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Sept. 11, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
37:27
Jason Chaffetz on Charlie Kirk Assassination - September 10th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
We have terrible news.
If you're just joining us, Charlie Kirk was at an event earlier today, Utah Valley University, and he was shot.
And Charlie Kirk is now dead at the age of 31 after the shooting at this event.
Turning Point USA founder, CEO.
He's been a friend of mine personally.
Very hard to take in Arm Utah.
Another friend of mine, Jason Chavitz, former congressman, was at the event today.
He joins us now.
Congressman, you were there.
Tell us what happened.
I mean, it was just one of the most horrific days of my life.
I'll remember it forever for all the wrong reasons because Charlie's a friend of ours.
You can't be in Republican politics and not know Charlie Kirk and be friends with him.
And I had traded text messages about this event he had.
I went, but parts of my family went.
We were all there.
And it's a beautiful day.
It's noon.
He comes out.
There's 2,000 students or so in what's called the quad.
Utah Valley University is actually, even though we don't have a football team, so nobody really knows who they are outside of Utah, but it's our state's largest university with 40,000 some odd students.
That's it.
It's bigger than Brigham Young.
Yeah, by about 10,000.
Between BYU and UBU, there are roughly 100,000 students, but full-time equivalents are about 70,000 between the two.
So it's a very, and I'm guessing at the event, there were probably 95% of those people were younger than the age of 30.
And exactly what Charlie Kirk and Turning Point does, which is, you know, prove me wrong.
And let's have a dialogue.
I mean, Charlie, as you know, always talked about if we can't talk, then it turns to violence.
And he answered the first question, Sean.
So he comes out, he's throwing out the hat, getting the crowd all riled up.
They're chanting USA.
They were chanting Charlie Kirk.
And then he sat down as he does.
And in doing so, the first person came to the microphone and asked him questions and challenged him about religion.
And he went very much out of his way to say, I love the LDS faith, you know, predominant religion here in Utah is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He said, if you think I'm going to say bad things about the LDS people or Mormons, I'm not going to do that.
But we each have our own faith journey, and we each need to pray, I believe in Jesus Christ.
And he was defending that and supporting that and saying it in a very personal way.
And even though the guy was disagreeing with him, he said, that's your, you know, good luck on your faith, your journey of faith.
And then the second person, about 20 minutes after the hour, or mountain time zone, 1220 or so, the second person came up and started asking, and he said, Charlie, do you know, and I'm paraphrasing, how many mass shootings there have been by people, by transgender people.
And he was basically asking about transgender shootings and mass shootings.
And then there was a shot, and it was a loud shot.
And I've been around guns enough to know it was a firearm.
And it was shot.
I saw Charlie fall back and to his left.
And, you know, now we've learned the news that he wasn't able to survive that.
But the crowd, when he was shot, they all kind of ducked down.
People started screaming and then they started running.
And, you know, like I said, I had family members there.
And three other members of her family were also there.
And it was scary.
And it's sad.
And now it also makes me mad.
It's infuriating as well.
I have all the emotions.
Jason, it's Lindy here.
Sean had to step away for one moment to take a call.
And I'm assuming you can understand where that call came from.
Yes.
What you're saying is just heartbreaking.
We all knew Charlie.
We were all friends with Charlie.
We also have on the line right now, Buck Sexton, who was also very, very close and is very close to the Trump family and to Charlie and anybody, like you said, who worked in conservative politics.
I mean, we all know Charlie.
And he was just larger than life.
Buck, I know we've been texting all day.
We are just beyond words.
I'm in shock.
And, you know, I understand that the country, you know, we had our president was shot, but we knew he was okay right away.
You know, you knew he raised a fist and it was, we got confirmation and Trump pulled through.
And I think for so many of us, I mean, I know for me and many people I've been texting with, we just thought Charlie was going to pull through too.
And I can't, I had to have many people confirm.
It's still hard to believe that this happened.
It's a dark moment for the country.
I think unfortunately, we wake up in a different country tomorrow, Linda.
This is going to affect many things in our lives in deeply negative ways.
