Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated in Utah after being shot once in the neck during a student gathering. President Trump confirmed the death, attributing the attack to the "extreme left," while Elon Musk condemned the violence and Speaker Mike Johnson led prayers amidst Democratic objections. The segment highlights Kirk's influence on campuses against media narratives, briefly touches on alleged judicial bias involving $3.3 million from the MacArthur Foundation, and asserts that his legacy of freedom and meritocracy will endure despite this tragic loss. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Tragic Shooting of Charlie Kirk00:14:47
I come to you with a heavy heart today.
Pretty awful news to talk about.
Somebody who is very important to all of us in the conservative community was shot at this afternoon, one Charlie Kirk.
And this is just a pretty tragic, tragic situation all around.
So President Trump has just confirmed that Charlie Kirk has died following this event.
And yeah, clearly an assassination attempt.
I've known Charlie a long time.
We actually both have the same company that sells advertising in our show, Salem Media.
And I remember the first time I met Charlie, I was struck by how tall he was.
He's just very tall.
He's a big guy and just phenomenal right on camera.
And I'm a good judge of talent, I'd say.
And I said to my producers, I mean, we had him on camera long before I even met him in person, I said, make sure we get him back over and over and over again.
The President of the United States confirming that Charlie Kirk is now dead.
It is believed that this may have been an assassination attempt.
I mean, somebody wanted him dead.
As we understand this, this was one bullet, one shot that was fired, and the president writes that Charlie Kirk is no longer with us.
Let me share with you his post.
He writes, the great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.
No one No one had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.
He was loved and he was admired by all, especially me.
And now he is no longer with us.
Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Eric, and his family.
Charlie, we love you.
So the president, again, sharing this news.
The video that we saw online was pretty telling.
They shot him in the neck.
Blood was everywhere.
Security escorted him off.
I heard he was in surgery.
I heard it did not look good.
They did not think he would make it.
And we've now learned that that is in fact the case.
And this is a guy who just, you know, had so much potential and the world in front of him.
And they, somebody took him out, took him out because he represented just, I think, too much of a threat.
There was just too much, too much going on.
Let me share with you some sound from the network where Charlie's show was actually broadcast every day.
I'm sick over this.
This is all.
He was in the United States government and two personal friends, but he passed a short while ago, wasn't able to survive the blood loss from the wound to his neck.
There'll be some announcements soon, is what I'm told.
And then we'll have to sort through what happened today, who's responsible, and try to understand how something so senseless could occur.
Yeah.
So they shot him dead, one shot.
This is a really senseless act of violence, a horrible time for this country, a horrible time for America's youth that's already been dealing with so much.
And what you're being told is if you speak out, if you dare to challenge this extreme left, they're coming for you.
Not just your job, not just your dating life, your life.
Someone took out Charlie Kirk because he represented too much of a threat.
It's a horrible, horrible, horrible day.
A terrible day.
Let Charlie rest in peace.
There's going to be a lot to be uncovered.
We're hearing different things about the shooter.
Apparently the shooter was saying, hey, just shoot me.
Really, really, really sick stuff, a sick individual that would do something like this.
But again, I'll share with you what Elon Musk is saying at this moment.
He writes, the left is the party of murder.
Certainly feels that way, right?
Certainly feels that way.
Charlie Kirk, dead at 31 years old.
One of the sort of biggest personalities on the scene.
Never graduated from college.
Never graduated from college.
He just decided he wanted to make a difference and he could make a bigger difference by getting out there and going talking to those college kids about what was going wrong in their education.
And believe me, there's a lot going wrong in their education.
And he made a difference.
He certainly made a huge, huge difference because I think that a lot of young people have been convinced they can be conservatives and that they can have a different viewpoint, different from ones that the academia movement is spouting.
in part because of what Turning Point has created.
I know a lot of people, and this is David, I have the news, we're live on the air, and it's awful.
Do you want to add anything?
Yes, yes, we've got it.
We're live right now.
Charlie Kirk dead at 31 years old, just a tremendous force in the conservative movement.
The president expressing his condolences.
Thank you, thank you.
And continue bringing info as it comes in.
Look, we've got a whole team on this one.
Again, the president saying that the great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.
No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.
You know, I told you guys earlier, I have a lot of strong viewpoints, but I'm mom to my kids.
My kids watched Charlie.
They watched Charlie because, you know, I don't know, I guess he is a lot younger than me.
He captured them in a way that none of us parents possibly could.
And I love him for that.
I love him for being able to ignite this excitement in young people about politics today.
And I'll never forget that.
We no longer have Charlie Kirk with us.
I think there's going to be a lot of questions.
Of course, you know, you saw earlier, I think I showed you that Kash Patel.
Kash Patel writing that the FBI was all over this.
