The Ben Shapiro Show - September 10, 2026


One Year Since Charlie Kirk’s Murder... What The Hell Happened?!


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

187.61

Word count

7,417

Sentence count

509

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

29

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 One year ago today, our friend Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered live on camera while debating public policy at a public university.
00:00:07.000 He was shot in the neck.
00:00:08.000 He bled out in front of all of us.
00:00:10.000 We all remember it. 0.99
00:00:11.000 His murderer was a militant gay man in a relationship with a trans furry. 0.90
00:00:14.000 The motives were perfectly clear and the evidence was perfectly clear. 0.78
00:00:17.000 What should have happened next was just as clear.
00:00:20.000 Political reunification on the right around some core principles, united opposition to left wing violence, maybe a religious revival.
00:00:27.000 None of that really ended up happening.
00:00:29.000 In a moment, we'll discuss what did happen.
00:00:30.000 How everything broke and how we can help put it back together.
00:00:33.000 We'll also be joined by TPSA spokesman Andrew Colvett.
00:00:35.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:43.000 So, as I said, one year ago today, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood in front of the entire world.
00:00:48.000 Obviously, I knew Charlie from the time he was 18 years old.
00:00:50.000 Anybody who knew Charlie for any length of time was sort of astonished by his level of energy, by his stick to itiveness, by the fact that he was willing to run through pretty much any wall.
00:00:59.000 First time I met Charlie, as I've talked about, He was 18.
00:01:03.000 We were at an event together down at the Breakers in Palm Beach.
00:01:06.000 And I remember turning to Jeremy Boring and saying, That guy is going to end up being head of the RNC.
00:01:10.000 And then, of course, he founded CPUSA, which ended up being probably more important than the RNC in the end.
00:01:15.000 And Charlie, for a long time, we didn't agree on everything.
00:01:17.000 A lot of those disagreements were public.
00:01:20.000 We varied on matters ranging from economics to foreign policy.
00:01:23.000 But obviously, Charlie was a lifelong conservative.
00:01:27.000 Charlie was also a bridge builder.
00:01:29.000 When Charlie was shot, I was.
00:01:32.000 At a breakfast in Los Angeles, my security team, as I've talked about pretty extensively, told me what had happened.
00:01:38.000 I went online.
00:01:39.000 I started seeing the videos.
00:01:40.000 Once you saw the videos, it was pretty clear that it was unlikely Charlie would survive.
00:01:44.000 My security team was talking to Charlie's security team.
00:01:46.000 It turns out once they were already at the hospital and they were keeping my security team informed because obviously this is what security teams for high profile individuals do in this sort of space.
00:01:58.000 Found out basically the same time as everybody else that Charlie had died.
00:02:03.000 And again, all of America basically went into mourning.
00:02:06.000 People on the right, good hearted people on the left, people in the middle, they'll recognize that whatever their political disagreements were with Charlie Kirk, Charlie had been a person who spent his entire life just doing political debate publicly and then bridge building privately.
00:02:19.000 That's what Charlie was doing.
00:02:22.000 And we're now a year out.
00:02:23.000 And I have to say that I think whatever expectations we all had of what was going to happen next were largely thwarted.
00:02:32.000 And what's truly incredible about that is that they were largely thwarted.
00:02:37.000 Around Erica Kirk, his wife, because there were people who decided that it was deeply imperative to destroy Erica as a human being and destroy TPUSA as an organization for their own nefarious political purposes.
00:02:52.000 Well, Erica this week had a piece over at the New York Times talking about what she's learned about her grief in the year since.
00:02:59.000 She says, September 11th, 2025, the day after my husband, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed.
00:03:03.000 The past 24 hours feel like a fever dream as I land in Phoenix from Utah and return home.
00:03:08.000 I get out of the car.
00:03:09.000 My kids run into my arms.
00:03:10.000 They have no idea where I was or what I was doing.
00:03:12.000 They care only that I'm home.
00:03:13.000 As I walk to the front door, there's a tightening in my chest I don't recognize.
00:03:17.000 Is this what grief feels like?
00:03:19.000 I sit on the couch where Charlie sat two nights ago, watching the Cubs with our kids.
00:03:22.000 I feel a wave building inside me.
00:03:24.000 I know it's about to crash.
00:03:25.000 She's talking with Usha Vance about all of this.
00:03:29.000 And, you know, she discussed this publicly before.
00:03:32.000 She and I talked about this as well briefly when I saw her a few days after the assassination in Phoenix, that Usha had told her just get through the next 15 minutes.
00:03:40.000 She says, When you lose someone you love, it's easy to struggle to understand God's plan.
00:03:43.000 One of the hardest tests of our faith occurs when bad things happen.
00:03:46.000 True faith means accepting we won't get every answer and finding peace in that.
00:03:50.000 I've seen extraordinary good born out of something unimaginably evil.
00:03:53.000 I've watched people return to faith in droves, reconcile with their families, and forgive old wounds because of Charlie.
00:03:58.000 I know my husband is in heaven, but I ache for him to be here.
00:04:00.000 Still, I can stand and say without a shadow of a doubt that God is good.
00:04:05.000 She says, one day, maybe when you least expect it, you'll start to see that those 15 minutes, the next 15 minutes, hold more than just grief.
00:04:10.000 The grief is there always, but so is the beautiful gift of life.
