the fact that there is essentially a regime change war or something akin to it, right?
You know, that would be, they've said that would be great if they could get somebody in power that they could work with.
I agree.
But I do believe that, and again, humility, I don't know exactly where Charlie would be, but I saw the way this played out with Midnight Hammer, that Charlie would have been rooting for our troops and the success of this operation, and he would have been trying to explain why President Trump did what he did, because he's been consistent since the 1980s on Iran.
Was consistent for a decade that president that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon.
And, you know, so he would be focused on messaging a very difficult thing to message on for our base because there's a whole anti-interventionist part of our coalition.
And we have to be honest about that.
And you saw that with Joe Kent's resignation, right?
It's just going to continue inflaming this piece.
But listen, he would be working on that.
And then he would be doing what he would love to do.
And that's going on campus.
We've tried to do that with Pick Up the Mic campaign tour that we have going around, I think, you know, dozens and dozens of college campuses all across the country.
So we're obviously nobody is going to do it like Charlie, but we've already seen this massive pickup in social media.
And we've got, you know, Nick Friedas, who's doing it.
We've got Will Witt, I think, did our first one, which was fun.
I hadn't seen Will for a long time.
But anyway, so we're going to keep doing the campus stuff.
We're going to keep putting it on social media and making the conservative case for the future of the country.
But also, it's political, right?
It's the door knocking.
It's to chase the vote.
We are hiring hundreds and hundreds of people at Turning Point Action right now to chase ballots in Arizona and Nevada and New Hampshire.
We're trying to build the red wall for 2028 so that the blue wall is now taken out of the way.
And, you know, because the way the census has gone and population moves, if you take New Hampshire, the blue wall is off the board.
They could sweep the northern Midwest and they still can't win a presidency.
So we're working on these things every day.
We have to stay focused on working and winning and doing the hard work that pays off in the end.
So that's what we're trying to do.
That's why we're trying to stay focused on those and not getting embroiled in the feuding and the hot shots.
Because ultimately, if we're going to save the country, it's going to happen in quiet ways, in less dramatic ways.
It's going to happen when you knock on somebody's door and get them to turn in their ballot.