Sean Hannity discusses a powerful "awakening" among America's youth and faith communities following Charlie Kirk's assassination, as explored in Selena Zito's Washington Examiner piece. Zito details the surge of young people, from diverse backgrounds, flocking to places of worship and Turning Point USA chapters over 32,000 new requests since Kirk's death. Sean frames this as a pivotal cultural moment, echoing through mothers at soccer games and local gun stores, where first-time buyers seek protection and purpose. Zito highlights how Kirk's boldness and faith have inspired a new wave of civic engagement, echoing similarly after the attempt on Donald Trump's life. This matters because it signals a generational shift in political and spiritual resolve amid the nation's growing fears and division.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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In just a minute, we're going to be joined by our friend Selena Zito.
And she has a great piece out in the Washington Examiner, The Awakening Fuse Coming.
And she talks at length about already the impact of Charlie Kirk on young people, his message.
I mean, I spent most of last weekend watching videos of Charlie and the things that he was saying to younger people that really, it kind of takes a younger person to say it to them.
And it was so impactful.
And anyway, the article, she goes into great specificity and detail.
And, you know, young people distraught over this.
Remember, kids in college today, they were not alive during 9-11-01.
And this has impacted a lot of kids in a massive way.
And she describes what happened at the Sanctuary Church and how, you know, busloads and busloads of kids, you know, were going there.
Pastor Jason Howard was taken aback by the size, the scope, the number of young people that came out on Sunday for service.
He said, I'll be honest with you, I'm in my 40s, so I was caught off guard by the response from people who were in my church in their 20s.
They were much more in tune with Charlie's influence than I was.
His assistant pastor was very much tuned in.
He's 22 years old, and his immediate reaction was to the spontaneity of all this, is that we're going to pray.
And the day after Charlie was assassinated, he had a whole bunch of people just gather in his backyard praying.
Selena Zito is now with us.
Her book, by the way, she was, you know, right next to President Trump.
She was right there at Butler in PA and wrote her number one New York Times best-selling book, Butler.
If you haven't read it, please get a copy.
The untold story of the near assassination of Donald Trump and the fight for America's heartland.
And now we live in this assassination culture.
Selena, first congratulations on being number one on the New York Times.
It was great to have you on at the time.
It's always great to have you on.
And I appreciate your time.
And I thought this article was really deep and profound.
Thank you so much.
And thanks for having me on about the book.
And I think this book is very relevant and important because one of the first experiences I had after President Trump was shot was I went out on one of my grandchildren's soccer games, right?
There's a bunch of suburban soccer moms there.
By the way, for the record, Selena's not old enough to be a grandmother.
I'm just saying.
They were all sort of lined up, and I would see them all the time because I go to my grandchildren's soccer games.
I had no idea what their political affiliation was or their faith, right?
But they were, on paper, they should have been terrorist voters, right?
College educated, live in the suburbs, right?
And upper middle class.
I was stunned, and I detailed this in this book and interviewed these young women about the amount of women who had MAGA hats on, red MAGA hats, just two days after the president was shot.
And so we would get into a conversation, and I'm like, you know, I have no idea what your affiliation was.
And they're like, yeah, we were always afraid, Chrissy, the one girl's name was Chrissy.
I was sort of always afraid to put it out there.
But my attitude now is if he can take a bullet from me, I can wear a hat and be bold about it.
And I'm seeing the same thing happening post Charlie's assassination in a really profound way.
And I'll give you two examples.
First is that story that I wrote.
I mean, these kids just came, and we're not talking like, you know, lily white suburbs.
We're in the city of Pittsburgh in the Hill District, a historic black neighborhood in Pittsburgh.
And they are coming by the busloads of every size, shape, and color.
And they needed to be somewhere, right?
They needed, these are kids that are out of faith or have just come to faith.
And they needed to be somewhere with purpose because they saw him in two ways.
They may not have always agreed with everything he said politically, but they loved how bold he was with his faith.
And that was something that was very, very important.
Selena, did you see this?