00:04:13.000 Again, the fact that Erica has had to go through all of this while simultaneously heading up TPUSA.
00:04:17.000 And when I say go through all of this, I don't just mean the grief.
00:04:20.000 I mean the insane desire by some to destroy her or to destroy TPUSA.
00:04:26.000 It's an astonishing thing and demonstrates.
00:04:28.000 The moral limits of many people in the so called conservative movement who were never really part of the conservative movement, who are out for themselves and who wish to tear down rather than to build up.
00:04:39.000 Again, who was behind it was perfectly obvious pretty much immediately. 0.76
00:04:43.000 The minute that I had heard that Charlie had been shot, it was pretty obvious to me that the person who shot him was likely to be a part of the radical trans movement.
00:04:53.000 And Charlie was not wildly offensive to a huge variety of people, is the truth.
00:04:59.000 He said some controversial things from time to time on matters ranging from criminal justice to the nature of Islam.
00:05:07.000 But the people who always seem most agitated about Charlie Kirk were radical trans activists.
00:05:11.000 Because, as I said at the time, there's a permission structure for violence that is implicit in the trans radical ideology. 0.61
00:05:17.000 The basic idea is that if you say a man is a man and a woman is a woman, you are quote unquote erasing them, that you're creating a trans genocide, you're a threat to them. 0.74
00:05:26.000 And so it was not a tremendous shock that Tyler Robinson ended up being the murderer.
00:05:32.000 There's perfectly obvious security footage of Tyler Robinson on campus that day.
00:05:36.000 Here's some of that footage.
00:05:37.000 And do you believe you recognize who that person is?
00:05:40.000 Yes.
00:05:40.000 Who is that?
00:05:41.000 I believe that's Tyler Robinson.
00:05:42.000 All right.
00:05:44.000 Where does he go from there?
00:05:47.000 He heads out of the parking garage on foot into the campus and actually goes to the quad area of the campus.
00:05:55.000 At that time, he makes contact with some representatives from TPUSA.
00:06:01.000 By quad area, Sorry, the amphitheater is what I've previously referred it to.
00:06:06.000 All right.
00:06:07.000 So he goes up on campus, visits the amphitheater area, the courtyard or quad.
00:06:11.000 Correct.
00:06:13.000 And then what do we see here now?
00:06:14.000 He returns on foot back to the same vehicle.
00:06:17.000 And what time is he returning back to the vehicle?
00:06:19.000 It's about 9 25 a.m.
00:06:23.000 Well, Robinson then ended up turning himself in at the behest of his parents.
00:06:23.000 Okay.
00:06:28.000 Here was the testimony on that point, plus the actual tape of him turning himself in.
00:06:31.000 This was presented at the preliminary hearing.
00:06:36.000 As you can see, he walks in.
00:06:37.000 It's clearly him. 1.00
00:06:39.000 Contra, fools, and some corrupting influences. 0.98
00:06:46.000 Lance Twiggs is Tyler Robinson's boyfriend, and he testified that Robinson had asked him for a Dremel to engrave bullets about a month before. 0.98
00:06:56.000 The Dremel that you talked about, you said he had asked for that.
00:07:01.000 Is that right?
00:07:01.000 And had he told you it was to inscribe bullets?
00:07:05.000 Yeah.
00:07:06.000 And so did you have a drum open?
00:07:09.000 Yeah.
00:07:09.000 Okay.
00:07:10.000 It was in our apartment, we had a section where we kept all our random tools for household stuff in our lower basement level pantry.
00:07:21.000 So, yeah.
00:07:23.000 And did you give that to them or tell them where it was?
00:07:23.000 Okay.
00:07:25.000 I just told them where it was, yeah.
00:07:27.000 Well, again, the evidence is very obvious in this case.
00:07:31.000 The police displayed the photo of Tyler Robinson's rifle, they also displayed photos of Robinson's engraved bullets.
00:07:40.000 The police also displayed photos of Robinson's texts directly on his phone.
00:07:45.000 And of course, the judge ruled that Tyler Robinson's trial could go for the death penalty is indeed on the table.
00:07:52.000 And the motive is not particularly difficult to tell, as Utah County Prosecutor Ryan McBride said, with the defendant's views repugnant to the positions that Charlie Kirk famously took.
00:08:02.000 So, again, it was perfectly obvious who's behind this from the very beginning.
00:08:04.000 So, what really should have happened here?
00:08:06.000 What should have happened?
00:08:07.000 Well, I mean, obviously, there should have been a political coming together at the very least around basic principles of free speech.
00:08:13.000 I mean, this is what Charlie was famous for.
00:08:15.000 I know that there was an entire religious element to what happened after Charlie had been murdered because Charlie spoke often about his open Christianity, which is great.
00:08:24.000 But what Charlie was most famous for was his debates on college campus and the fact that he was a speech advocate.
00:08:30.000 I mean, here was Charlie explaining to a liberal student why he believed in free speech.
00:08:34.000 What compels you to sit on a college campus and talk about it?
00:08:38.000 Because I don't think I'm going to change your mind, and I don't think you're going to change mine.
00:08:41.000 Maybe you'll make a point I won't think of.
00:08:43.000 Maybe I'll make a point you'll think of.
00:08:45.000 But also, I'm a big believer that.
00:08:48.000 Public and open and sometimes provocative speech is fundamental to a free society, right?
