The Charlie Kirk Show - Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Ben Shapiro Remember Charlie Kirk
Episode Date: September 16, 2025Over the years, the hosts of the Daily Wire came to know Charlie Kirk as a fellow host, as a fellow conservative, and above all, as a friend. Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Ben Shapiro all join Andr...ew on the set in Phoenix to remember Charlie and express how to further his immortal legacy.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I don't know.
So,
I'm going to be able to
I'm going to be able to be.
You know,
I'm going to be able to be.
So, I'm going to be able to be.
Everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
I am Andrew Colvette, executive producer of this show.
I am joined by some fairier friends of Charlie.
And of course, they need no.
introduction. That would be in no particular order from my right to left, Matt Walsh, Michael
Knowles, and Ben Shapiro. And I want to explain how this even happened. Obviously, we had the
Vice President of the United States honor Charlie by guest hosting the show from the White House
yesterday. I was just in D.C. yesterday for that, and it was an amazing experience. I've gotten so much
great feedback and of course we are so honored that jd wanted to take time you know from running the
country and leading the world to help honor his friend charlie kirk and in the moments that
passed right after we got the news i was in a state of shock and one of the things that gave me
some solace and gave me some comfort in those first few hours afterwards was i actually happened to
see a tweet from Matt Walsh and I could feel the visceral anger that was pouring out of his body
onto the post on X and I it's hard to explain why that gave me so much comfort but I knew that
there was an army rising up with righteous anger at what had just happened to my friend and to the
host of this show and within minutes of that I got a call from the CEO of Daily Wire just
asking if there was anything he could do and I said yes send send the team I'm going to want
them to guest host this show and so I asked and they graciously granted the the request
and here they are on Tuesday it was originally going to be Monday but you guys got slightly
outclassed we got bummed we can't believe it just terrible first of all thanks for
having us and no place we'd rather be obviously but if the idea is
is that Charlie's friends are going to take turns stopping by and doing the show,
then the show is going to go on until about 2052, I think, because Charlie had a lot of friends.
You're going to be aged out by then, so you'll be off the list, but we'll figure something out.
We'll take care of you, Michael.
But, Matt, first to you, tell me what happened in your heart in those first moments,
or however you want to do this, what Charlie meant to you, however you want to take this,
But those first moments meant a lot to me, so I would love to let me into that headspace.
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for allowing us to do this.
It's obviously a great honor, as well as, of course, in the midst of this great tragedy.
I think, you know, Charlie was a great man.
He was a patriot.
He was, you know, he loved God.
He loved his family.
All that came through.
but the word that keeps coming to my mind
when I think about Charlie
is in fact it's the word that I used
after I met Charlie the first time
and I called my wife
and it's just impressive.
He was an impressive guy
and that's the thought that I had
when I met him
and I knew he was impressive based on his work
but just meeting him in person
he's just this really impressive guy
and he did something
that I don't think anyone else can do
certainly in this business
and that he was this compelling
incredible charismatic speaker but also this force behind the scenes and organizing me built this
incredible institution now in this business there are some people who can be personalities
and can talk in front of the camera although I think no one did it as well as Charlie and then
there are people who are kind of the organizers behind the scenes I don't know anyone who was an
a plus talent in both areas and yet Charlie was which is why you kind of hear
this conversation now, which is inevitable, about who's going to replace Charlie? Who's going to be
the new Charlie Kirk? And I am truly sorry to say that the answer is nobody. There is no new
Charlie Kirk. It's just like when Rush Limbaugh died and there was a conversation about who's
the new rush. There is no new rush. You only get one rush in your lifetime. You only get one Charlie
Kirk. We're blessed to have Charlie once and we're not going to have them again. Now, all the rest of
us can try to pick up the legacy and and live out his legacy and carry it forward which we will
but we can't be charlie charlie kirk and i think that's why you mentioned the anger that was just like
millions of other people when i i i'll never forget where i was when i when i first saw and heard
about this i was sitting in my car as about to walk into a coffee shop and just get a cup of coffee and
I got a text from someone saying what's going on with Charlie Kirk and then I went on
Twitter and I'm looking around and there's all this you know at the time it was kind of felt like
rumors or something and I didn't I wasn't sure I started text I was texting Michael and Ben
and then I heard about a shooting and in the back of my mind I kind of was I was concerned
but I wasn't that concerned because I thought well there's no way what do they can't kill
Charlie Kirk it's just like it can't happen that cannot happen and that cannot happen and
Then, and I'll never forget, just kind of frantically scrolling around, texting, what
the hell is going on, and the video just popped up on the screen, and I saw it, and I'll never
unsee it. And I just put my phone down and I was filled with grief, shock,
But rage, just overwhelming anger.
And I've felt that ever since that moment,
it hasn't gone away.
In fact, my anger is only intensified.
And there's a lot of reasons for it.
It was a horrible atrocity, what was done to him.
Anger for his family, most of all.
Anger for a lot of people.
But also anger for the country.
Because you took someone from us, from all of us.
That's why I think there's this outpour,
this just incredible outpouring of mourning and grief
is because we all feel it,
whether you knew them or not,
whether you were friends or not,
we all feel that you took something from us.
You took someone from us that we needed.
And you had no right to do that,
which is why we could talk about the grief and the morning and all of that,
and we should.
But we also need to talk,
about justice that we need justice for charlie we need justice for all of us um justice for his family
you know we can which is why i'm not interested in conversations about unity and togetherness
and kumbaya handholding and all that i know some people it might comfort them to talk that way
but we don't have time for that right now what we need is justice for this for this for this
man who was robbed from us and and we need it now much was made about jd's closing yesterday when
he talked about unity and but he said first we need truth did you have a chance to hear that
and what's your take did yeah i thought well i thought jady i thought his in i thought it was
incredible what what i i think in fact jad d vance's uh you know monologue took it towards the end of his
of the show yesterday, I thought, was tremendous.
And before that, I also want to say that Erica's speech was, I honestly believe one of the
greatest speeches I've ever seen anyone give.
I think it's one of the great speeches ever delivered when you consider the circumstances,
but then also just the message.
And, look, Erica was under no obligation to give the country what it needs.
you know Erica could just go out there and say how she feels
and it's our obligation to comfort her and to be there for her
and yet she did in fact give the country what it needs
because she didn't she she didn't give us
she didn't withhold the anger
like we saw that she is angry and she wants justice for her husband
righteous loving anger anger that's rooted in the love
that she has for her children and her husband
and I think it was so beautiful
and important for us to see that.
Yeah, guess what?
She did it right where you're sitting.
That's where the Erica Kirk speech happened.
We put the podium right where your chair is.
Guys, I'm going to look over here.
What do you remember about Charlie?
You know, the first thing you say on this show is,
I want to make sure each of you has your own moment for this.
So we'll start with you, Michael.
Well, look, it's hitting everyone.
Obviously, it's hitting millions of people who never met the guy,
but who felt very, very close to him
because they were with him all day in their pockets and reels.
And for those of us who were friends with him for many years, you know, it hits in a personal way.
In the same way that it hits when any family member or friend dies, I realized, which is that part of what you're mourning is not just the person,
but you're mourning this future that you had imagined for the person and with the person.
And I think that's especially true with Charlie because this is not in any way hyperbolic.
everybody who knew Charlie
knew this guy was going to be the president
I think I don't think I'm being hyperbolic at all
I knew you just meet the guy
or you just see him from afar
and you say this guy's going to be president
for all the reasons that you were mentioning Matt earlier
not only did he kill it in front of the camera
and on the stage
but he was this unbelievable
operative organizer
extremely effective political figure
behind the scenes and he just had it
I just don't know he just
had greater skill and talent than any other political figure of our generation.
And so you say, well, he's going to be president.
When it happened, you know, I was texting my wife, and she texted me, she said, do you see what happened?
I said, yeah, yeah.
She said, it can't, that can't have happened.
She goes, I know, I saw it, we all saw it.
I actually didn't see the video, thank God.