Over 32,000 requests for new Turning Point USA campus chapters have been filed since Charlie Kirk's death.
32,000.
And the message is even going higher.
I mean, and the requests are going higher day by day.
I mean, this service that's, I was planning on going out there.
I'm not going to be able to make it in Glendale this weekend, but they will seat 70 plus thousand people out there.
Yeah.
And there's two little, two teenage kids here on the street who are starting one at the local high school.
I spoke at a turning point event in Butler, Pennsylvania this summer, and it was at Slippery Rock University, and it was jam-packed.
Like, it was jam-packed.
And there were kids everywhere.
So this is, and as I note in the story, this awakening I have noticed began last summer.
And we began among young people.
And I kept, and I write it in the book, but I kept reporting it as well, telling people, like, y'all aren't paying attention to these young people.
They're here.
They're at the Trump rallies, right?
They see the intertwine messages from protecting religious liberty to Republic conservative populism.
And it's a message that hits them.
It's something that's been missing.
Last night, I sat for 90 minutes of my little grandson's flag football practice.
And the amount of mothers that have been, suburban mothers, again, different group of mothers, talking about what happened to Charlie Kirk.
These are women in their mid-30s who have little boys that were playing flag football who were talking about they're thinking about homeschooling now.
They don't like what they see from the influences from these teachers.
They're thinking they're devastated by what they're seeing that other community leaders, like doctors and nurses are.
And they're mad.
They're not just sad.
They're mad.
And I don't think that people understand the force that they have awakened with, not just in his assassination, but also in how they have behaved afterwards, whether it is denying it or encouraging it to happen to other people that are conservative populace.
I don't like outside events because nobody's going to be able to afford a secret service type of protection, which is what you would need if you're doing an outside event.
So I'm urging people, you got to go inside, make sure everybody gets magged before they come in.
You can do a sweep before of an inside area and make it secure.
And then, you know, then go in and do your event.
You know, at that point, you know, I also recommend that you be on a stage, that you be elevated and not on the same level as the people that are in the room because they can rush you.
And, you know, at that point, you're going to have people offstage.
I've had that type of security many, many times in my life.
Yes.
And instead of recoiling, and that's a really important point, Sean, instead of recoiling, and I've remembered reporting all day, it'll probably be out on Friday, about the amount of women who have gone to local gun stores just in western Pennsylvania as first-time gun owners and wanting to be and signing up for training has been through the roof.
I think the key word there is training.
Over the years, people know I've had a pistol carry permit my whole life, even in New York City.
And that's hard to get.
If you get enough death threats, I even had one when I lived in New York, believe it or not.
I turned it in when I moved to Florida.
However, I mean, it's hard to get, and you really have to make a compelling case while you need one, and you get enough death threats.
I guess I passed the threshold, Selena.
I guess I'm not that light, but I mean, it's kind of scary out there.
I urge everybody to have something.
I mean, I have, obviously, I carry, I have a six-hour P320, and I also carry Burner.
I carry the new CL launcher.
It's a non-lethal, very effective technology way to incapacitate any perpetrator.
So I urge people, they're advertisers on the show, and I believe in it.
I'm the same way.
Same person, get death threats all the time.
People don't know, those of us that are in the public eye, that this happens with regularity.
Oh, yeah.
Because we don't, because we don't talk about it.
We just keep it to ourselves.
You don't want to call attention to it.
That is absolutely right.
And yeah, so the gun shops that I've been talking to said, you know, all of these people are being very responsible.
They want to learn.
They don't want to just buy a gun.
They want to understand how to work it.
And most of the gun shops that I've talked to have have target practice behind their buildings, right?
And so they go right to a professional.
But people just don't feel safe among their neighbors.
Like, think about that, Sean.
Think about the amount of doctors we have seen and nurses and people that teach our children and our grandchildren that have not just said, oh, I didn't like him.
Like, so what if someone says that?
I don't care.
But have just said, like, I wish the rest of them would die too.
It's like, oh, wait a minute.
You're talking about me.
You're talking about me, your patient.
And it's very chilling.