00:08:54.000 It pushes boundaries, it gets people out of their comfort zone, it makes you live in a less totalitarian moment, at least in that instant, right?
00:09:02.000 Um, so I just think it's really healthy.
00:09:03.000 I think it makes you more human, right? 1.00
00:09:05.000 And you maybe you're like, oh, like that's really stupid, you just keep walking. 1.00
00:09:08.000 Okay, and again, people try to portray Charlie as some sort of radical, insane, nasty person that just never came from him, it just didn't. 0.99
00:09:15.000 So, what should have happened is, of course, banding together against the people who wish to destroy the body politic, Matt Walsh.
00:09:21.000 Famously tweeted, the entire right has to band together. 0.99
00:09:23.000 Enough of this infighting bullshit. 1.00
00:09:24.000 We're up against demonic forces from the pit of hell. 1.00
00:09:26.000 They're killing us in our churches. 0.95
00:09:27.000 They tried to kill our president.
00:09:28.000 They killed Charlie, one of our greatest advocates.
00:09:30.000 Put the personal squabbles aside.
00:09:31.000 Now's not the time.
00:09:32.000 This is existential.
00:09:33.000 A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.
00:09:37.000 And Matt, of course, called for coming together against political violence.
00:09:41.000 I want to be very clear that we will not back down after this.
00:09:45.000 We will not shrink away or go into hiding.
00:09:48.000 We will not fall silent.
00:09:50.000 We will not walk in fear.
00:09:54.000 We will stand taller and prouder than we ever have, and be louder and bolder than we've ever been, and fight harder than we've ever fought.
00:10:04.000 You know, they think they can kill the movement by killing us, but in the entire history of the world, that strategy has never worked.
00:10:12.000 And it won't work now.
00:10:13.000 I promise you that. 1.00
00:10:17.000 You can kill a man, you can shoot him in the neck on stage, you can spill his blood for the whole world to see, but you cannot kill a cause. 0.99
00:10:26.000 Especially when that cause is nothing else but love of God, love of country, love of family. 0.99
00:10:30.000 That causes truth.
00:10:32.000 And of course, President Trump spoke similarly.
00:10:34.000 He said it was time to end political violence in the United States.
00:10:38.000 It's a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
00:10:56.000 For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
00:11:08.000 This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
00:11:18.000 Okay, so again, what should have happened was a bit of a coming together or a major coming together, particularly on the right.
00:11:24.000 What also should have happened was presumably a religious revival.
00:11:29.000 Charlie openly talked a lot about his faith, the importance of his faith.
00:11:32.000 When asked what was most important in his life, he said, his faith.
00:11:35.000 If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered?
00:11:40.000 If I die, everything just goes away.
00:11:42.000 How would you, if you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered?
00:11:47.000 I want to be remembered for courage for my faith.
00:11:51.000 That would be the most important thing.
00:11:52.000 Most important thing is my faith in my life.
00:11:54.000 So, obviously, after Charlie's assassination, there was what can best be termed a gigantic religious revival tent meeting almost for his memorial.
00:12:03.000 I was privileged to be there.
00:12:04.000 I was in the vice president's box.
00:12:05.000 He called and he asked me to be in that box after I'd appeared on Fox News that morning.
00:12:10.000 I was attending the memorial anyway.
00:12:12.000 And at that event, Erica got up.
00:12:15.000 And of course, she forgave Tyler Robinson, speaking about her faith openly.
00:12:20.000 Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.
00:12:27.000 That man.
00:12:35.000 I forgive him.
00:12:43.000 Of course, it's an incredibly moving moment.
00:12:45.000 And then the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, got up and gave a speech talking about Charlie's legacy of faith and the importance of the New Testament.
00:12:53.000 One of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following his deep belief that we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time by the hands of the God of the universe, an all powerful God who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with him in eternity.
00:13:14.000 But then sin entered the world and separated us from our Creator.
00:13:18.000 And so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us.
00:13:23.000 And He suffered like men.
00:13:25.000 And He died like a man.
00:13:27.000 But on the third day, He rose unlike any mortal man.
00:13:32.000 And then, and to prove any doubters wrong, He ate with His disciples so they could see and they touched His wounds.
00:13:42.000 He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh.
00:13:46.000 And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return, and he will.
00:13:50.000 And when he returns, because he took on that death, because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him.
00:13:58.000 And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love.
00:14:10.000 Now, again, if what you are looking for is some level of political reunification against political violence, against permission structures, For violence, or even on the right more broadly.
00:14:20.000 If what you were looking for was a religious revival, people returning to church, a principled revival of the social fabric that Charlie actually cared about, what that did require was some borders.
00:14:31.000 It did require borders because people who tear apart that social fabric, or people who are not part of that movement, or people who take advantage of that movement to tear it apart from the inside, right?
00:14:40.000 That needs to be stopped.
00:14:42.000 So, not long after this, unfortunately, things started to fall apart.
00:14:45.000 And a couple of months later, I spoke at the CPUSA event pretty famously.
00:14:50.000 Where I said this personal feeling is not a substitute for moral judgment.
00:14:55.000 To take again the Candace Owens situation as an example, friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter.
00:15:02.000 Politics is not the sisterhood of the traveling pants.
00:15:05.000 Politics is about principle, and if you're willing to sacrifice basic truth and simple principle in favor of emotional solidarity, you have betrayed your fundamental duty to the American people.