But she said, we all saw it, and so we know it happened, and yet it couldn't have happened.
And I think that that's the feeling that a lot of us have.
And obviously, Charlie would have known more than anybody.
Nobody is promised tomorrow.
He understood the risks of a public life.
He understood better than most people the condition that the country is in right now.
But I think this is what really drives at home because, as you know, we don't need to even dignify them with much discussion.
But there have been some very hideous responses to Charlie's assassination, not only from fringe lunatics, which you get all the time, but from mainstream voices, from Normie voices, from the person.
you went to third grade with on Facebook and from elite media outlets.
And I think that was, that really shakes a lot of people because Charlie being the premier
political talent of our generation, being so generous, so gracious, so constantly charitable,
be so totally mainstream, I think a lot of people see, they're not more, not only this good
man, this innocent man who was murdered, but they say, man, would half the country cheer
if something happened to me too or to my brother or with my co-workers to you know there's this
recognition that people are feeling two things one they everyone who's never even met charlie is
feeling this personal loss but also this political loss we feel that something about our political
order has gone down with this guy who was the best example of it and it's why people are not
going to get over it for a long time nor should they get over it because it really has to impel
action. We cannot continue in this way. And the people who are undermining the very basic
foundations of our country and of our society, they need to be punished for it in a just and
prudent and lawful way. But they need to be discouraged and suppressed because we cannot
tolerate this. Yeah, I love what you said there. And I'm just struck. And we don't have to
get into this now. But, you know, there was news this morning that the charges against
Luigi Maggione had been downgraded
and he's now
there's no option for life without parole
so there's a chance that this assassin
I hadn't heard yes
this assassin could be
released at some point and he's a young guy
so in theory this man might walk the streets
free again this is so utterly
outrageous and infuriating to me
and that's you know I fired off a tweet this morning
about it because I was I was like
you know do you not understand the moment that we are in how dare you not if you're the judge
and you think this is the way you're going to go at least kick the can a week or two yeah but to
spit in our face yes so i i get enraged by that and anyway so candidly when i first started
working with charlie i mean ben you were you were the campus guy and uh it's interesting how
everything evolved but you know we looked up to you and what you were doing so much and i remember
actually meeting with you with charlie in you know ventura boulevard in los angeles and you know it's
many moons ago but you know we're fondly remembering them now because it's how it's how this
whole community community was knit together ben the floor is finally yours i feel feel bad is that
nine thirty three here not at all i mean it's um but yeah please that i think the thing for all of us
Charlie is that everyone felt Charlie's used the word innocent earlier. Michael, it wasn't just
that he was innocent in the sense, obviously, that he was an innocent person. He was truly innocent
at heart. Charlie didn't change from the time that I knew him at 18 years old. I mean, the first
time I met Charlie, and I've talked about this before, was the breakers in Palm Beach, and he was walking
around. He had just started turning point, and he was like very scrawny at the time, but very
tall, his beanpole. And he was just a bundle of energy, which never stopped.
I mean, legitimately, endless levels of energy.
If you're talking about meeting Charlie, Charlie was just energetic all the time, all the time.
I don't know where it came from.
And he was walking around the breakers as a kid trying to gather donors.
And he came up to me as Mr. Shapiro.
Great to meet you.
And it was like, I used to be calling Mr. to that.
I was like 28.
And Charlie, I met him.
I turned to Jeremy Boring, you know, the other co-founder of the Daily Wire.
And I said to him, that guy's going to be the high of the RNC.
Like, there's just no doubt.
And as I've said before.
You saw it that early?
The first meeting.
The first meeting right off the bat.
You could tell because this is the thing about Charlie.
The way that people know Charlie as this unbelievably talented debater and a terrific broadcaster
and an unbelievably clear advocate for his values and for biblical values and for truth.
And the reason that legitimately tens of millions of people are mourning him.
And, I mean, I should just say, from a Jewish perspective,
every synagogue that I know of did a tribute to Charlie Kirk over the weekend.
Like on Shabbat, they stopped the services to do tributes to Charlie,
which is an amazing testament to who Charlie was.
But you could tell that early that Charlie, the thing is Charlie got good at those things.
The thing Charlie was always amazing at,
the thing he had an inherent talent for his coalition building.
He was always an unbelievably great coalition builder.
I mean, it's something actually that Tucker talked about yesterday on J.D.'s show.
And that's an amazing thing.
I mean, this is a fractious coalition, and America is a fractious country, and to have somebody with the ability and to dedicate his time and effort to actually building those coalitions is really tough to the point where he's able to bring together people who can, you know, disagree on an enormous number of things and still point their ships in the same direction.
Tucker Carlson and I talked on Friday.
Okay, now everybody knows that Tucker and I have had our disagreements and have our disagreements about an enormous number of.
policy issues, and I'm sure at some point we'll publicly discuss those issues and talk about
our differences and all that. But that doesn't matter because we're going to point our ships
in the direction that Charlie wanted those ships to be pointed, which is in the direction
of making the country stronger and better. And that was Charlie's gift. That was the thing
that Charlie was amazing at. He had innate talent for that. All the other stuff, I watched him
cultivate over the course of 13 years. I watched him get good at debate. I watched him become a
charismatic speaker. Charlie was not a naturally charismatic speaker. He became, that is, that is an
unbelievable skill to be able to actually better yourself in all of these ways and get better every
day at doing them. So that by the time that this horrifying act of evil happened, he was just
the best there was at it. That is just an incredible testament to not only the amount of
determination and energy and grit that Charlie put into things and that rolled off him every
time he met him. He's just, again, bouncing around the room every time he met him because
he had another thing to do, another thing to do.
The fact that I remember when I got the, when I started getting the text, I obviously, it's,
I kept saying on the show, and I've said it for days since, like, there are no words, and I'm rarely at a loss for words.
There are legitimately no words, but the thing that I remember stunning me is when they reported, when the headlines came up with his age.
Because I was like, I know Charlie for a long time, and so you think of Charlie as, you know, somebody who, you know,
grew up with you, which is, which is true. The fact that Charlie was 31 years old and had accomplished
all of these things, I mean, just when Matt, you say irreplaceable, utterly irreplaceable, I mean,
just completely irreplaceable, which is why everybody, I mean, this is why his movement is going to
have to be the replacement, right? Everybody is going to have to do their part because when a giant
drops the load, it's got to be a bunch of normies who pick it up. But I think that's the other thing
about Charlie, aside from the fact that he was a giant. I said this on the show a couple of days
ago is that you know people describe people as larger than life charlie wasn't larger than life he just
was life he was just so alive and so normal so normal that's why people connected to charlie right
he he wasn't a persona right there are so many people in the space and in the political space
who are just kind of like caricatures of themselves and personas and performative and all this kind of
crap and charlie wasn't any of those things right charlie was a guy who had to be taught not to wear
a baggy suit as we were talking about off the air. Charlie was a guy who, as you mentioned,
someone told him he had Riz and he said, what the hell is Riz? That's who Charlie was. And the fact
that a normie can change the world that way. I mean, and that's what Charlie was. He was saying
normal, good, innocent things, the kinds of things that you want your children to grow up with.
I'm going to show my kids videos of Charlie. And my kids are like 11. I have four and they range
from 11 to 2, I can show them Charlie Kirk videos.
You know, Charlie, Charlie used to always check us and say, no, like if we had some content
idea, and he go, there's 10-year-olds watching, there's 14-year-olds watching, always remember.
He brought an innocence to the world, but an innocence with a level of sophistication
and how to approach the world, and that is so difficult to do, because people who are innocent
tend not to know how to do the other thing, the activism thing and the coalition building thing.
He's a five-tool athlete.
Truly amazing and developed tools that weren't even in his arsenal at the beginning.
This is why people talk about Charlie being talented, and they think that talent is a sort of compliment.
A lot of people are born talented at a lot of different things.
Charlie was born talented at a great many things.
And then there are the things that he legitimately made himself the best in the world at.
