Vice President JD Vance stepped away from his official duties Monday to host a special episode of Charlie Kirk’s podcast that included stories of how several Trump administration staffers knew the conservative activist and his impact on their careers. Discussions also centered on political violence as Vance and guests blamed “the left” for proliferating and celebrating political violence.
Vance and other senior officials in the Trump administration used the two-hour episode to discuss their connections with Kirk and to explore plans for how the administration would go after leftist groups. Vance and guests partly blamed the assassination and rising political violence on “left-wing extremism,” despite law enforcement not determining a motive.
Kirk, 31, died after a gunman opened fire at Utah Valley University, striking him in the neck. The shooting happened during Turning Point USA’s American Come Back college tour. Kirk founded Turning Point in 2012 to organize young voters under conservative ideals, which helped build Trump’s youth base.
“He was a critical part of getting Donald Trump elected as president and getting me elected as vice president,” Vance said.
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Vance flew Kirk’s body on Air Force Two from Utah to Kirk’s home state of Arizona. Kirk’s wife, Erika, was aboard that flight. Without sharing exact details of their conversation, Vance said they reminisced over Kirk and the stories they shared along the way.
Law enforcement identified the gunman as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. Federal prosecutors have planned to charge Robinson with aggravated murder, making him eligible for the death penalty. Federal, state officials and several political influencers raised unfounded claims about Robinson being “indoctrinated with leftist ideology” despite Robinson not formally speaking with law enforcement.
‘Left-wing extremism’ partly blamed for Kirk’s assassination
Vance hosted the show as he welcomed White House Adviser Stephen Miller, television personality Tucker Carlson and others. Among the memories and stories guests shared with Vance, the podcast gave people a peek into how the White House is responding to Kirk’s killing.
“We have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice and, importantly,” Vance said, “we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”
He and Miller agreed that the administration would go after groups they claimed promoted and paid for violence. Miller took the announcement a step further in calling the groups domestic terrorists, claiming they organized doxxing, riots, street violence, dehumanization and terror cells throughout the U.S.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller said.
An hour before the shooting, Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., posted a short video on his YouTube channel where he said people must do whatever’s necessary to save the country as there’s a “war.” That same night, “pro-democracy” news site MeidasTouch shared a post on X of several conservatives saying the country is at war, calling Democrats a domestic terror organization, and they only have a choice to “fight or die” as conservatives.
“People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence,” Vance said on the podcast. “This is not a both sides problem.”
However, researchers have said political violence doesn’t majorly happen to any one political ideology. Instead, it is more intense compared to the civil rights era, which has led to two assassination attempts on Trump, the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice, the killings of democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in June, the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and the 2020 plot to kidnap and kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in June that all elected officials and political media need to reaffirm the danger political violence has on the First Amendment.
Charlie Kirk: The Communicator
Vance guided discussions on the episode into the way Kirk spoke and how he built Turning Point USA to where it is currently: openly debating with college students who disagreed with him.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Vance she took a page out of Kirk’s book and typically speaks with journalists she knows oppose her views. She described herself as a Gen Z conservative and established a Turning Point chapter at St. Anselm College, her alma mater.
Carlson was more candid, sharing that Kirk bridged gaps within the Republican Party when disagreements arose over foreign policy. He added Kirk confided in him, revealing he supported Israel and that there shouldn’t be another regime change war against Iran.
“It allowed both sides to talk to him because they felt that this person doesn’t hate me, it doesn’t need to get existential,” Carlson said. “It’s not about disliking me or some weird bigotry.”
The vice president ended the episode condemning an opinion piece a freelancer wrote for The Nation, an independent magazine, that criticized Kirk’s views and said his legacy “deserves no mourning.”
“There is no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign, and refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins ‘Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children,’” they wrote.
The journalist later wrote online that they faced death threats, antisemitism, claims they are transgender and wishes they faced sexual violence.
“In addition to all of the nonsense above, Vice President JD Vance just went on Charlie Kirk’s show and said that I was paid to write the column by the Ford Foundation and Open Society and that I was justifying his death,” the journalist wrote. “Literally none of this is true. I said explicitly in the column that I did not believe anyone should be killed for their views, and criticizing Kirk’s own statements is not a call for violence.”
Vance vowed to get more people to condemn the ideals and actions that led to Kirk’s assassination. He said articles like the one that appeared in The Nation “set fire to the house” Americans built.
He echoed Miller’s statements, saying that the White House would work to “dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country.”
“I can’t promise you that all of us will avoid Charlie’s fate,” Vance said. “I can’t promise you that I will avoid Charlie’s fate. But the way to honor him is to shine the light of truth like a torch in the very darkest places.”