There's so many thoughts that I think running through all of our heads.
I mean, also, we tear up just thinking about Charlie's wife and his beautiful kids and the loss that they've had because Charlie wanted to do what we all knew he was so gifted at and so dedicated to, which was just engaging.
Charlie never threatened anybody.
Charlie never crossed any lines.
Charlie was, let's talk, let's discuss.
And in so many ways, that's just at the heart of how our country is even able to function.
And he was winning in the best possible way.
He was winning the culture.
He was winning the debate.
He was leading this charge and was such a powerful figure in the Trump movement for people and for young people.
And, you know, I would tell people that I would come across, you know, Linda, in our work, you know, that with young people on campus and say, oh, you know, do you know Charlie Kirk?
And I'd be like, you'd say, yeah, I've known Charlie for a decade.
It's, oh, I was like, he was such an inspiration to them.
And I sit here and as I'm saying all these things about him and we're doing a eulogy for Charlie.
I mean, Linda, they assassinated our friend.
They assassinated our friend speaking in a college campus.
I think honestly, the thing that I feel the most afraid of and the most upset with, and I think both you and Jason would agree with this, is it feels like there's a target on everybody's back.
It feels like we're in a place where when you speak your mind on the right, they come at you and they come at you in a way that is frightening.
You know, Charlie never advocated for violence against anybody.
He always, always spoke with love, his faith in Jesus Christ and his opinion.
And you know what he did?
He opened the mic to hear everybody else's opinion.
I mean, I just, I mean, look at you, Jason.
You're there with your children.
This is something you can take your kids to to hear open discourse and conversation instead of screaming and shouting and the Antifa nonsense that goes all over the place.
This is a place for conversation to try to understand and get to a place where we can all live a better life through Christ, through loving one another.
And now his poor wife, Erica, their children, both under five.
I mean, I just am, I think all of us feel the same way.
Jason, you've been amazing today.
I don't know how you're doing what you're doing, having been there firsthand.
How are your children?
Here's Karen.
You know, my kids, quite frankly, you know, in politics, I get to run into some of the most interesting people in the world, you know, being in Congress, being on Fox.
I got relatives.
They're probably most interested in seeing Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk.
And that's who they're excited about.
That's who they want to get their picture taken with or spend time or even just say that they shook their hand.
And that's why he had thousands of people think about this.
You have thousands of people on a Wednesday, beautiful day at noon, to do what is not taught in the classroom, which is to have a dialogue.
And as you both mentioned, the message of Charlie Kirk was, look, we got to be able to talk to each other.
If not, it's going to result in violence.
But I'm still emotional.
I'm still, I'm sure, in shock of it all.
But the violence seems to go one way.
And I'm just saying that if you have a conservative voice and you want to be able to express yourself and just live, love your country and freedom, I know that's not the case.
I know there are people on all kinds of both sides of the aisle, but I don't think when this chapter's written, I just immediately, my gut reaction, again, I'm emotionally close to this at the moment, but do you think it's a coincidence?
A guy that comes in the microphone is asking questions about transgender violence and shootings, and then a shot rings out.
I don't.
I don't think it's a coincidence.
I think it's pretty sad.
What I'm frustrated with right now here in real time is the lack of communication from local law enforcement.
There was a very light footprint.
Charlie has a personal protective detail, but we're talking a handful of people and we're talking 2,000 people in a crowd in an open space with no security checks.
I mean, it's a college campus, you know, and it's Utah.
We're not used to shootings, period, let alone something an assassination like this.
You could go for a long, long time and just not have a shooting in Utah County.
We just don't have it.
And so they got to find this shooter.
There's so many videotapes rolling.
You tell me they don't know who it is yet?
I completely agree with you.
Congressman and Buck, I know you guys are getting a lot of people calling you.
Can I bother you to stay with us through the break and for a few more words on the other side here?
Sure.
Thank you.
Hannity.
The Sean Hannity Show.
We just had a major storm hit where my studios are and the line went down, hopefully just temporarily.
Buck Sexton is with us today.