And that was an inspiration to people too, because if you go back and you just watch the sort of arc of his career and his trajectory,
which, as Michael says, was going to lead to the White House.
I mean, like, no one believes any different.
If you watch that arc, the ability to continue to improve his own trajectory by becoming,
that's part of the tragedy is he was getting better at everything and he was already the best.
He was getting better at all those things.
And that's an amazing, that's an unbelievable thing.
And that's what was taken from us.
And the other thing is that you just to kind of close out my monologue here.
No, that's great.
You know, that it wasn't just that I received, you know, messages from everybody.
We all received messages from everybody.
Because if you knew Charlie, even tangentially, everybody knew how affected you were by Charlie's death.
It wasn't just that I received messages from all over the world, from, obviously, you know, friends in Argentina and in Britain and in Canada and tons from Israel, obviously, because Charlie, of course, was publicly extremely pro-Israel.
Not just that.
I got messages from people who are very prominent figures, who are liberal, who were deeply disturbed and upset, and who are not, I don't want to say that everybody who disagrees with us politically is a person who celebrated Charlie's death, because that's not true.
This is the opportunity that Charlie provides.
What Charlie was about was opening doors.
So all those kids he was talking to on campus, so many of those kids became conservative.
became God-fearers, went to church on Sunday
because of, and they weren't people
who already were on Charlie's side, right?
That was Charlie's day.
He took a bunch of people
who weren't going to go to church last Sunday,
and they all went to church last Sunday.
The church piece from everything I'm hearing
were overflowing,
overflowing, you know, I said,
make heaven crowded Charlie.
I saw the Charlie effect at church
because I'm sitting there,
we're kind of a buttoned up,
more traditional parish.
That guy's really, shocking, I know,
not a lot of tank tops,
but I look around,
I look around and there were
sweatpants and t-shirts
and I was so happy to see the sweatpants and
t-shirts I knew every single one of them
was there for Charlie. And so I think that we shouldn't just use
this as an opportunity
to mobilize on behalf of the things that Charlie
believed to carry forward his legacy. His
legacy was going to people we disagree with
and getting those people to
realize that
Charlie's principles were right.
Right, that's the
unbelievable legacy that he leaves because again
being murdered in the way that he was, doing the thing
that Charlie was all about, doing outreach.
He was doing outreach, right?
Religious outreach.
He was talking about Christ in the question before he was killed, right?
He was doing religious outreach.
He was doing political outreach, values outreach,
biblically based outreach.
And being killed in that way means that there is an opportunity
to reach out to people who weren't going to be devotees of Charlie
or devotees of the ideas that he espoused.
And to ignore that, I think, would be to ignore a huge part of what his legacy can
mean. So yes, I totally agree with the vice president. You can't have unity with people who celebrate
the murder of Charlie Kirk. You absolutely cannot. Those people are, I'm not going to curse. Those people
are the worst that humanity has to offer, the people who celebrate the death. A wonderful person like
Charlie and a husband and a father. And I cannot watch the tapes. I mean, you're playing, you know,
before the show started, the videos of Charlie with his, I can't watch them. I have such a hard time
with that. I mean, because we all have young kids. It's so painful. It's so painful. It's so painful
to watch and knowing that those kids are going to grow up without their dad, it's unspeakable,
unspeakable.
And people who celebrate that, there are no depths in hell that are rich enough for those people.
But I think that there are people that we can reach out to.
And that was always Charlie's idea.
There are always people that we can reach out to.
He convinced literally millions of young people to move to the other side of the political aisle.
And so I think there's an opportunity to make people make that choice.
make that choice choose between the demons who are celebrating Charlie's death and the rest of us who would like to have a functional country where we can talk to one and I love I love what you said I mean I do think this is an opportunity this is a this is that fork in the road moment as a country where we and I and this is you know we could get into the whole cancel is it cancel culture debate or whatever which I personally find to be ridiculous because if somebody reveals themselves to be a ghoulish nasty vile person then that employer
should have every right to fire
a ghoulish violence. If you
threaten to murder someone or encourage
the murder of someone for speaking their mind,
then it actually helps
the marketplace of ideas to get
that person out. That person is
undermining the marketplace. To quote
Chesterton, it's the thought that stops
thought. You can't, it's
you need certain foundations,
just like any marketplace, you need certain
rules and basic guidelines, or else
you can't even speak. I can't have a conversation
with you if you're going to threaten to murder more talk.
It's a deliberate misread of what cancel culture is.
Of course.
And this idea that you as an employer owe it to an employee to continue to employ them after they post in celebration of Charlie's murder.
Of course, you don't have an obligation to continue signing a track who is celebrating to somebody who celebrates Charlie's murder.
Like, duh, that's a basic aspect of freedom also.
There's no equivalence also because, and this is the really frustrating thing about this kind of, oh, the rights engaging in cancel culture.
Well, even if I accepted that framing, there's a difference here in the kinds of speech that are being quoted.
unquote canceled.
You know, the left will cancel you if you say that, you know, men can't have babies.
That's what cancel culture is on the left.
They'll cancel you for saying things that are true and normal and obvious.
And on the right, to the extent that anyone's being canceled, and it's not being done through force of loss,
certainly not through violence, it's just being done through, you know, free speech and people,
freedom of association.
But at the extent anyone's getting canceled, they're getting it canceled for saying things that are objectively vile and disgusting.
And in some cases, illegal.
Right.
And so there's just, there's a, there's a fundamental difference.
Like society should treat those things differently.
I love the point you're making because it's, it's truth versus a lie.
It's, and I think I hadn't seen it put that way yet, Matt, and I think it's really smart.
So.
Yeah.
Well, I just think, I think that when we talk about the difference in, in, you know, canceling on the right or the left, there are a lot of other differences to, I mean, one of the big differences is that the right, especially historically, you know, over the last.
several decades doesn't have
the institutional power that the left does
and so when the left cancels you
they're using institutional power
to do it I mean they're using big
tech platforms they're using
they're using these big corporations
so they have they have that
institution power that the right doesn't have
so there are a lot of differences but I think
I think the most important difference again
it goes down to the actual speech we're talking about
I mean not all speech is exactly the same
there's there is just a difference
and so it is good
we should in society
react with
revulsion
to things that are revolting
when someone says something
revolting and disgusting
we should react
with revulsion and disgust
but when someone says something
that is good and normal
we should not react
with revulsion and discuss
you hypocrite
hold on hold on I'm confused
Matt
I think I've got you
yeah no I mean it's it's
it's this common sense stuff
that we all know it
and yet somehow it
erupts into a debate on X.
I think that what happens is that everybody flattens out these positions into the dumbest
version of the argument.
There's a sort of pixelation that happens where it's like, well, that means that I should
be able to say anything and no one should ever be angry at me.
No one should ever criticize me, no matter what I say.
And if you do, that's a form of cancel culture.
And it's like, no, you've now reduced the argument to the stupidest version of the
argument.
The argument that I think all of us on the right were trying to make, maybe sometimes ineffectually,
but I think correctly was if you say a man is not a woman, that is not a cancelable offense
or should not be.
And yet that was a cancelable offense for half of our industry.
I mean, legitimately.
I mean, this is the thing that's – and there was an incident that happened, just personal memory, from 2014, where I was on CNN headline news.
And there was a transgender identifying person, a very large male transgender identifying person with extraordinary large female hands.
And I only remember the size of the hands
because I was grabbed by the back of the neck
during that television interview
because I had the temerity to call him sir
and ask about his genetics.
And the entire panel immediately responded
by rushing to the defense of the person
who is doing the physical assault on camera.
And that is the predicate to all of this.
There are permission structures
that have been created on the left for violence.