00:15:14.000 If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving anti American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes, there's a reason Charlie despised Nick Fuentes. 0.98
00:15:20.000 He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll, and building him up is an act of moral imbecility. 0.96
00:15:24.000 I ripped into Among others, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, for a very good reason, which was they had decided that the unity of the right was not important. 0.92
00:15:33.000 They had decided not only that, but that they were going to humor conspiracism with regard to Erica Kirk and TPUSA.
00:15:40.000 The vice president of the United States, JD Vance, he got up and he said sort of the opposite.
00:15:44.000 He said, There don't need to be any ideological borders, no border control for the conservative movement.
00:15:48.000 I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de platform, and I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure, will have the fake news media denounce me after this speech.
00:16:00.000 But let me just say, the best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie's death that he himself refused to do in life.
00:16:13.000 He invited all of us here.
00:16:22.000 Charlie invited all of us here for a reason because he believed that each of us, all of us, had something worth saying, and he trusted all of you to make your own judgment.
00:16:35.000 And we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.
00:16:40.000 We have got to build, and President Donald Trump is a builder.
00:16:45.000 Now, again, maybe that was tenable if everybody was oriented in the correct direction, but instead, instead of that moment of unity, Either political or spiritual.
00:16:55.000 Instead, what we got was rampant conspiracism promoted by precisely people who were not banished.
00:17:02.000 Precisely people who, while they themselves were banishing themselves from the movement, people themselves who were not, in fact, in any way treated with any level of skepticism.
00:17:14.000 The ideological border control went away.
00:17:15.000 And one of the things that happened was that the moment evolved.
00:17:20.000 And it is impossible to tell the story of the last year without talking about this.
00:17:23.000 Because that is very much part of the story.
00:17:25.000 TPUSA, as we'll talk about with Andrew Colvitt in a little while, is alive and well.
00:17:28.000 It is thriving.
00:17:29.000 There are lots of great things happening, but the promise of the moment was destroyed.
00:17:33.000 It was.
00:17:34.000 And it was destroyed by people like, for example, Candace Owens, who spends and has spent literally the entire year since going after TPUSA and Erica Kirk and promoting wild, insane conspiracism with regard to pretty much everybody, up to and including me, among others.
00:17:51.000 Here is Candace, September 16th.
00:17:54.000 Of last year, right?
00:17:55.000 Just days after Charlie's murder, after suggesting TPUSA was in on it, suggesting that Erica Kirk herself knew things, that there was a cover up going on.
00:18:05.000 Here she was.
00:18:07.000 No one, and I mean absolutely no one, outside of my husband and Erica Kirk, has the power to shut me up right now.
00:18:16.000 And then, of course, Erica Kirk specifically said, please don't do this.
00:18:16.000 That's it.
00:18:19.000 And Aunt Candice just refused her. 0.99
00:18:21.000 In fact, Candice went much further than that. 0.88
00:18:23.000 She made an entire series essentially comparing her to the bride of Chucky.
00:18:27.000 And now she says Erica went to the enemy.
00:18:29.000 Same perspective that he held, somehow immediately that was something she reversed course on and felt comfortable having them in her home.
00:18:34.000 Okay, fine.
00:18:36.000 So, right off the bat, we're just going, why is this in the New York Times?
00:18:39.000 Why is it behind a paywall?
00:18:41.000 And why can't you just do anything that feels normal?
00:18:44.000 And as Charlie was, I guess you've been honest, it's just turning point 2.0.
00:18:47.000 It has nothing to do with turning point 1.0.
00:18:49.000 It's a totally different organization.
00:18:50.000 It's unattainable.
00:18:51.000 You work with the Department of War, you work with the deep state apparatus, you are their emotional asset.
00:18:56.000 We get it.
00:18:56.000 It just feels like you're laying it on thick and like maybe you could have just published a sub stack here.
00:19:01.000 That if I'm running your PRH, do a sub stack about how you feel, don't put it behind a paywall, what you've learned about grief.
00:19:07.000 Okay.
00:19:09.000 Um, just horrific.
00:19:11.000 And of course, she was defended and is still defended by Megan Kelly.
00:19:15.000 Here's Megan Kelly, a principle free human being, doing just that.
00:19:21.000 I think that Candace Owens is a very, very dodgy witness in this, considering she doesn't have a ton of credibility amongst other people.
00:19:31.000 Okay, but wait, let me just say, let me say this in Candace's defense.
00:19:34.000 Um, First of all, she's brilliant.
00:19:36.000 Candace is brilliant.
00:19:37.000 I realize she's controversial, but she is very smart.
00:19:40.000 And I think what happens with people when they get into conspiracy theories is it's never just one.
00:19:44.000 They take the whole passel of them.
00:19:45.000 She's not here to defend herself.
00:19:47.000 But I will say, I have checked more than once because I see this crazy quote, and I know her a little. 0.61
00:19:52.000 And she's a fighter. 1.00
00:19:53.000 She's feisty. 1.00
00:19:55.000 I have never known her to be some nut job. 0.74
00:19:57.000 She's very, very smart.
00:20:00.000 Tucker Carlson, of course, engaged in precisely the same sort of stuff here.
00:20:03.000 He was laughing at conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk with Jimmy Doerr.