You know, Buck, we both knew Charlie so well.
If you're just joining us today, Charlie Kirk has died at the age he was shot and killed today at an event at Utah Valley University in a speech that he was giving, Turning Point USA.
This is what he did.
I mean, he built an incredible operation where thousands and thousands of kids all around the country kind of had a safe space in these indoctrination centers for the left wing.
And we don't know.
The shooter is still on the loose.
The assassin is on the loose.
Buck, I did have an opportunity.
I did talk briefly with the president.
He was pretty shaken up by it, as you would imagine.
Charlie had a great relationship with President Trump.
And it is just sad in every way.
He's 31 years old, was 31, two young children, wife he leaves behind.
And, you know, and then we have the radical left.
I just saw that, you know, J.B. Pritzker puts out on the shooting, political violence, unfortunately, is ramped up in this country.
And I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country.
I think the president's rhetoric often ferments it.
How do you go from the death of an assassination of a 31-year-old young man whose only fault is he is a conservative?
How do you go from there to saying something like that within two hours of this young man dying?
Sean, it's sad beyond words what's happened.
It's also enraging.
There is something demonic that is not just within the Democrat Party and the left in this country, but I think unfortunately we have seen is ascendant.
And this has now shown us a pattern.
I mean, use that word, assassin, and that is the word we need to understand and need to utilize here.
Charlie Kirk was my friend.
He was your friend, as you said.
He was close with President Trump.
He was best friends with Dom Jr., the president's son.
You know, he was winning.
He was convincing.
He was bringing over the youth, young people in America to the side of just rationality, sanity, constitutionalism, being reasonable.
And there's something deeply sick and wrong with the left.
And I think we need to just start to understand that this is what we are up against.
The rhetoric that they use, calling Trump a Nazi and saying all these things, and therefore by extension, saying people like, you know, defaming people like Charlie, there are maniacs out there who act on this stuff, and they think that they're getting signals.
They think that they're getting the approval of the loudest and most powerful voices in the Democrat Party.
And I think, Sean, you're talking about a rifle shot at 200 yards.
The shooter is still on the loose right now.
This was an assassination.
That is not an easy shot at 200 yards on the first shot.
This was planned out.
This was someone who decided that they were going to engage in one of the worst acts of evil we have seen in American politics in decades.
And I'm just in shock.
And I miss my friend.
And I feel terrible for his family.
I feel terrible for the people who were counting on Charlie, everyone in Turning Point.
And honestly, so many people across America, they relied on him.
And they knew that he was there.
And they knew that he was making the arguments and fighting that good fight and that he was stolen from us by an assassin's bullet.
We wake up, Sean, in a darker, uglier, scarier country tomorrow.
And I don't know a way around that.
My own family is asking me, what do we do?
I don't have any answers.
I don't think anybody does right now, but this is going to have reverberations for a long time.
And it just has made it everything worse.
And I couldn't be more upset for Charlie, for his family, and for everybody who believed in him and what he was doing and his mission.
If you think of everything that he's been so successful at doing, it's mind-numbing.
Again, at the age of 31, the most repulsive part of this is it's not just the J.B. Pritzkers of the world.
You know, it wasn't even an hour from the time that he was shot.
And over at MSDNC, you know, on the Katie Tur show, you know, you have Matthew Dowd, one of their political analysts, suggesting, oh, his rhetoric made him a target of violence.
And hate speech inevitably led to him being shot.
And he's one of the most divisive young figures.
Why?
Because he's a conservative and he goes on a college campus and he offers a voice to people that feel that they don't have a voice on a college campus.
And then to take it a step further, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, lead to hateful actions.
They are rationalizing and justifying all of this.
And these comments were made before we knew he was dead.
We knew how bad it was because we had the video that showed the blood gushing from Charlie's neck, you know, the second he was shot.
And this is where the minds of some people go.
We'll take a break here.
We'll come back on the other side.
Buck Sexton is with us.
We'll try and get some calls in as well.
Get our line back up as we continue.
sad day for America.
All
right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-SHAWN.