And these permission structures
are deeply evil and they are not the same thing
as saying
a man is not a woman
like if you are some of the people
who we've been watching we haven't played any of their tapes
because they don't frankly deserve the airtime
who are out there
and making statements about how Charlie deserved
what he was going to get or other people
the New York Times featured a Twitch streamer
who has spent his days
for the last several years
defending terrorism
violently threatening people and calling for violence
and the New York Times featured that person
in the pages of the New York Times
are we not supposed to react to that with revulsion as Matt says of course we should react to that with revulsion it's not the same thing you know we we have to recognize the left and the right when people have as you point out what's often a degraded debate about speech you have to begin with something you can't think from nothing you can't speak from nothing you have to begin with basic truths and like men men and women are different for instance or basic moral goods C.S. Lewis called this the Dow
others have called it the natural law
or the first principles of practical reason
it's like in math you have to start with an axiom
a equals a plus B equals B plus A
it's not that you can prove those things
but you can't prove anything else without those things
if we now deny that murder is wrong
we're past reason I just want to say again
guys thank you for making the trip
here you know you guys
were so gracious
about I mean it was you were just like
anything we could do you know can we do more can we do more
and we felt that
love and we feel that love and um you know so just thank you again because i know getting the three
of you in the same spot they're like each other that's getting us to voluntarily be around each other
but what we all would you know we we've been talking to a lot of our friends in the conservative
movement just in the broader american culture and right now it feels that not just the beating
heart of the conservative movement the republican party where it does feel like the beating heart
of america is in phoenix right now that's a tp USA and so this this is the
place to be and however anyone can help some people can help by spreading the word starting a chapter
sending a donation do whatever they can do though this is this is where it's out right now thank you
thank you for saying that and i i also want you guys to know that you know Erica feels that too
um i talked to Erica multiple times a day as as we're just you know because on top of the show
duty it was sort of you know I don't think people realize this I was originally like comms PR you
dealing with incoming on Charlie and then we started the show and so I still have I still
wear two hats you know Charlie would do this and then he would go run turning point and it was
sort of we just kind of did it together when we when we built this part out it was kind of like our
side hobby which became this moment every day to sharpen ideas and by the way when you talk about
how Charlie leveled up it was this microphone you know that that did that for him because the
the number of reps he was putting in every day he was sharpening and sharpening and sharpening
and we had the sounding board in these these chats that we have you know i'll never delete i'm
gonna you know where we're working through you know this new news cycle came up and we've got to
figure out how to navigate it and every day doing that you're just sharpening your mind sharpening
your mind so that when he would go on campus it would it would come out the way it did and it was
amazing how his life was like that where every piece of it fed into the
next where turning you know this show would feed into the campus events which I'm now going to call
basically campus tent revivals it just you know it occurred to me this morning I was like that's
what they were and and you you start realizing he buried this stuff in the in this political
conversation but he was telling people to follow Jesus repent and be saved you know listen to the
gospel God wants so much more from you he wants you to be a part of something bigger it was a tent
revival and thousands came
thousands came and yeah
they cast a ballot when it came time in November
God bless him. That was good that was a good
because it was innocent and it was fun
and it was just basically true
and you know some of the pushback that people kept giving
Charlie which was you know why is he
going to college campuses and talking to people and Charlie would
answer that right I mean he'd say because that's where the people are you got to
talk to the people right I mean it's pretty simple
but they would say well you know in his debates
he's what is he been doing all Charlie did was ask
extremely simple questions that people on the
their side could not answer. They couldn't. I mean, that's why the Revival 10th set on it
proved me wrong, because people had a very difficult time, as it turns out, proving truth wrong,
because it was true. And Charlie was uniquely capable of speaking to that truth. I know we haven't
played any clips of Charlie. Well, we will. We have another hour, so we're going to keep...
I would love to play clip 38, where Charlie is talking to young men, because they really are in
need of this advice. This is going to live forever.
All right, studio, play cut 38. I don't give advice to young women on how to find
a man. I will say to young men, get your act together and really make self-control and self-discipline
a priority in your life. One of the reasons why so many young women are upset with the dating
pool, I hear this all the time, is that they see men that can't control themselves. And as you
can tell, the young ladies are very enthusiastic about hearing this. And by the way, here's a
thought crime for you. Women want to be led.
women want to be led by strong men and you will men are different than women and women are
different than men and both need each other by the way i mean that's true and and you know it sounds
controversial when he says it and then you think for more than 20 seconds and it turns out that
it's just true and charlie had a unique gift in clarifying and crystallizing that truth and then
truth in delivering it out there in viral fashion, which is why, again, tens of millions of people
are more, is why have giant marches chanting his name in South Korea and London, and you have
a, and squares being dedicated to him in Israel, and New Zealand marches and like all over the
world, people are mourning Charlie in a way that I think would have, frankly, I think it would
have been astonished Charlie. If he, if he, like, I, you knew him much better than,
than I knew him. It would have blown his mind. We, we knew that Charlie was getting uncomfortably
freakishly famous his name idea some some pollster did it for us without us knowing and told us
afterwards it was like you know we knew charlie was getting very famous to the extent
you don't get buried down south park without exactly well yeah but but you know it's kind of
funny because i remember the first plane ride i took with charlie years ago there was one kid that
came up and like kind of on the sly like his bumped him and i was like oh that's cool
And it got to the point where it didn't matter if he was in London.
It didn't matter if he was in Manhattan.
It didn't matter if he was at some, like, random bar.
This is a really funny story, actually.
This is some random bar with, like, in kind of the boonies.
It's a whole backstory with a couple Fox hosts.
And at this random bar, over the course of an hour and a half conversation,
about 150 people came up.
I literally heard the story from one of those Fox hosts two days ago.
Yes, this is a true story.
And kept getting selfish.
and they would hand the phone to the Fox host
and be like, could you get me a picture of Charlie?
And this, you know, there was two rather famous people
that he was engaged in this very long conversation with
and they would be like, sure, you know?
And so we knew he was getting weirdly, weirdly famous
and uncomfortably so, but he embraced it.
He had said, you know, he used to really kind of,
I think, struggle with a little bit.
But as the years went on, he was like,
I've just embraced it.
This is my life.
And he would always, he'd say yes to every selfie.
Every selfie.
Sure, come have a selfie.
And you're going, you know, like this very Charlie Kirk's smile.
But anyways, we, it was, he said he would, to your answer your question, I think he would still be blown away.
Because I think it's hard to know when you're living it just what's happening.
And, you know, I mentioned to a reporter it was 15 billion views his content got in the fall lead up to the election.
across and TikTok did a survey and after the election and they discovered that Charlie was the most
trusted voice for Trump voters under 30 and he was you know way more popular than President
Trump and so when you look at what happened with the youth vote especially knowing that the
boomer vote fell off 2% so boomers went to the left 2% in this last election and young people
went like 13 points to the right.
And so you look at, I think it's a completely fair thing to say that I don't think
we have President Trump if we don't have Charlie.
The President said it the other day, didn't he?
As did Susie Walker?
Well, Vice President has said it, certainly.
Because I remember when I was on with Charlie at the last Amfest in December right after
the election.
I remember saying that to Charlie.
I said, without you, the president is not the president again.
And I think everybody who watches politics with even any remote.
level of intuition and understanding knows that that is the case.
And again, that's an area where I remember when they announced the TPUSA was going to be doing
the vast majority of Trump's voter outreach.
I was like, do they have any prep in that?
Like normally you hire, you know, a group that has an outside expertise in that sort of thing.
And again, that's just an area.
He was constantly leveling up.
That's a crazy thing to level up.
And he never, he never asked for any credit for that.
I mean, he is the reason that Trump got elected.
but I never heard him ever say that.
And this is, in our business, you know, you've got,
everybody always wants credit for everything.
I think I was actually the first person to tell you that.
Yeah.
But for Charlie to have that level of influence,
but to never play, in fact, he did the opposite.
He would deflect credit.
He would give it to other people.
You're the perfect example for that
because you had that incredible documentary.
what is a woman and the question Charlie took it and ran with it in such an amazing way
and he would always be like I got to get credit to Matt Walsh like he would go out of his way
and I know he messaged you privately a lot saying like oh you're doing amazing this was so good
or whatever but you know he gave you a lot of credit for that and I think I saw you at the
inauguration at some event I remember and I made it a point being like I want you to know
he really, like, respects the heck out of you.
