Washington — Vice President JD Vance hosted “The Charlie Kirk Present” Monday after Kirk was shot and killed final week at Utah Valley College.
Vance introduced Sunday in a submit on X that he had the “honor of internet hosting the Charlie Kirk Present” to “pay tribute to my good friend.” Talking from his workplace within the White Home advanced Monday, Vance stated he was “filling in for any individual who can’t be stuffed in for” as he kicked off the present.
“However I will attempt to do my finest,” Vance stated.
Kirk, a conservative activist, was assassinated final week throughout a Utah Valley College occasion hosted by his group, Turning Level USA, in Orem, Utah. The 31-year-old was near Vance, together with President Trump and his household.
After his demise, Kirk’s physique was flown on the vp’s aircraft, Air Drive Two, to Kirk’s dwelling state of Arizona. Vance canceled a deliberate journey to New York to mark 24 years because the Sept. 11, 2001, assault to fly to Utah to retrieve Kirk’s physique. Vance stated Monday that he was honored to have the ability to “take Charlie’s stays from Utah to Arizona.”
Vice President JD Vance hosts an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Present” on the White Home, following the assassination of the present’s namesake, Sept., 15, 2025, in Washington.
Doug Mills/The New York Occasions/AP
Vance has described his longtime friendship with Kirk, who was additionally a key ally in his political rise. Vance stated in a submit on X after Kirk’s demise that the slain conservative activist was one of many first folks he referred to as when he thought-about operating for Senate in 2021, and he stated Kirk advocated for him to turn out to be the vice-presidential nominee “each in private and non-private.”
The vp described Kirk as a “true good friend.” On Monday, Vance referred to as Kirk “the neatest political operative I ever met,” saying “I owe a lot to Charlie.”
Kirk’s youth turnout operation has additionally been credited with serving to Mr. Trump’s 2024 election bid, whereas Kirk himself was recognized to have influenced a few of the Trump administration’s personnel selections. Vance stated a lot of “the success we have had on this administration traces on to Charlie’s capacity to prepare and convene,” including that Kirk “did not simply assist us win in 2024, he helped us workers the complete authorities.”
The president introduced final week that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Charlie Kirk moderates a dialog with Vice President JD Vance throughout Turning Level Motion’s Chase the Vote marketing campaign occasion at Technology Church in Mesa, Arizona, on Sept. 4, 2024.
REBECCA NOBLE/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Andrew Kolvet, the chief producer of “The Charlie Kirk Present,” stated on CNN Monday that Vance’s internet hosting of the present “took place as a result of he requested if he may do it.”
“Charlie and JD had been mates. They had been precise mates,” Kolvet stated, including that “a number of the folks which can be operating the federal authorities are private mates of Charlie’s they usually had been within the trenches collectively, the marketing campaign, they usually’ve recognized one another for years.”
In the course of the present Monday, Vance urged that “we now have to be sure that the killer is dropped at justice,” previewing discussions of what he referred to as the “extremely damaging motion of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the previous couple of years, and I consider, is a part of the explanation why Charlie was killed by an murderer’s bullet.”
White Home Deputy Chief of Workers Stephen Miller, who was among the many company on the present, echoed the sentiment, saying “we’re going to channel the entire anger that we now have over the organized marketing campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”
“We’re going to use each useful resource we now have on the Division of Justice, Homeland Safety and all through this authorities to establish, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America secure once more for the American folks, it would occur, and we are going to do it in Charlie’s identify,” Miller pledged.
Vance stated he has heard “many calls in the previous couple of days for unity, and for therapeutic” within the wake of Kirk’s assassination, saying “you haven’t any concept how desperately I need that.” However he added that “first, we should inform the reality.”
“I actually do consider that we are able to come collectively on this nation, I consider, we should,” Vance stated. “However unity, actual unity may be discovered solely after climbing the mountain of fact.”
The vp claimed folks on the left usually tend to have a good time and defend political violence, saying “this isn’t a each side drawback.”
“If each side have an issue, one facet has a a lot larger and malignant drawback, and that’s the fact we have to be instructed,” he added.
Additionally among the many company was White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt, ex-Fox Information host Tucker Carlson, Division of Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White Home chief of workers Susie Wiles.
Vance stated “it is as much as all of us” to “carry on the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
“We have to hold on the mantle, we have got to hold on the torch,” the vp stated. “That is why I am doing this present as we speak is I simply needed to, you recognize, ship a sign that we’re not going to let Charlie’s mantle be discarded. We will carry on carrying it.”
Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, stated in her first public remarks since his demise that “the motion my husband constructed is not going to die,” noting that “the radio and podcast present that he was so pleased with will go on.”
“If you happen to thought that my husband’s mission was highly effective earlier than, you haven’t any concept,” she stated.
A memorial service for Kirk is ready to be held on Sept. 21 in Arizona.
Extra from CBS Information
Kaia Hubbard