I know a lot of you want to weigh in on all of this.
If you're just joining us, I'm sure the entire country knows by now that Turning Point, USA founder, CEO, friend of the program, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated today at an event at Utah Valley University, which is beyond surprising.
And the shooter, the assassin, is at large.
President Trump, I did speak briefly with him, said the great even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.
No one understood or had the heart of the youth of the U.S., of the United States of America, better than Charlie.
He was loved, admired by all, especially by me.
He's no longer with us.
Melania, my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica, his family, two young children.
Charlie, we love you.
I can't believe the shooter is still at large, but he is.
And of course, the left predictably is going out doing the things that they do.
Let me just play how bad it got.
We didn't even know whether he had survived the assassination attempt by the time that MSDNC was saying this on the air.
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.
Charlie Kirk is a divisive figure, polarizing, lightning rod, whatever term you want to use.
Why?
Well, he's one of MAGA's most prominent voices online.
He hosts a near daily podcast.
He opines on almost everything.
He's been very closely aligned with the president since his initial run for office in 2015, 2016.
And his ties to Trump really elevated his own brand.
He was really quite young as an activist when the president launched his initial campaign.
And he has kind of ridden along with MAGA since 2016.
As we were just talking about a moment ago with Alan, after one of the Doge employees was allegedly attacked in Washington, D.C., that's what Donald Trump used as a justification to send in federal troops into Washington, D.C. to get things under control, the carjacking situation.
He used that.
And I know it's hard to predict the future, Mark, but you can imagine the administration using this as a justification for something.
Then we have the dopey governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.
Political violence, unfortunately, has ramped up in this country.
I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country.
I think the president's rhetoric often foments it.
It's beyond the pale.
It's, you know, a lot of these comments are made so cold, callous.
What did I say on this program after the president gave a speech before a joint session of Congress?
I said that Democrats couldn't stand for the family of Lake and Riley.
They couldn't stand for the family of little Jocelyn Nungari.
They couldn't stand for a young man who at the time had beaten cancer and became a Secret Service agent that night.
And I said, if that's the point that people are at in this country, forget politics.
You don't have a heart.
You don't have a soul.
You don't have a conscience.
If this is where your mind goes when a 31-year-old, yeah, outspoken political commentator is assassinated at a university in Utah.
There's something really dark, ugly, twisted, and the missing kip.
It's pretty unbelievable.
Buck Sexton is still with us at the Clay and Buck Show and friend of the program, also a friend of Charlie Kirk.
I know this is personal for you, Buck, but I also know something else.
You're scheduled to give a public speech tomorrow.
If I told you the text that I'm getting from friends and family and associates about security and be careful, and you're getting the same thing, I'm sure.
Sean, this terrible assassin at 200 yards to hit somebody in the neck, this person trained most likely, planned this out, knew what they were doing, and from a tactical perspective, and is still on the loose.
But there's also even beyond that, there's the reality that this is not happening this horrible and tragic assassination of our friend Charlie, which is still, I mean, it's just, we're all in shock.
I mean, I've had when Lindo was texting me about this and I kept saying, Linda, tell me it's not confirmed.
And my hands were going numb.
And we're sitting here, we're thinking about how to process this, but it didn't happen in a vacuum, Sean.
You and I know that there were two assassination attempts against President Trump, but there have also been many violent attempts.
If you were to go back, coming from the left against people on the right, I think of the shooting that happened, what, in 2018, tried to be a mad, that guy tried to do a mass assassination of members of Republicans, specifically Republican and conservative members of Congress, yelling, this is for healthcare.
I mean, you and I have both spoken to Senator Rand Paul about that.
He was there on that day.
Steve Scales got hit, almost died.
The left has a violence problem, a big one.
And it's because they say that Trump is Hitler.
It's because they say that fascism is here.
There is nothing like that on the right.
There is nothing that exists in our political discourse that goes anywhere near the kinds of defamatory and insane statements that they make.
And I think everyone's tired of it.
Sean, the problem I'm seeing right now for a lot of people is just trying to, one, process the grief, but also suppress the rage.