Yeah, well, he gave me far too much credit as one of the few times I disagreed with him
is when he would do that.
But I do remember, I mentioned it on air a couple days ago, that after the election
that Charlie made a point, I mean, he had just had this huge victory that he was the pivotal
player in it.
And he made this point of putting out a tweet to give me some small token of credit because
on the trans issue and I just remember thinking again that that's too much credit but but also
nobody does that in this business no no one ever especially when you just had a huge victory and
you're thinking who can I who can I give this credit to so it's not going to me no one does that he's
he's like one of the very few guys I know you know I'll give you an insight on that because
you know there was a lot of people that would chirp at Charlie or attack
And he, you had to be, I mean, you know, a certain level of doing something wrong for him to name you, to put you, to name check you.
And that was usually like, oh, you're, you know, trying to, you know, come at Pete Hegseth and he's our boy.
So if you're coming in the way of Pete, then there might be, there might be a point.
But other than very, very specific instances, and I had a really long conversation with Charlie about this.
and he was talking about sort of how the Greeks sort of had a hierarchy of virtues,
but not just that, it was like roles.
And he put being an entertainer, no offense to you guys,
because I think you guys are all much more than that.
But he put being an entertainer, and I think the Greeks did too, like the actors,
and those are really low.
Criminals and prostitutes usually.
Yeah, it was really low on their list.
What they put high was being a philosopher,
who's being a theologian, was being a statesman.
And I remember Charlie very clearly saying,
our job is to keep the coalition together.
Our job is to be these three.
He's like, a lot of people can do that.
He's like, we have to do this.
Because, you know, it was so easy and so tempting to get infuriated
when these pot shots would come over
and nobody knew the work that we were doing and he was doing
behind the scenes to sort of like assuage this person
or bring this person back or, you know, make sure that they felt, I mean, there was a lot of that going on.
But to me, that is the skill.
And actually, that is different from, certainly than entertainment.
It's even different from philosophy.
There are a million dime store philosophers.
A lot of people who have a brilliant idea and just ask them, you know, and they'll give you their white paper on it.
There are very, very few people who can build a coalition and fewer people still who can maintain a coalition.
The only other example I can think of in modern politics is Trump, who holds these disparate parts together.
And Charlie was the glue.
It is unbelievable.
The friendships he could maintain, the pieces that he could broker for the common good, for a common purpose.
That there is simply no comparison.
And when you're looking at elections, when you're looking at moving the ball forward in the country, it was the most important thing.
I totally agree.
and I promised you guys a
by the way it was a very Charlie thing
because Charlie would always be like this
and every so often I'd catch him where he wasn't like
fully like tuned in and be like yeah it was great
anyways we'll be right back
and by the way that's real
he was he he answered all of his
audience questions
did he actually answer all he no he
did he actually read all the questions
yeah he did
I'm not even kidding he read them because I saw them
that's unbelievable the read
unread anyway Matt I wanted to
paid tribute to you because it just became such a big part of the tour. I wanted at least play one
of those videos that you helped inspire with Charlie. Play Cut 68. What is a woman? It's a woman who,
it's a person who believes they're a woman. No, but that's not a definition. What objectively is a
woman? It's a woman. No, what is that? A woman. Give me a definition. Just anyone who believes
they're a woman. No, but what is that? It's circular reasoning. What is a woman without using the word
woman in the answer. Can you, can you answer that question or no? It's just a person who believes
they're a woman. I mean, what's wrong with that? You can't answer the question. You can't use
the word woman in your answer. The inability to answer the most fundamental obvious biological
question, what is a woman? This is not troubling? Like, it's so simple, it's so obvious. And I guess
the question is, when is womanhood then achieved? Just like for that, whenever they decide. I mean,
like... Last chance. Can you tell me what a woman is?
Are you a woman?
Why are you a woman?
Why are you so hateful?
I asked you what a woman was.
That's not hateful.
Thank you for your time.
yeah i haven't seen that one in a long time
never gets old it never gets old
what did we just witness there and why was it
well it's the i mean it's the question
it's still the question of a of a generation that's still that they still
they've had they've had now uh several years to figure out a good answer to that
and they still haven't haven't quite gotten there um and i you know i always love
seeing that
and I would
certainly do
and I know we all did
the same thing
with Charlie
that he would
he would stumble on
like a certain point
or a way of phrasing it
and you go
that's great
I got to go use that
and of course
you always
you always got to give credit
but that was the
well not always
because sometimes Charlie
would be like
I'm going to steal that
don't worry
like
I'll give attribution
30% of the tab
as long as long as you're at
30% attribution
you're fine
but
that kind of goes back to
you know I hate to drag it
drag it back down to the depressing stuff but
that goes back to what we've lost is like this
this kind of give and take this we're building off
of each other and
and we've lost that now I also wanted to say
just real quick that and I made this point a couple of times
on my show and on X and stuff but
we've been talking about all the tributes to Charlie
and all the people that love him.
and what a testament that is to him and his character and his effectiveness and all that is true and that is the greatest testament to the man is that is that millions of people are are mourning his loss but I also do think and I and I I don't we shouldn't lose sight of this that the people all the people on the other side who are celebrating his death and dancing on his grave it's infuriating to see it's disgusting it enraising
me but also that is a testament and a tribute to Charlie as well and and and and when I die you know
I would like to think the same thing's going to happen because that means that that that I was
effective you know that your your your enemies if you are a warrior yeah and Charlie Kirk was a
warrior he was a peaceful warrior he's a happy warrior he's nonviolent but he was a warrior
If you're a warrior, then your enemies should celebrate when you're no longer there.
When you're out of the arena, they should be happy because that means that you were winning.
That means that you were punching hard.
And so we should all want that for ourselves.
When we're no longer here, if our enemies couldn't care less, just another day at the office for them, then that means we didn't punch hard enough.
That means we didn't fight hard enough.
And so I do also see that as a testament.
So can I ask you all three of you a question?
What are you going to do next?
I mean, nobody can replace Charlie.
We know it's going to, I guess the question is sort of,
how has this changed you?
What practical things?
I mean, you're going to be going to campus.
I have a real answer to this, which is I owed Charlie a text.
Because unlike Charlie, I was not diligent or fastidious about this thing.
He was just unbelievably good at constantly being in touch with people.
So I owed him a text a few days prior, but I thought, well, whatever, I'm going to see him.
I'm going to see him in a couple weeks because he and I were scheduled to speak together at University of Minneapolis, or as he called it Mogadishu, in 12 days, 12 days after it happened.
And so it happens.
And then, you know, you're in a fog, and then you're getting the news.
And then later, this popped into my head.
I said, oh, my good, I was supposed to do an event with Charlie a week and a half from now.
And so your first instinct is, well, there's no way that that event can go on.
That's your, just whenever something like this happens.
But then two seconds later you say, there's no way it can't go on.
Especially given this man, especially given this movement that he built and everything that he stood for.
He said, there's no way that we can cancel that.
And so I said, well, look, this is a decision for TPA USA to make.
And you can speak to it more.