00:20:07.000 Takes the gun apart, leaves the screwdriver there, puts it under a towel.
00:20:11.000 Spider Man's his way off the top of a building, runs across campus with the gun apparently under a towel.
00:20:16.000 Nobody sees this.
00:20:17.000 He runs into the woods, puts the gun back together again without the screwdriver.
00:20:21.000 Who's a regular MacGyver, this guy? 0.98
00:20:23.000 And then he hides the gun in the backyard of a house owned by Palantir. 0.99
00:20:27.000 And if you think anything else besides that, you're a crazy Jew hating conspiracy nut. 0.97
00:20:35.000 And of course, Jimmy Doerr himself would then go on to mock Erica Kirk for her incorrect grieving. 0.94
00:20:41.000 This is obviously a setup, and you're not allowed to ask questions about it.
00:20:44.000 And if you are, you are attacking a grieving widow.
00:20:48.000 And that's, again, when did Jackie O ever say, quit looking in, stop?
00:20:52.000 Quit looking into who killed my husband.
00:20:54.000 Never.
00:20:55.000 That's not what happens.
00:20:56.000 And that's not how you grieve, by the way.
00:20:58.000 I remember when my dad died, my mom immediately bought a gold sequin pants outfit, started carrying sparklers around and selling t shirts.
00:21:05.000 And my friends were like, Jimmy, what's with your mom?
00:21:06.000 I'm like, she's grieving.
00:21:10.000 Why did things fall apart, you ask?
00:21:12.000 Well, this, of course, was a permission structure for the left to do the same.
00:21:15.000 So for a moment, for a brief moment in time, the left had to, for a second, denounce political violence and pretend that they were upset about Charlie's death.
00:21:24.000 And all that went away.
00:21:25.000 It went away because members of the right decided to make it okay.
00:21:29.000 And so now what do we get?
00:21:30.000 We get Drewski mocking Erica Kirk, mocking Charlie Kirk.
00:21:34.000 Get on your feet!
00:21:50.000 This clip had almost 200 million views on X alone.
00:21:53.000 Candace Owens then did a clip laughing about how wonderful this was.
00:21:59.000 Yes. Because they are the ones who mattered most.
00:22:06.000 Okay. 0.81
00:22:07.000 That black guy didn't say a single word. 0.87
00:22:10.000 And so just takes away the entire scene. 0.99
00:22:12.000 Just perfect faces that he's making behind him.
00:22:15.000 This is how everybody's feeling.
00:22:16.000 Everybody, for the first time, it's not left to right.
00:22:19.000 It's like everyone's united in feeling this.
00:22:22.000 It feels fake.
00:22:23.000 It feels wrong.
00:22:24.000 They are trying to use this idea of Christianity as a shield.
00:22:28.000 And I was hinting on that again, removing Erica Kirk from the scenario. 1.00
00:22:33.000 I was noticing all of these women that make videos. 1.00
00:22:37.000 They're just caddy, they're just influencers, but they try to find a Bible verse. 0.95
00:22:40.000 It's like, I'm not actually caddy.
00:22:42.000 This is a Bible verse.
00:22:43.000 Stop doing that.
00:22:43.000 Just stop doing that.
00:22:45.000 My God, the amount of projection for Candace Owens.
00:22:48.000 This, of course, allowed the left to do what they really wanted to, which was mock Charlie's murder.
00:22:51.000 Here's Hassan Piker doing this just a couple of weeks ago.
00:23:33.000 Of course, all of which has led to leftists openly celebrating what they're calling the Kirk Aversary on TikTok.
00:23:38.000 So I know the Kirk Aversary is coming up, which is so exciting.
00:23:42.000 What's everyone drinking for the Kirk Aversary?
00:23:44.000 We're doing like Bloody Mary's or.
00:23:47.000 On this upcoming Kirk Aversary, if you wasn't a day one hater, get to the back of the room.
00:23:54.000 Who's going to be throwing the Kirk Aversary functions?
00:23:58.000 Like, I'm trying to get lit, bro.
00:24:03.000 Well, again, this is what happened in America.
00:24:06.000 And when it came to political unity, when it came to political unity, that was never part of this either.
00:24:13.000 Because it turns out all the exact same people who are promoting conspiracism, insane conspiracism, ugly hideousness, all those same exact people are people who have openly declared that they're not part of the movement.
00:24:27.000 It wasn't a matter of people like me saying, you're not part of the movement, clearly pointing out the truth.
00:24:32.000 It was they themselves saying they are not part of the movement.
00:24:36.000 Since that day, Tucker Carlson has declared himself no longer part of the GOP.
00:24:42.000 I would not support the Republican Party.
00:24:44.000 There's no chance I would support the Republican Party.
00:24:46.000 I'm not going to support the Democratic Party.
00:24:47.000 I don't know what I'm going to do. 0.72
00:24:49.000 But at this point, you know, how could you support, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens?
00:25:00.000 Like, that's, you know, it's not possible to vote for people like that.
00:25:04.000 And I'm not going to.
00:25:05.000 And I think, I voted Republican my entire life.
00:25:09.000 I worked at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC.
00:25:12.000 I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican party.
00:25:17.000 I mean, very consistent defender, but there's no defending this because it's immoral.
00:25:22.000 And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation.
00:25:32.000 And they're not doing that.
00:25:33.000 So no, I'm out.
00:25:35.000 And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out.