They're going to continue to get information.
But Charlie Kirk is dead at 31 years of age, the founder of Turning Point USA, a grassroots organization that really ticked off the left.
I mean, really.
I mean, how many times is the New York Times writing about him?
In fact, you know, the New York Times is now writing about him, and they like to call him a right-wing influencer, like he's some kind of crazy man.
He wasn't.
He wasn't crazy at all, believe me.
You know, when I see the stuff you guys are writing over at the New York Times, I think we know who the crazy ones are.
Let's see how they're characterizing him in this moment in time.
This is a big story, a very, very big story.
And I think that everybody should feel very vulnerable right now.
Very vulnerable because if you can't get out on a college campus and talk to kids about different ideas, then we got a problem.
He has been killed again.
I repeat, breaking news right now, dead at 31 years of age, Charlie Kirk, at that Utah event, just speaking to kids, hundreds of kids that had gathered there for an opportunity to agree with him or spar with him.
You know, that was one of the things he was just phenomenal at.
He would take on anyone and he would do so with just such gravitas.
It was incredible, incredible to watch him.
He was speaking in front of a large crowd, and I guess there wasn't a ton of security there.
Perhaps they didn't realize how vulnerable he really was.
Andrew Colvett, who is Kirk's spokesperson, is reporting this indeed.
It's confirmed he's dead.
The president has said this as well.
Speaker Mike Johnson weighing in on this.
Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado asked for someone to lead a prayer out loud there on the House.
Several Democrats objected.
Democrats are objecting to having a prayer for Charlie Kirk.
Ana Polina Luna began shouting angrily at the other side when she heard that the Democrats were objecting.
And they were objecting because they said, you know, other students hadn't been given the same treatment.
So, of course, they, you know, they have to turn this into something.
Can you guys not just give a simple prayer?
a simple prayer for someone, you know what?
We are praying right now.
We're praying because we no longer have him here.
And that's a big void.
It's a big void for the conservative movement and for youth in America that looked to Charlie Kirk.
He was like a savant, okay?
Like I'll just tell you, like you could ask him about anything.
Like he was like a walking, talking history book.
I mean, this guy knew more about American history in World War I and World War II than like like, you know, I'll tell you, TV commentators, they kind of come and go, right?
You know, they all the same stupid talking points.
I'm sorry.
Like, I'm just being brutally honest, okay?
They have their little talking points often sent to them by their political party, and they say X, Y, and Z. Charlie took it so much further, like to infinity and beyond.
And I loved his show because, you know, he really had the freedom to speak more extemporaneously than when you're in a little, you know, three-minute box on Fox News, for example, or Fox Business in my case.
But he just knew so much about so many different things, and that's a rarity, I I find, especially among the political class, dare I say.
Okay, so they, they tend to have their little talking points and that's about as far as they go.
Charlie could always take it further.
I saw something recently where he just took down a professor, a professor of uh, World War Ii.
This guy was a World War Ii professor And like he just didn't know basic things about World War II.
And it was one of these things that he does.
And it's like a sport.
Like you'd watch these things.
And it was sort of a, it literally, debate would become a sport because he was so, so good at it.
And, you know, he at like 18 went to, I think, a college in Illinois, I believe, which is where he was from outside Chicago.
And he went to college and he wound up leaving because he wanted to pursue more of a political career.
And he wanted to pursue a career where he could really help, I think, change people's minds.
And in fact, that is exactly what he did.
So Charlie Kirk, no longer with us.
It is a tragic day, a tragic day for America, a tragic day for American youth that loved him, right?
That loved him on YouTube and loved him on Twitter and loved him on TikTok and all of these platforms.
Charlie was everywhere.
I saw something with Laura Ingram the other day.
She said her kids watch Charlie.
And I'll tell you, my kids watch Charlie too.
My kids watch Charlie too.
I am absolutely brokenhearted right now.
It is a huge loss, I think, for all of us.
And I think the thing is, you got to remember, and the way, you know, his legacy lives on is if it is if we really focus on the things that he cared about, which was freedom for everyone.
His belief in a meritocracy was everything.
Moving Beyond Victim Mentality00:06:03
And I realized the left wanted to paint him into this, that, and the other, right?
The left always wants to, you know, you're the boogeyman, you're the bad guy.
You know, God help you if you have a brain and you're a conservative because then they're really after you.
And we saw that as recently as last night.
I mean, sadly, CNN was going after him as hard as they could because he dared to bring up the obvious, right?
Which is that, I'm sorry, there was a racial component to the fact that the media was not covering what happened in Charlotte.
Like, how else do you want to frame that?
Because if the tables were turned, it would be very, very, very different.
And we know what happened after George Floyd, okay?
Like, so, like, this is not like rocket science.