But it seems to me that the tenor around here is we've just lost the leader,
replaceable man and we we don't even necessarily want to keep going on but we have to do it well yeah
and that's why we did our friday show and um if i could you know i was not in a good place
um i'm still not in a good place but i knew we had to do it because charlie would want us to do it
and i and it i kind of likened it to what happened at you know pentecost a little bit because what
happened was charlie died and his followers his team
his staff i mean it was we were trying to make sense of the chaos part of part of the team was in
provo part of the team was in phoenix and we were trying to just just put one foot in front of the
other and then erika got up and spoke to the world and it was like that was like our
pentecost where and all of a sudden we were filled with courage and i don't think that was just us
uh on the team i think the whole country watched it and i think that's what you know i think
Hannity played it twice he played it a second time from from top to bottom and I was I was
incredibly grateful for that editorial decision and I think people wanted that and needed it and
Erica was so brave and I can just tell you we have been inundated from the grassroots these young
kids we're probably at 40,000 new maybe more new chapter requests to start new chapters
and and I've said this on doing media hits to put that in perspective we had 900
college chapters and 1200 high school chapters and charlie just a few weeks ago was like we're
going to be on every high school in america we're going to do 35 and a thousand and i was like
i googled and i go charlie there's only um 23 000 high schools we're going to be on 23
000 we're going to find new high schools but and ever you know the whole team's like charlie we
you know and eventually he goes okay fine you know we'll we'll do 15 and then he tells the
the guy who's building the slide because this is a presentation goes me you can put 10 but you make
think he's doing 15 and he was so committed to putting a club america which is our high school
brand on every single american high school and i just marvel because that is such a fresh
memory it's two weeks two two weeks ago that we had this and i just marveled that now in death
he is going to absolutely accelerate that that mission that goal so much faster than he could have
ever possibly imagined and that was the charlie's more more let's do more we have to go harder
We have to go faster, more, and the whole team knows that.
And he was just, and he covered it all in this amazing grace.
And I just want to give some kudos here.
I want to make sure I have enough time to The Daily Wire.
I just found out that the Daily Wire is donating a million dollars to TPSA.
And I, from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys so much.
I'm blown away by that generosity, and I know Erica is too.
Our pleasure.
easiest board decision.
God bless you guys.
That's breaking news and an amazing, amazing gesture of confidence in what Charlie built
and what we are going to keep moving forward and growing and multiplying.
Ben, you notice something, you picked something up about that clip that we showed of Charlie
where he's asking, what is a woman, what is a woman, what is a woman, what is a woman?
Pause, why are you so hateful?
Right.
And we all laugh because it's inherently ridiculous because Charlie obviously is not.
not being hateful. But that I think when, you know, I think we're all feeling Matt's visceral
rage, or at least if we're not, we should be. And the question is where to direct it.
And I think that that visceral rage has to be directed at the ideological frameworks that
create the impetus for violence. In that statement, when she says, why are you so hateful?
That's kind of the whole thing. The reason I say that is because there is a basic framework
for ideally there's been this flattening where we pretend that all ideologies are equally likely
to create violence this is a favor of the media right it's just or politicians political violence
both sides both sides everyone's doing okay here's the thing we all know which ideologies everyone
knows which ideologies are most likely we are not burning down the country we're not running
we're not burning down businesses we're not throwing rocks at police we're praying correct and
let's be real about this the minute literally the minute
I heard that Charlie was shot.
I know about you guys, but I had some pretty good suspicions as to what ideology was behind
the murder of our friend.
It's always the ones you most expect.
And so the question is why, right?
The question is why.
And the answer is because there is a framework of mind that has been created in which
people claim that there is the problems in their own life.
And this is what Charlie stood against, right?
Because Charlie was constantly talking about personal responsibility and making your life
better and take your life in your own hands and you can be a success.
Right.
That's that clip we played earlier for men.
Like, be better.
Be back. If you are a person who takes the failures in your own life and you externalize those
onto a shadowy group of people who are responsible for all of your failures, and then you say those
people are victimizing me to the point where they are genocides, erasing me, trans erasure,
transgenocide. And then you say, well, if those people are trying to kill me, it's self-defense,
right? Speech is violence. It's self-defense for me to shoot somebody like Charlie Kirk for saying
that. When she says, why are you so hateful, the reason she has perceived,
fact as hate is because it is a denial of her sense of identity and a sense of threat that
is now justifying violence. That is the reality. There's an undergirding to some of these
ideologies, particularly this ideology, that has violent extremism as an after effect. That's just a
reality. And there are multiple ideologies that are like that. So I think that the BLM ideology
had aspects of this for sure. I think radical Islam, as Charlie routinely talked about, particularly
in the last couple of weeks before his murder. Radical Islam, obviously, is deeply ensconced
in the sort of conspiracy theory about our failure is the fault of all these other people. These
people are trying to harm us. Therefore, we are justified in doing violence to them. And when I
see the New York Times trotting out Hassan Piker repeatedly now, this is like the second time,
repeatedly, to talk about Charlie's murder, as though he is the representative of good faith debate.
When his, he is back to every terror group, and I can imagine.
And it's legitimately.
openly called for...
Set American Reserve 9-11
has openly talked about
how his political opposition
should be physically harmed.
You're a lawyer, right?
I mean, when does it cross the line
into incitement?
Does it have to be...
When a specific name has to be used?
Because this is relevant to what happened
with Pam Bondi
and all the clip that's...
I mean, you know, she was saying...
She basically said hate speech
is illegal.
And Charlie...
I mean, I think she ended up
clarifying later to her credit
the clip is I'm told
is incomplete she ended up quoting
incitement right
um
Michael looks up
it's an unfortunate phrase to use
if you're just saying that threats and incitement
are illegal of course they are
you don't need to say hate speech
no exactly so that's the problem
no but it ties into
it ties into what happens next here
and that's why I'm asking it because a lot
of people you know there was a push
to sort of smoke out all these people that were criticizing
or that we're dancing on the grave
rather and that's perfectly fair it comes to the social social consequence but not a legal one when
does it become a legal consequence so i think that what they've been attempting to do and cash patel is
apparently talking about this is labeling antifa terrorist group which absolutely they should be i mean
clearly they should be at this point and that if there are people who are funding groups that are
violent then we should obviously be looking into them probably under racketeering laws and conspiracy
laws. If you are donating money to a ex-Mormon trans furry group that is openly planning
violence, then you should be held legally accountable for that in the way that you would be,
as we all know, if it were a white supremacist group and you were funding a white supremacist group.
We all know that that would be investigated by the FBI.
And I don't mean to step on your point here, but I just want to underscore why what you're
saying is so critical, and I want the audience to understand that is because one of Charlie's
best friends in the administration was Stephen Miller.
And Stephen Miller came on our show yesterday.
I think he said the same thing on Hannity.
The last text message.
And there's so many prophetic little nuggets, guys.
I wish I could share them all.
The last text message he shared with Stephen Miller was we have to root out the people that are funding the violence.
What we're talking about here is organized crime.
All right.
Sorry.
I didn't mean to cut you off, Ben.
But I think it's important that people understand that Stephen Miller, one of his dearest,
friends, you know, this is the last thing he got from Charlie.
Do you not think that Stephen Miller is going to make this his, his, I mean, immigration
will always be his number one issue, but this is not going to go away and the admin is going
to take action on this.
I think that would be the best thing, because I think that what you're going to see from the
left now is an attempt, and you're already seeing it, to claim that the right is cracking
down on free speech as a response to what happened to Charlie.
This is why they're retelling this, this idiotic line that it's cancel culture to fire somebody
who's cheering somebody's murder.
It's why they're now trying to spin that quote from the Attorney General into,
they're cracking down on free speech, being meticulous about your policy pursuits,
which is something that Charlie very much was.
Yes.
You know, being meticulous in how you actually do the thing is the thing that the administration
needs to do next.
And Stephen Miller is definitely going to do this.
I was talking with my friend Chris Rufo about this, because Chris is very much into this.
You have to be incredibly meticulous in your use of power to a,
your goal. And that's the thing that needs to happen next. I mean, we can, we need to have
the conversations that we've all been, been talking about with people who disagree with us.
And we need to, you know, obviously point our boats in the same direction to try and generate
more power and more and more victories and more successes behind Charlie's legacy and the things
that he, that he stood for. But the thing that, that the government can do needs to be really
meticulous. And we need to be meticulous in how we pursue that. And the government can be very,
we should be very, very clear that this was left-wing LGBT extremism.
I mean, all of the, all the evidence we have right now points to that very, very clearly.
And that needs to be said.
It can't be said enough.
And in particular, you know, the trans connection here is also very clear.
And I think more is going to come out about that.
Trans ideology is inherently dangerous.