The amount of hatred we've seen, what's your reaction to it?
I've chronicled a lot of it.
You know, I didn't cry after Butler when you and I have talked about that.
I wondered when it would happen.
I think a lot of that had to do with sort of I had to work immediately, right?
I had to work in the moment.
So I was never given that space to consume what I experienced.
But I'll tell you what, I cried my eyes out on Wednesday, first for Charlie and Erica, and then for the young people he influenced.
But then as I saw the hatred come out, it broke me.
I can't believe there are people out there that can think like that.
There are plenty of people that I don't agree with, maybe even don't like.
I would never think about saying something like that.
When you think about what you lived through at Butler, being right there in the front row, right near the president when the shot rang out, we now know, by the way, the distance of a millimeter more profoundly than ever.
And you think back to that day and how close Donald Trump came to being assassinated right in front of your eyes.
Yeah.
And I relive that moment every night when I say my prayers.
And I relive the conversation that I had with him the next day along with that.
And that's when he talks about God, when he talks about divine intervention.
What was my purpose, Selena?
Why am I still here?
I never ever turn my head.
I never put a chart down, at least not on that side, and never in the beginning, sometimes at the end.
And he talked profoundly about how his faith was moved in that moment.
And I can't imagine if both of them work on right now.
I can't even imagine.
I've had this conversation with him myself.
And I would argue, having known him for 30 years, that day, that moment changed him in every good way, to be very honest.
And we have had conversations with it.
You know, I talked to him.
He has not looked at the video of Charlie getting shot.
He says he won't look at it.
You know, I understand that.
And you know what?
I was thinking about John.
You know, one of the things that really has gutted the president and motivated him to be so purposeful in everything that he's done is not the fact that he was shot at, but the fact that Corey Compatori died.
Someone who went there that day to celebrate him, to celebrate President Trump with his family.
And in many ways, that's what Charlie was doing.
He was celebrating the movement.
He was talking about things in a very, and so I'm not shocked at all that that's his response, because in many ways, Charlie and Corey Compatori were there for reasons that are very closely associated with President Trump.
I can't imagine how hard this is on him.
I think we now are officially living in an assassination culture, and we better be very aware of it.
And the left really does need to examine their consciences collectively and tone this rhetoric down, as John Fetterman said, and stop with the Nazi talk and allegations.
Selena, love you.
You're the best.
By the way, if you've not read her book, Butler, number one New York Times bestseller, we have a link on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores all around the country.
It's called Butler, the Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland.
We appreciate you as always, Selena.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Love you, brother.
You're the best.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue on the other side.
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There is a beautiful part, and we are not going to be able to calculate, through the prism of history we will, the magnitude and the impact of what has happened with this assassination of Charlie Kirk.
We just, but all the evidence as we just discussed with Selena Zito is there.
I want to play a montage.
People going to church and saying how their churches were packed because of what we all have been living through.
Listen.
I have been to church like twice my entire life.
And since Charlie Kirk is unable to go to church this Sunday, I'm going to go and take his seat for him.
And we'll see how it goes.
I didn't know Charlie Kirk never met that guy before in my life.
And something else that I've never done before in my life is believe in God.
I'm going to wear this suit to church.
I'm going to go to church.
I'm going to try to be a better father, husband, and leader for my family.
They deserve that.
Charlie Kirk, look what you did.
No parking.
No parking at all.
None.
I had to park like five blocks away from church because everyone wants to come now.
Amen.
Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Charlie.
Went to church today.
It was the first time in 20 years for me and Devin.
It was the first time for our children.
After the events of the last week, Devin and I had a lot of talking that was happening between us about the type of life that we want for ourselves and how we want our boys to be.
You know, we talk about Charlie Kirk.
We talk about a man of God who was not afraid to stand in his convictions in anything.
And we are raising three boys that will one day be men.
And we want those boys to be as strong in their convictions as Charlie Kirk was.
Wow.
How powerful is that?
You know, I will say I love my parents for so many different reasons.
And I know that they had a much harder life than me.