00:25:38.000 What happened to the unity?
00:25:39.000 I mean, that's it.
00:25:40.000 Kenneth Owens, of course, suggested that satanic Zionists were occupying the White House and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed. 0.80
00:25:48.000 Tucker called Trump the Antichrist this year.
00:25:51.000 Megyn Kelly declared with Sean Ryan that the GOP had betrayed the American people and that all they had left were Epstein fans.
00:25:59.000 So, again, if you wanted the unity to last, if you wanted a spiritual revival, if you wanted all those things, it requires you to draw borders because it turns out those borders will be drawn for you in any case.
00:26:10.000 But here is the thing.
00:26:11.000 As we move forward, because again, it's been a year since Charlie's death, and I say, Charlie had a couple of roles.
00:26:15.000 One is that he spoke openly about conservatism in very convincing and excellent ways, and the other is that he was a bridge builder.
00:26:21.000 As we move forward toward the 26 election, toward the 28 election, we are trying to bring people together.
00:26:28.000 We are.
00:26:29.000 You know who is here at the RNC?
00:26:31.000 We are.
00:26:32.000 The Daily Wire is here at the RNC for the midterms.
00:26:35.000 You know who's going to be campaigning with candidates?
00:26:37.000 Members of the Daily Wire for the midterms.
00:26:39.000 Who's thinking about the GOP and its future in a meaningful and optimistic way?
00:26:43.000 We're doing that here.
00:26:44.000 At the Daily Wire.
00:26:46.000 We're doing that.
00:26:46.000 You know who's not here?
00:26:47.000 Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens.
00:26:50.000 Those are the people who are not here.
00:26:52.000 Because it turns out, in the end, that if you wish to have a conservative future, you need to actually have a set of conservative principles.
00:26:59.000 And one of those principles is basic truth and decency.
00:27:02.000 And if you don't have those things, you can't build a movement around anything else.
00:27:05.000 You just cannot.
00:27:06.000 It is not possible.
00:27:07.000 And joining me online to discuss how things have been for TPUSA and how things will be going forward is Andrew Colvitt.
00:27:13.000 He's spokesperson for TPUSA.
00:27:15.000 Andrew, thanks so much for the time on what is, of course, a Horrifying day.
00:27:19.000 I mean, no one thought that we'd be sitting here on September 10th of 2026 without Charlie.
00:27:25.000 Just your general feelings.
00:27:27.000 Yeah, I think that's right.
00:27:28.000 I was reflecting on September 9th that a year before September 9th, it was a day like any other, and we were just marching forward.
00:27:37.000 You had no idea that the next day, everybody's lives, especially here at Turning Point and on the show, were going to be turned upside down and forever changed.
00:27:49.000 It's a terrible anniversary, the most tragic of anniversaries, but it's also a day where it's incumbent on us to remember Charlie's life and the beautiful things that he left us as well.
00:28:03.000 It's like so much in this last year.
00:28:05.000 It's been such a mix of emotions and ups and downs, but we have to keep going forward.
00:28:10.000 That's what Charlie would want.
00:28:12.000 So, why don't we start talking a little bit about Erica and how she's been dealing with all this short, beautiful op ed for the New York Times about grief recently.
00:28:19.000 And frankly, the amount of just abuse that she's had to take over the course of the last year is just unthinkable to me.
00:28:25.000 It was always unthinkable to me.
00:28:27.000 I can't understand it for the life of me.
00:28:29.000 It makes literally zero sense.
00:28:31.000 It's insane, but she's weathered all of it.
00:28:33.000 How is she holding up?
00:28:35.000 Yeah, thank you for asking about her.
00:28:37.000 She's holding up.
00:28:39.000 I think a lot of people will tell you anniversaries are the toughest moment, especially for a spouse of somebody who's died, let alone assassinated in such a public way.
00:28:52.000 I think it's a hard day for her.
00:28:54.000 I think she understood that she wanted to spend this day privately with her kids and some close friends and family and just be away from the noise and just have a day to remember Charlie.
00:29:05.000 And so, God bless her for that.
00:29:06.000 It's the perfect way for her to do this day, right?
00:29:10.000 I don't know if people expected her to be on stage at the RNC or to be at the UVU event, but no, I think it's the right way for her to do this is to just be private with her family and with her kids.
00:29:21.000 And so we're here at HQ and we've got a bunch of people around and it's a good thing.
00:29:28.000 They all wanted to be able to express their love and admiration for Charlie.
00:29:33.000 And so both things can happen at once.
00:29:35.000 And I'm really happy with the way the team has come together.
00:29:39.000 You know, everybody mourns in their own way, Ben.
00:29:43.000 It's a very personal experience.
00:29:44.000 You know, I tend to not cry publicly.
00:29:48.000 I can't do emotions on command.
00:29:50.000 You know, when I'm working, I'm working.
00:29:52.000 And when I'm in my private time, you know, it's a very solemn day, a very sober day.
00:29:57.000 But she's doing okay.
00:29:59.000 She's very strong.
00:30:00.000 People have to understand Erica's faith in God is tremendous.
00:30:04.000 And she is stronger than people realize.
00:30:08.000 But, you know, this is hard for anybody.
00:30:11.000 So, Andrew, obviously, we're one year past Charlie's death.
00:30:14.000 A lot of people were worried that TPUSA would fall apart, that basically without Charlie's unique leadership at the helm, things would go sideways.