It is inherently violent.
ideology is inherently violent because it is a violent rejection first of all of the self you are rejecting yourself if you're if you're in the throes of this ideology you're you're doing violence to yourself um we know the suicide as as trans activists themselves are are always very quick to point out the suicide attempt rate is extreme astronomically high so this is an inherently violent um ideology and kind of going back to your point earlier ben that
How are these things incited?
Well, these people are being told that your very existence hinges on the acceptance and affirmation of other people.
And so not just like your identity, but your life itself, your very life, your very existence, it depends on other people affirming it.
And if they don't affirm it, then they have caused you to not exist.
And to those of us who are saying, it sounds crazy, we can't wrap our minds around that.
That's what these people believe.
That's what the ideology teaches.
It's what the media has been saying.
It's what the schools have been saying.
It's what Democrat politicians.
It's what the president used to say under the old regime.
This is the message that used to come from the White House all the way on down,
that if you do not affirm these people, and that is to say,
accept their delusional perception of themselves, then you are killing them.
And so when you go to people who are already in the throes of this inherently violent ideology,
they're already delusional, they're deeply confused.
And then you tell them that, hey, those people over there, if they don't accept everything you say about yourself, they are killing you, they are a threat to you, they're committing genocide.
They use that word transgenocide and they use that label against Charlie.
They've used it against me.
They've used it against you, too.
That is not now.
We kind of laugh it off because it's silly.
It's ridiculous.
Genocide.
What the hell are you talking about?
They show up.
But the people that they're telling that to believe it.
They believe that we are literally committing a genocide against them.
And so when you do that, when you go and tell people, these people, if they don't affirm you, they're killing you, they're committing a genocide.
And then one of those people goes and kills one of the people that you made that claim about, it is 100% also your fault.
You intentionally cause that.
You might as well have just told them, hey, go kill that guy.
Because that is in effect, that is what you said to them.
And that has been the message.
It can't be stressed enough.
That has been the message not just from the left wing fever swamps on the internet, but from the very top of the Democrat leftist,
remit on down that has been the message and so they they own this well and by the way this this
individual i'm going to say his name i you know i i chant you are my rage uh outlet so just
keep rage tweeting please because uh but you know he was bragging about it and and and and before
it happened he was saying this there was people with four knowledge and they didn't come out so shame
on them i hope they burn in hell we'll be right back said this before and um but it
bears repeating. The last message that Charlie sent me was, I think it was just the day before we lost him,
which is that we need to have an organized strategy to go after the left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.
And I will write those words onto my heart, and I will carry them out.
If people ask me, you know, what emotions I'm feeling right now, I'm just something people say.
I mean, you kind of know the answer. There's incredible sadness, but there's incredible anger.
And the thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion.
But focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history.
Probably show that. Amen.
And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
So let me explain a little bit of what that means.
We've got 30 seconds.
It'd be quick, Stephen.
The organized docks and campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence,
the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses,
combining that with messaging this design to trigger incite violence,
and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence,
it is a vast domestic terror movement.
And with God is 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.
It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.
So, Ben, I want to go to you, because, again, you're the lawyer here.
He mentioned terror network, domestic terror network,
and with Luigi Maggione, the news this morning,
was that the judge dropped the domestic terror sort of angle
to the prosecution.
Is this legally defensible?
Is this just a New York bad judge?
You know, I haven't actually read the,
decision from the judge or the rationale for it, I do not understand how it's not just clearly
first-degree murder. I mean, it's obviously premeditated murder. So dropping it to second-degree
murder as though it's a crime of passion is totally crazy in every possible way. And again,
when we talk about people who own it, Bill Burr shouted on multiple shows on national TV, free
Luigi. When we talk about inherently violent ideologies, it's not just the trans ideology
that is inherently violent. If you are a person who says the existence of wealthy people is a threat
to me, that they are killing us, that there's a group of people and they are manipulating your
life such that you're poor and they're rich and they are harming you. They are actively harming you
by their very existence. The billionaires are actively harming you just by existing. They are evil
by their existence. Then why should we be surprised when healthcare CEOs get shot on the streets?
And then there's a post facto after the murder justification in the same way that you saw
with Charlie. There is something so hideous that has been bred on my – the point I've been making on my show is
typically nobody gets shot over marginal tax rate conversations, right? It's not as though every
political debate in America ends with somebody shooting somebody else. But there are particular
types of political debates in America in which one side sees fit to murder the other side. And it is
baked into those ideologies. And so I don't want to hear this nonsense from Democratic politicians
who just generically denounce political violence.
If you are unwilling to say, as a democratic politician, for example, Donald Trump is not a fascist.
When you talk about thought matrices that create violence, if you keep calling Donald Trump Hitler, everyone said this, it's true.
If you keep calling Donald Trump Hitler over and over and over, someone might think, you know, he's Hitler.
And what do we do with Hitler?
We try to shoot Hitler in the head.
You know, on your both sides point, Ben, there's this meme that's come out.
Seth Moulton, this Democrat congressman, goes on TV, has been spewing this, that the vast
majority of political violence in America is from the right. And when I heard that, I said,
well, look, I don't know. I haven't looked at the statistics. Maybe that's true. It doesn't
ring true to me, but maybe it's true. So I go and I look into the statistics. I say, oh, there's this
study, that study. So I said, okay, well, let me just look into particular cases. There was an event
a couple years ago at University of Pittsburgh. Two Antifa operatives show up. These are members
of an Antifa cell. Go to Antifa meetings. We're caught going through TSA with
explosive material on them multiple times, still led to board the airplane. They sit off an explosive
at the event. And it was over the transgender issue. Injured, very seriously injured a female
cop at the event. I looked into that. I said, well, this would be an example of left wing violence,
right? No. It was not classified as left wing violence. It was pled down. It was classified as
obstruction of justice, not included in any of the stats. I looked through some other cases.
Covenant. They treated Covenant as a non-left-wing attack. They said that the shooter was seeking
fame, it was not a left-wing attack. This is a transgender ideologue shooting through a window of a church and murdering kids. So I realized the way that they get away with this is very simple. They don't count the left-wing violence. It's a completely bogus statistic. And so to your point, Ben, yes, you have to call this out, to Stephen Miller's point, this is largely organized. There are groups that fund this, that promote this, that publicize this, groups with foreign knowledge of attacks. This is organized. And our government,
has taken on organized crime before, taken on the mob, taken on terror groups, taken on all of
these things. We have the ability to do that. It is not only our right through our representatives,
it is our responsibility to do that to restore order. And if we are not treating this as an organized,
criminal, political threat from the left, then we are just twiddling our thumbs.
And the left will always be more violent. I mean, it's not even close. They have a near,
a near monopoly
on political violence on the left, especially
over the last 10 years
in particular over the last five years,
they have a near
monopoly on it. And there's also a
reason for that, which is that
and there's a reason why conservatives generally
don't, to your point,
everyone's mourning, no one boarded up their windows.
Not only were there, was there no rioting,
nobody was even worried that there would be.
Everyone just knew that there would not be.
Meanwhile, if you were to flip it around
and somebody of Charlie's importance and status on the left
were to be assassinated, God forbid.
We know that immediately all the windows
are being bored up in every major city.
And the reason is that the left,
they are enemies of civilization.
They hate civilization.
They hate Western civilization.
They want to, they want,
and this is kind of words that they use, dismantle.
They're always talking about dismantle.
Abolish.
They want to tear everything down.
And they'll tell you that, tear down,
dismantle, tear down, tear down the
patriarchy, dismantle the white
heteronormative, whatever, the family.
Whereas conservatives, what are we
most, like, at its essence,
what are we trying to conserve? We're trying to conserve
civilization, Western civilization in particular.
And we have disagreements about how to do that
and all of that. There are certainly
disagreements about that. But all
of us are fans of civilization. And so we just
inherently recognize that when you see a guy,
I walk up to a health care CEO
and shoot him and kill him in the street,
you cannot have a civilization
if that is allowed to happen.
If we get to a point where that just happens
and we're okay with it,
then we don't have civilization
where we have a third world country.
And so conservatives just fundamentally recognize
that is a bad thing.