All right.
Like he was stating the obvious, but they didn't want to accept it, which is why all their headlines were a bunch of garbage.
Like, well, they didn't have, I mean, the headlines are garbage, right?
I mean, again, the New York Times, let me put this one up for you, trying to gaslight us.
Like, you know, Charlie's the crazy one.
You're the crazy one if you think for two seconds that this had any, you know, the media is not covering this because of racial reasons.
And that really just disgusts me.
Let me show you right here.
North Carolina ignites a firestorm on the right because somehow, I mean, this is just, this is terrible.
This is the way they're framing this.
Instead of talking about how bad Democrat policy, I mean, like, can they not just admit it?
This is surely, it's like, look, guys, you know, you need a little law and order.
Maybe you shouldn't be letting people out.
Maybe you should not have a judge, your magistrate there, who never passed the bar exam.
Who's just, you know, allowing this, you know, revolving door for people who have committed criminal acts to come in and out?
I mean, that's not okay.
It's not okay.
And that has to change.
And whether you're going to have, you know, mental health institutions where you put people who have real problems, including the guy who did this forever, or you have jails, you got to find some way to deal with this.
And this is bad policy that the Democrats have had.
We learned today that there was somewhere around.
$3 million that this particular county had been given by an organization, a very liberal organization, with the desire to, you know, basically make sure they could reform the prison system because they didn't want so many black people in prison.
And because of this, they got all this money and there was a definite goal.
Here it is.
Mecklenburg County was awarded somewhere around $3.3 million by the MacArthur Foundation.
because they wanted to find non-jail alternatives.
So I can guarantee you that the woman who was the judge in this particular case was under a certain amount of political pressure, and she may have had her own ideology that thought, okay, well, it's not this guy's fault.
You know, it's not, I mean, think about the way that, and this is a big thing, we'll get into this tomorrow.
I don't want to go too far off course because I think we're all in a state of mourning right now.
But the New York Times, when they talked about this particular tragedy, They kept referring to a black man and they capitalized black.
And I was struck by that.
Apparently, I'm like, so what's the grammar rule on that one?
I'll show you guys what they were writing.
Apparently, every time you say white, you give a lowercase, but every time you say black, you have an uppercase.
And so they were writing about how the MAGA movement was trying to make more of this, whatever.
And so somebody in the MAGA movement is looking at this and saying, hey, wait a second.
Why is it that you always capitalize black, but the white woman, apparently, she doesn't deserve a capital?
And the reason for this is because, well, since mid 2020, interesting, mid 2020, was that around the George Floyd time?
They decided to start doing this, you see, because capitalizing black meant you were referring to people, an identity, an entire group, that it's not just a skin color, but it's an identity, it's a group.
And I just got to say, like, you know what, I think that my Nigerian friends who immigrated here would say that they actually don't have a lot in common with people who grew up in Watts or, say, Harlem.
And they actually feel distinctly different.
Just like, you know, I come from an Irish background and we're kind of distinctly different than, say, a Polish background.
But apparently we get a lowercase letter.
We get the little w.
We're not the big w.
I mean, this is so stupid, okay?
And this all started in 2020.
This is all part of it.
Like, let's get away from this.
This is what Charlie was trying to do.
Get us away from this.
For teaching young kids to take some responsibility in their education and in their lives, right?
So that they were controlling their destinies for the future, that they had some say in things, that they were not the victims.
Because who wants to be a victim?
We've got to move on from that mentality.
But the left wants you to always believe you're a victim.
You know, you look at the crime rates.
They've gone way up since Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty and all of that.
Well, you know, it didn't do a whole lot of good.
I'm sorry to bring you this show today.
I wish this, as we came on the air, I wish I had something different to say.
A Rough Week and Truth00:02:01
But I want you to know, he will be remembered.
He has a legacy that will never die and a movement that will never stop.
Young people, they know the truth.
They know the truth now in part because of him.
You know the truth.
I know the truth.
And we're going to keep crusading every single day for that truth, no matter how scary it gets.
I'm here for you.
You're here for me.
And we will continue this march forward together.
I want to look at some of your comments because I know that this is hard on all of you guys too.
It's been a rough week, I got to tell you.
Really, really, really rough week.
I know everybody's heartbroken.
Glow writes, Charlie is so special.
He changed the course of an election with young voters.
I have the utmost respect and love for him.
Rest in peace, beautiful Charlie.
Yeah.
Rest in peace.
Let your children, I hope your children go on to just have a wonderful life and great memories of you.
There's so many videos.
What an archive.
There's so much that can be learned.
Charlie Kirk, truly one of the greatest.
We love you.
I wish your family all the best.
Rest in peace.
We will be back here tomorrow with much, much, much more to cover.