00:30:22.000 And yet, TPUSA has only grown.
00:30:24.000 In many ways, it's gotten stronger in the wake of Charlie's assassination.
00:30:27.000 Where is TPUSA right now?
00:30:29.000 What do you see as the future of the organization?
00:30:32.000 Yeah, it's a question that's actually connected to your last question about Erica.
00:30:35.000 I've been saying this because to me, it was something I always understood, but I realized at some point that the broader audience had no idea.
00:30:43.000 I believe that had Erica not stepped in when she did in that critical moment, I mean, it was so heroic of her.
00:30:51.000 I don't know.
00:30:52.000 It could have been the unraveling of Turning Point.
00:30:54.000 Because if you don't understand the inner workings of the organization and the personalities and the way the different verticals work and the different programs work, I truly believe she was the only person that could have stepped in in that moment and sort of steadied the ship and brought everybody together and rallied the entire team behind what her leadership. 0.98
00:31:13.000 And then there are these other critiques about, oh, a woman shouldn't be CEO. 0.55
00:31:17.000 And frankly, I disagree on a fundamental level. 1.00
00:31:21.000 I believe that maybe that's somewhat true.
00:31:24.000 Maybe more men are CEOs than women, whatever.
00:31:27.000 But the calling of a woman that is a wife and a mom is much different than the calling of a widow, especially of a public person that belonged to the world like Charlie Kirk.
00:31:38.000 And so I'm just so proud of her leadership and what she's done.
00:31:43.000 And I'm so proud of the team.
00:31:44.000 I look around the team all the time and I say, you guys are my heroes for what you've endured this year, for what you've been able to accomplish under the most extreme, unthinkable circumstances.
00:31:54.000 And yeah, to your point, I mean, our high school chapters have grown almost 200%.
00:31:58.000 They continue to grow.
00:32:00.000 People don't understand how hard that is, by the way, Ben.
00:32:02.000 You've got to get staff involved.
00:32:04.000 You get a core group of students, but then you have to do paperwork.
00:32:08.000 There's an approval process.
00:32:09.000 Charlie's own alma mater took us like three years to get approved.
00:32:12.000 So it's a long process to get these chapters up and running.
00:32:16.000 But these students have been amazing.
00:32:19.000 They're more courageous than ever before.
00:32:21.000 Charlie has made them, I'd turn them, I always joke with him that Charlie turned these kids into total lions.
00:32:26.000 Like they are fearless, they will not be cowed by attacks, smears, social media, all that stuff.
00:32:31.000 So everything's moving forward on that side.
00:32:34.000 The college chapters are now at over 1,500.
00:32:37.000 And Charlie used to say out loud, I don't think you can get past 1,000 because there's just not enough schools where you can gather that core community because you got commuter schools and things like that.
00:32:48.000 Our TPUSA faith has gone from 4,000 churches in our network to 12,000, which is just incredible.
00:32:54.000 Lucas and the team are doing a great job there.
00:32:56.000 So, piece by piece, we have over a million students that are involved in Turning Point in one way, shape, or form or another.
00:33:01.000 We have over a million small dollar donors now to the organization.
00:33:04.000 And all of it is just this giant testament.
00:33:08.000 To the man that Charlie was, the worthiness of the mission he chose to engage in.
00:33:13.000 And so I just find it remarkable.
00:33:15.000 God's hand of provision, God's faithfulness, even in a political cycle, as you well know, where there is a lot of headwinds, somehow God continues to bless the organization.
00:33:25.000 And yeah, the future is the same.
00:33:30.000 I'm sure you've seen this, but it's one of the annoying parts of my job is that I constantly inundated it with, Charlie would have never done that, or you guys have betrayed what Charlie was.
00:33:39.000 And it's like, No, actually, we all were very intimately aware of what Charlie believed and what he wanted and the future.
00:33:46.000 It was all sort of scripted, and we had a roadmap through 2032, if you want to know the truth of it.
00:33:51.000 And obviously, it gets vaguer as you get further out, and the details fell in as you get closer to those dates.
00:33:57.000 But we kind of knew where we were going, and we've tried to remain true to that.
00:34:01.000 And so nothing changes.
00:34:02.000 The mission doesn't change.
00:34:03.000 We want young people to believe in the American dream, to have skin in the game, and we want them to not give in to nihilism and cynicism and scapegoating.
00:34:11.000 We want young people to believe in this country.
00:34:14.000 And I believe the opportunity for that has never been bigger.
00:34:17.000 And we intend to do our part.
00:34:19.000 So, yeah, Andrew, when Charlie was assassinated, I think everyone sort of expected that there would be a couple of things that happened.
00:34:26.000 One would have been sort of reunification of the right, particularly because it was a political assassination.
00:34:30.000 I mean, Charlie's assassin, Tyler Robinson, killed him for obviously political reasons. 0.92
00:34:34.000 He was a gay man who is in a relationship with a trans furry man. 0.79
00:34:38.000 And he was very obvious about his political motivations in killing Charlie. 0.85
00:34:41.000 I mean, Charlie obviously was an advocate for the basic idea that there is a difference between.
00:34:45.000 So you would have expected that the right at the very least would come together around that.