And I know I stand on their shoulders and the shoulders of my four grandparents that came to this country legally from Ireland.
And they grew up poor.
My parents grew up poor.
And my parents sacrificed so much.
My mother, prison guard, work in double shifts.
The main reason was to give their kids a better education.
And that manifested itself by sending all their kids to Catholic schools.
And I went to Catholic schools for four years.
And whether I knew it was happening or not, it did happen.
And that is that those values and belief in God grew inside of me, whether I knew it was happening or not.
And as I got older, then I just embraced it more and more and more.
And again, Christians, the first thing that they will acknowledge is we've all sinned and fallen short.
We just want to be better people.
And we're asking for forgiveness for sins and we're asking for help to be better people.
And the fact that so many people, you know, misrepresent what it means to be a Christian is a sore point for me because, oh, Christians think they're perfect.
No, they just have a belief system and they have a desire to be their best person, their best self.
And to hear that is pretty amazing.
And if when people interview me and they'll say, well, well, how did you survive where so many others, you know, have not been able to survive as long as you have in the industry that you work in?
You know, I go back to my parents.
I go back to the values of hard work and faith that they instilled in me.
And they never took vacations because they were spending all that money on Catholic schools they could barely afford.
And that my belief and my faith in God is the other thing.
I've said this on the air before, not new, but I'm just sharing it with you now.
And that foundation is at the heart of, I think, in an industry where, you know, all those years I worked in restaurants, 10 years and 10 years in construction, nobody wants your autograph.
Nobody wanted a selfie.
Although selfies weren't a thing back then.
And while I might get, you know, requests now, which I'm very grateful to always accommodate because I feel grateful to this audience for giving me this microphone and that camera every night.
But it's really those things that have kept me somewhat grounded.
Linda would argue, maybe not fully grounded, but that's a different issue for a different day.
But, you know, my faith grows stronger as I get older.
And I don't think I, you know, there's a belief in the Bible that of yourself you can do nothing, and it's true.
And that every, you know, I consider my life an undeserved life.
And I know many of many of us, life is a gift and it's precious.
And Charlie left us way too young.
Get to our busy phones: 800-941-Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, Mike in California.
Hey, Mike, how are you?
Glad you called.
Great, Sean.
I just wanted to start with: I'm glad you were talking about what you just spoke about just now.
And I'm a teacher and an ordained minister in California, third grade.
I just feel like the left is really trying to paint Charlie as a political commentator.
They keep saying that, or political firebrand, political, political, political.
But what he is, what he is to us who believe is he's a Christian martyr, and he's an American Christian martyr, the most prominent one since Martin Luther King Jr., which they've tried, I teach history.
And when you read the history books, it's Dr. Martin Luther King now Jr.
And I have to tell him, well, it's Reverend Doctor.
I have to tell him what he had a doctorate of, and you have to insert that because they're trying to wipe Christianity from the face of America.
And it's a total disservice to him and loss of honor to his memory to not call him an American Christian martyr because he died for his faith.
Everything he talked about all the time was rooted in faith.
Just like you said, your morals are rooted in your faith.
He was constantly like he talked about the nature of God.
He defended Christianity.
He talked about the nature of man against transgender indoctrination, which is, I believe, religious dogma in itself.
Because if you ask a transgender person, give me an immutable characteristic of a man or a woman, they can't a physical one.
It all goes to metaphysical.
And metaphysics is a department of religion.
So they are trying to indoctrinate with religious dogma, and they've been successful establishing religion in the name of government all over the place.
And I feel like that needs to get fought on that.
But my main point today is just that: that we need to refer to Charlie as an American Christian martyr.
See, but this is why Charlie was such a shock to the system when he'd go into these hostile environments and he'd talk about faith and God and values and old-fashioned values about how men should treat women, not going to frat parties and throwing up in the bushes after.
I mean, I have my rules for my kids when they went to college.
If I told them in the way I told it to them, you would laugh, I promise.
And he would do it.
And the shocking thing is, is because schools barely mention God anymore, it was a shock to the system.
And because they are indoctrination centers, it was a shock to the system.