They just assassinated one of the most important political figures on the right in this country.
I mean, take apart, step aside for a second.
He's your friend.
He's my friend.
He's friends with everybody that we know in this business.
Everybody that we know in this business.
There was nobody on the right that had any prominence in media and politics who didn't know Charlie.
And everybody liked him.
And they took him out.
They took him out for a reason.
And it's the ugliest and most upsetting thing possible to have happened on a day like today.
And they did this because they want power.
They did this because they want to subvert the movement and the trajectory of the country and what President Trump and his supporters were seeing.
And this is taking the country into a place.
I don't know what it's like tomorrow, Sean.
Everyone's just texting me saying, how's your concealed carry piece?
Do you need me at long you want?
I mean, I've got a bunch.
I know you do too.
But they're just worried now about what the next step is and where the country goes.
And they're trying to process the grief.
It's horrible beyond words.
I am truly worried for the country.
Truly worried for the country right now.
Well, I'm going to get ready and then we'll play for this audience.
I want to play a lot of the anti-Trump rhetoric.
We have montages that we played.
Eric Trump was on earlier and Eric brought up the fact, and somebody else brought up the fact, Eric brought it up, Kathy Griffin with a decapitated head.
Go back to 2016.
Madonna, I think an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
Or think of, you know, when's the last time a president was assassinated?
You know, another idiot actor making a comment.
Never mind the daily rhetoric that comes from the left, and they don't see, you know, they're the first to blame conservatives.
You know, look at Rosie O'Donnell tried to blame the Minneapolis shooting on conservatives.
There was no evidence at all that warranted that observation of those comments.
Let me play, let me, let me, let me play just some of this rhetoric and even, you know, not even knowing that he had been, that he was dead.
The instinct of people is so repulsively grotesque and evil.
Listen.
Charlie Kirk is a divisive figure, polarizing, lightning rod, whatever term you want to use.
Why?
Well, he's one of MAGA's most prominent voices online.
He hosts a near-daily podcast.
He opines on almost everything.
He's been very closely aligned with the president since his initial run for office in 2015, 2016.
And his ties to Trump really elevated his own brand.
He was really quite young as an activist when the president launched his initial campaign.
And he has kind of ridden along with MAGA since 2016 and built.
We're oddly influential with the guy who wants to kill us.
And to our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything, you.
But this is the hallmark of revolution.
Yes, I'm angry.
Yes, I am outraged.
Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
You know, I had a dream the other night about that I was playing golf with Donald Trump and I was standing beside him with a club in my hand and I was, you know, considering my options when I suddenly woke up.
You know, it's one of those dreams where you want to just get back to sleep so you can finish it.
You know?
Put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity.
He'll tear him up.
I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors.
I want you to talk to them whether they're independent or whether they are Republican.
I want you to argue with them and get in their face.
Press always ask me, don't I wish I were debating him?
No, I wish you were in high school.
I could take him behind the gym.
That's what I wish.
What we've got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets.
Ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came together and supported those ideals who have made the difference.
They've marched.
They've bled.
Yes, some of them have died.
This is hard.
Every good thing is.
We have done this before.
We can do this again.
Pause, I'm concerned that T. Potter can go straight to hell.
In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.
Oh, Ivanka's going to be our saving grace.
You know, when he's about to nuke Finland or something, she's going to walk into the bedroom and, you know, daddy.
Daddy.
Don't do it, Daddy.
He's a punk.
He's a dog.
He's a pig.
He's a con, a bull artist, a mutt.
He's an idiot.
He talks how he wants to punch people in the face.
Well, I'd like to punch him in the face.
We are graced with Sarah's presence tonight.
I have to say, I'm a little starstruck.
I love you as Aunt Lydia and the handmaid's tale.
Hey, f that.
Gracious ass.
Why are you even out here?
Trump.
Members of your cabinet that have been booed out of restaurants.
That's just taking up at their house.
He's saying no peace, no sleep.
No peace, no sleep.
And guess what?