00:34:50.000 And you also would have expected that there would be a unity around religious revival, which is something that obviously TPUSA pushed very hard in the immediate aftermath of Charlie's assassination up to and including that extraordinary memorial service that happened in Arizona where I was privileged to attend with 100,000 people coming and people basically trying to rededicate themselves to things like going to church.
00:35:10.000 And yeah, that was all kind of a moment of promise.
00:35:12.000 And it feels in many ways as though that moment was, in some ways, sullied, and in some ways, you could say stronger, maybe wasted by some people who have attempted to actually fragment that moment and turn what happened with Charlie into anything else.
00:35:26.000 Obviously, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that there have been extraordinary levels of conspiracism that have arisen around Charlie's murder.
00:35:32.000 It's something I know that you and I've talked about this off the air, but I mean, it's something that you've been dealing with a lot.
00:35:37.000 Obviously, Erica's been dealing with it a lot, the organization's been dealing with it a lot, the sort of fragmentation around basic fact.
00:35:43.000 The inability to just come to grips with what happened and what should have happened in the aftermath.
00:35:49.000 And this was easy stuff, and we just didn't get to the easy stuff.
00:35:52.000 Where do you think we go from here, and how serious do you think those fractures are?
00:35:58.000 You know, I tend to be a glass half full on this stuff now.
00:36:03.000 Maybe six months ago, I wouldn't have been, but I feel better now than I did six months ago.
00:36:07.000 And I think in six months, I'm going to feel even better still.
00:36:10.000 I think the conservative movement and political movements in general are sort of like a host.
00:36:15.000 And then you get these pathogens that are introduced, and then it takes a little while for the antibodies to kick in.
00:36:22.000 And I think some of this conspiracy stuff just caught everybody off guard.
00:36:25.000 We weren't ready to deal with it.
00:36:27.000 And I think you hit the nail on the head.
00:36:30.000 I think a lot of people just assumed everybody was going to come together and unify.
00:36:34.000 And so everybody was caught off guard by it.
00:36:36.000 I think there was some stuff, it was coming from voices that a lot of people assumed would have been on team, but it turned out they weren't.
00:36:45.000 I think having that clarity now, though, that these people want something different, that they are actually forces that are arrayed against us, is helpful.
00:36:55.000 The clarity is actually helpful.
00:36:56.000 And I think at the beginning, that was not clear.
00:36:58.000 I think it was muddled and I think it caused a lot of problems.
00:37:01.000 So, I sort of have this contrarian belief about this.
00:37:05.000 I can't prove any of this.
00:37:07.000 It's just my own personal faith.
00:37:08.000 And my faith does guide me in this.
00:37:10.000 First, I would say what God has unleashed, man cannot stop.
00:37:14.000 And by the way, if God is omnipotent and all knowing and omnipresent, Then God knew that this was going to happen and that God has a plan for this too.
00:37:22.000 And I actually, my belief is that the purging can actually, you know, you've got to take the weeds out of a garden, right?
00:37:31.000 Sometimes the purging can be a gift.
00:37:33.000 And I think that those, there's many voices that were never really with us to begin with.
00:37:38.000 And sometimes that can be helpful.
00:37:40.000 Now, I'm a big tent guy.
00:37:41.000 I want everybody to come together.
00:37:43.000 I want a coalition that's healthy and that can move forward.
00:37:46.000 But I actually sort of wonder if this isn't, We won't look back at this at some point and realize that there was a plan and there was God's providential hand still upon this.
00:37:55.000 And I believe that that's the case.
00:37:57.000 So my glass is half full.
00:37:59.000 And I do think that there has, what will emerge from this is so many more people ask me, what's the legacy of Charlie Kirk?
00:38:06.000 And I say, I'm not going to know for another 40, 50 years.
00:38:09.000 And probably then I won't understand it because there are, and I will tell you how I know this because when you go to college campuses or you speak to turning point students, and I called them lions earlier.
00:38:19.000 You will see that there are the future leaders of this country that are forged out of different stuff than you or I, Ben.
00:38:26.000 They come from a whole different set of base elements that forged and formed them.
00:38:32.000 And it is powerful.
00:38:34.000 And I think that the inspiration of Charlie's legacy, his death, is going to do something remarkable in so many of their lives.
00:38:40.000 And I truly believe that we're going to have thousands of young people that will lead this country in a great way that were inspired by Charlie.
00:38:46.000 And so there have been times, I'm sure, where we all wanted to pull our hair out because.
00:38:52.000 It's just, you know, the lack of facts, evidence, reason, logic, all that stuff.
00:38:56.000 But I do think that the antibodies are kicking in and, you know, the movement is responding.
00:39:01.000 And I think, you know, better days are ahead.
00:39:04.000 That's Andrew Cole, the spokesperson for TPUSA.
00:39:07.000 Obviously, a rough day for everybody over at TPUSA, but they're doing extraordinary work and they continue to do extraordinary work.
00:39:12.000 So, not only our thoughts and prayers to the team at TPUSA, but also to Erica and folks.
00:39:16.000 Obviously, TPUSA still needs your contributions.
00:39:19.000 They still need your support.
00:39:19.000 So, you should head on over to TPUSA right now and give generously because they're still doing tremendous work out there.
00:39:25.000 Really appreciate the time, Andrew.
00:39:26.000 And, you know, try to, we appreciate you holding up.
00:39:30.000 Yeah.
00:39:31.000 Thanks, Ben.
00:39:31.000 I appreciate the time.