And that's what made it all the more powerful.
It was also a moment of affirmation for kids that did have these values but felt a need to be quiet.
Anyway, Mike, I appreciate your call, man.
Thank you.
You make great points.
Quick break, right back.
We'll get to your calls.
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Sharon is in Kentucky.
Sharon apparently disagrees with me, Sharon, but I am glad you called.
How are you?
Hi, Sean.
Listened to you for 20 plus years.
Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate the points Rachel was making yesterday and give you something else to think about in regards to your stance on professors and colleges.
She was completely right about everything she said.
And I ask you this.
What do you think Charlie would do?
He would not want you to just, he would not, in any sense of the word, just not do anything or say anything for a grade, I don't think.
It's what he was all about.
I'm so devastated that he's gone.
But I want you to change your stance.
I want you to stop giving it on the radio as just go along, get along, to get your grade, and then get out.
Fight it.
Fight the professor.
So let me be clear, though, because you're not the only one that has challenged me on this.
And I'm actually very, very open to listening to what you have to say.
I'm talking about very, very unique circumstances.
I'm talking about, you know, it is so hard.
All right, if we start with the idea, and this comes from the Latin derivative, I did learn Latin.
I did go to a seminary, high school, and we did study theology.
I did go to Mass every day.
But one of the few words I remember in Latin is educred, education to bring forth from within.
I think that's predicated on a belief that everybody is born with God's talent.
Everybody that I know that's a fireman, a policeman, a teacher, a doctor, you know, every one of them, without exception, a nurse, they are called to do so.
It's been a dream of theirs, a pilot.
They're called to do so.
They've wanted to do it their whole life.
So I'm really, I'm talking about very specific, unique circumstances where people have this desire, this calling that they want to serve and be a teacher or a doctor, and they want to get into medical school or law school or business school or postgraduate school.
And they know if they have one of these crazy left-wing teachers and they challenge them, that it is going to significantly one bad grade can make the difference between getting into that school or not.
I'm not going to condemn the kid that says, all right, I'll play the game.
I know I'm playing a game.
And I'm not going to be critical of them for doing that.
If kids have the freedom, I made the choice in college myself to fight my teacher, the guy that said he's a Marxist and communist.
And it took up the entire second half of the semester because I couldn't take it anymore.
And Reagan was president.
We fought about Reagan.
The guy, you know, it was, everyone was like rolling their eyes every time I'd start in with the guy.
So I hope you understand I'm talking about a very unique circumstance when people are pursuing their calling in life.
And I don't think I explained it as well as I meant it.
And if you still disagree with me, tell me.
Yes, I do still disagree with you.
I am a critical care registered nurse.
And what I will say is, you know, what you went through many, many, many years ago, it's changed now.
Charlie made a movement.
He's caused a movement.
And these young Gen Zs, they're on a roll.
And I want them to keep being on a roll.
I want them to be outspoken.
I want them to express themselves.
And I want you to back them up and do what Charlie would have done.
Well, one way to back them up, and this is part of Turning Point that I really support, is they have for high school kids and for college kids, you know, what do you do?
How do you fight back against woke teachers and indoctrination?
And I would urge kids to go to the Turning Point website and learn how to do that.
And that is an alternative for sure.
I would say that's a great option.
I agree with you.
I think that, you know, you can respectfully disagree with your professor.
And if he still causes you problems, you can take it to the proper authorities.
And if worst comes to worst, Sean, take the class over.
I am a critical care nurse.
I've done this my whole life.
It's all I ever wanted to do.
But there is no way I would have put up with a teacher preventing me or, you know, confronting me with a Marxist attitude.
We have to keep this going.
We have to keep this going forward.
Listen, I love your fire.
I'm mostly agreeing with you.
I'm just not going to be critical of the kid that has a dream that would be destroyed.
I'm not going to be critical of that.
I hope that kind of answers your question.
800-941-Sean is our number.
And people make great points on this.
It's just so hard.
I've seen this for kids to get into some of these post-college programs.
It's so competitive, especially like medical school.
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