We're going to win this battle because while you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don't know the Bible.
God is on our side.
And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant.
I mean, Buck, the rhetoric has been there.
We've all covered it.
We've discussed it in great specificity and detail.
And it's almost like there's been this dehumanizing effect.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't a few people on the right that don't say a lot of dumb stuff, but this is so beyond the pale and it's gone on.
It's almost been normalized in a way.
Do you think that kind of rhetoric has an impact on people that would be responsible for something like today?
Sean, I know it does.
You know it does.
And everyone with us right now knows the same, that the rhetoric they use is wildly irresponsible, that it has led to a whole range of horrific.
I mean, this we're calling it an assassination.
It's also an act of terror.
Let's be clear.
Charlie was killed for political reasons.
This was political violence, politically motivated violence.
This was a terrorist act by an assassin.
And we've seen this in the recent shooting of the church in Minneapolis.
We saw this with the trans shooter in Nashville.
We've seen this, as I said, the baseball diamond in 2018, the two assassination attempts against President Trump.
This country was saved by an inch by President Trump turning his head.
I mean, saved from God knows what was going to happen.
Saved by an inch, Sean.
And today we weren't lucky.
Today we didn't have the hand of God to direct that bullet away at the last second.
And now we deal with the tragic consequences of this.
The rhetoric of the left is absolutely, and let's just, I don't even like necessarily making it about the, it's the Democrat Party.
It's not just the left.
It's not a fringe.
To your point, are there crazy?
Can you find some crazy person who says they're right wing somewhere?
Of course you can.
You and I, though, Sean, are talking about the editorial pages of the New York Times.
It's not in the mainstream of conservatism.
It's not.
It's on the deep, deep fringes of people whose names I probably wouldn't even know, you know, or people that just, you know, I've noticed there's been an attempt to try to, you know, make certain people, you know, part of the conservative movement that are anything but conservative, anything but MAGA, anything but what a Republican stands for.
And, you know, it's a means of associating us with this madness.
I've been on the air on radio since 1987.
I've been on Fox in early October.
It's going to be 30 completed years on the Fox News channel.
And, you know, this kind of rhetoric doesn't come from mainstream conservative.
We're talking about networks that do this regularly.
We're talking about newspapers that do it regularly.
You know, we're talking about the whole Democratic Party that is doing this regularly.
And is it the reason?
I don't know what the reason is.
Nobody, you know, evil does exist.
It does.
But this has been so over the top for so long, sadly, I think we've become immune to a lot of it.
Well, that's definitely the case, Sean, and that's the huge difference that on our side, it's always going to be a completely dishonest comparison when people say, oh, there's violence on the left, and you'll see a lot of this, both sides-ism.
There's no both sides-ism here, or rather, there should be none.
The Democrat rhetoric that you and I are talking about is from the most elevated, the most widespread, and most powerful and well-funded voices in the Democratic Party.
They say that Trump is going to end this country.
They say that Trump is an existential threat.
I'm sure, I mean, I know, I listened to your show, Sean.
You've had to play those clips how many dozens, if not hundreds of times.
Oh, Trump is a threat to democracy.
Well, those same lunatics that are saying that when they say Trump is a threat to democracy, Charlie was in many ways the right-hand man for young people in MAGA.
And there was a clear decision that has been made by people on the left that anything goes to destroy Trump.
We saw that with all the prosecutions and all the just the insanity, with the two assassination attempts against Trump as well.
And now they've assassinated Charlie Kirk.
They're not going to change, though, Sean.
This is the part of it, I don't know where we go from this because at MSNBC, they're going to say, well, you know, political violence is bad, but everybody has a little bit of this going on or something.
By the way, I'm just going to say this.
I got to run.
Buck Sexton, you've been great.
You're a dear friend.
You please be careful.
If you're just joining us, Charlie Kirk, assassinated at Utah Valley University.
We'll have more of our coverage and also coverage tonight at nine on Fox.
We'll continue.
Sean Hannity is what?
Our love, thoughts, prayers for Charlie, his wife, his children, his family.
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