Where on the left, they don't recognize that.
And it's again, it's hard for us to wrap our mind
around this as normal people,
but they do not see civilization itself
as necessarily a good thing.
And so to them, violence is,
and if you're looking to tear down civilization,
then violence is always going to be a tool in that.
I think there's actually a deep nihilism implicit in that
that doesn't exist on particularly the religious right.
And the reason I say that is because if you do,
as Charlie believed it, as all of us believe,
that there is a God-centered universe,
a God-ordered universe,
that for the most part,
we can discern right not all of it obviously you don't know why horrible tragedies horrifying things
happen i mean everyone is suffering with the aftermath of that but there is in fact a god order universe
which is certainly something that charley believed if you believe that then you also believe that you
have a duty in the world to act within that universe in rational ways and you have duties to god
to do the things that god told you to do including things like don't kill people don't murder people
and if you don't believe any of that if you believe that the world is just a system of power
that every argument is just a guise for power,
the sort of Michelle Foucault argument,
that all arguments, at their essence,
are just a way of me getting power over you,
then the response to an attempt for me to get power over you
is to use power in response.
And that leads to revolutionary violence.
And we've seen periods like this in American history.
It happened in the early 20th century.
It happened again in the 1960s.
And I fear that we're headed into another period like that
with a left that is so nihilistic
in its desire to see every argument,
argument. This is the thing they were trying to silence with Charlie, really more than anything
else. The thing they were trying to silence with Charlie was the argument. It's the thing that he
died doing. They didn't want him making the art. Yes, he was an amazing coalition building. We've talked
about this. Yes, he was an amazing political activist. The thing he was killed for doing was making
the argument. That's what he was killed for doing. There are lots of political activists and some of them
are quite effective. He was killed for making the argument. Why? Because there are too many
nihilists on the left predominantly who believe that the argument is just a form of power that is to be
met with a bullet yeah yeah and charlie and i you know again there's so many things that are
going to haunt me i think but he in the last month i would say multiple times one of the most
common arguments that he was warning everybody about was we america has two roads ahead we have
the fork in the road is maga or magi ism and he would use that more than
mom danaism right which was the more common i think refrain from from most and that's haunting and i hope that
i hope that you know we have a joke around here it's like how many times charlie's proven right
how many times he told us something and we're just like ah gosh darn it he's right again and i'm
you know obviously this is something he would have never wanted to be right about but um he was and
I think in his memory, we have to do everything we can in our power to make sure that the country
does not fray. And I've said this before, but I'll say it again, Charlie was, he wanted revival.
He didn't want revolution. He wanted the blood of Jesus. He did not want blood in the streets.
And he wanted a country his kids could inherit and be prosperous and thrive and go to church
and love their spouses. And that is not the tone that we are getting from the American left.
And I found that, you know, you brought up Hassan Piker.
I do have a clip that would, I don't know if you guys want to play it.
I'm of two minds of it.
But, you know, he's basically saying you've got to gutting your opponents.
Liberals, left-wingers, you need to be showing your opponent's guts.
You need to be gutting them.
You need to be shanking these somethings and letting their intestines just ride on the stage.
Blood in the, soak the streets in blood, I think, was one of his phrases.
Slice and dice him, he said.
And that guy is in the New York Times.
Times. So he's not a fringe player. The New York Times featured him twice in the space
of a week, twice. This is the great exponent of rational debate that they've got on left.
Ours was Charlie. And Charlie was murdered. Their great exponent of rational debate is the guy
who says slice and dice your opponents and leave their intestines writhing on the stage.
And who won't be doing any of that himself, by the way. Correct. He will stay in his comfortable studio.
And his million-dollar mansion is a socialist. Yeah. And he'll offer up
whatever leftist lunatic will take that and run with it,
he's fine to just offer that person.
That person also is a human sacrifice for him,
the person that that person kills, most especially,
but the person who carries it out,
because now they're like, you know,
they go to prison and Hassan Piker gets to keep living his comfortable life.
But the people, you know, we respond in a cultural way,
which is very important, we respond in prayer
in a spiritual way that's very important,
but we can't neglect the political either.
And when people violate the law,
when people incite violence,
when people engage in direct threats,
when people do things that are illegal,
it is incumbent upon us to prosecute them,
including those people, to the fullest extent of the law.
Amen.
I want to end this conversation on sort of what happens next.
And I was just telling you guys,
Charlie's main goal was that people would know Jesus.
But his political main goal was to keep the coalition together,
to keep Trump's coalition together.
And it was such an amazing guiding light for Charlie,
and it was a North Star because it would help dictate,
where do you where do you you you know dive in and and correct people maybe name check them if you have to
and when you wouldn't when you would stay silent what debates you would enter into which ones you wouldn't
and i guess my question is does this have to get worse before it gets better is this going to be
or how do we keep the coalition together yeah well look i think that well the question of where
we go next or what happens next is impossible to totally answer because everything is different now
everything has changed
everything changed
and I think that we don't know exactly
how yet
and so that
that's the first thing
we are really living in a new country
now I believe
and you have those moments
you know these rare moments
and in our generation
we've had a few of them
where you wake up the next morning
and okay this is a different country now
and this is this is one of those moments
but what I can say is that
there are a few things that have to happen going forward
and maybe on the sort of
they have to get uglier first side of it
is that we have to we have to establish order
we were talking about civilization protecting civilization
well you need order for civilization
you need law and order and so that needs to be
reasserted in a big way
and that can be ugly
now it's done through the law you know
no one is calling for again we are the
offenders of civilization. We don't want to see random violence. We don't want to see people
killed in the street. We don't want to see that. But we want to see our legal authorities
exercise that authority. And that can be an ugly thing. Like putting people in prison is not a
happy thing. We wish we didn't have to do that. Executing murderers, people who commit
crimes need to be executed. And it needs to be done legally and swiftly, not 35 years after
they've been convicted. I believe personally that public executed.
should come back. There's a reason why Western civilization had public execution in many places
for hundreds and thousands of years. I think that's an example people need to see. And a lot of that
stuff is ugly. But here's the thing. You're going to have ugliness no matter what. And either we can
have ugliness in the street. We can have the kind of ugliness where a CEO walking down the street
at 5 a.m. gets shot in the back of the head. We can have the kind of ugliness where a man
on a college campus who's just trying to make the argument,
get shot and killed,
we can have that kind of ugliness,
the ugliness that can affect anybody,
that anyone can fall victim to,
or we can have the ugliness that's contained,
where we have people in positions of authority
who use force to go and take the violent people
and the dangerous people and punish them.
We can have that kind of ugliness,
and that's what we need.
And then after that,
or at the same time, we've already talked about this a little bit, is unity, not just random.
You know, you can't go, you can't just say, hey, everyone, let's unite, let's be united.
You can't go, if you go up to a group of 1,000 people and say, hey, let's unite guys.
They're going to look at you and say, and they're going to ask, what do you mean, to do what?
Unite around for what?
What are we uniting?
I don't want to, I'm not going to unite with you unless I know what we're doing.
And so that's why a lot of the calls for just sort of general generic unity in America don't really work,
because there's always the question of around what.
But as conservatives, as people on the right, you know, we can unite and we should.
And I think what we need to do is put it put to the side a lot of our inner, you know, our squabbles, our family feuds.
Put all that to the side for now.
We can get back to a lot of that stuff.
We probably will.
I'm sure we will.
Conservatives always do.
We'll always get back to it.
But for right, but for right now.
um there there we have more important things to do because one thing i know for sure
and there are plenty of conservatives who i've had my own i've been known to get into
feuds here and there with people uh but here but here's what i know and we saw this with charlie
that if i walk out of this building and i get killed that every conservative even the ones
that i've feuded with that they will not be happy about that they will they will mourn that they
will mourn that in it the same if it happened any of us they'll mourn it even even the people
the conservators didn't like us but i also know that on the left they they won't share in that
mourning for the most part and so kind of the friend enemy distinction is easy for me to see
the people who will mourn your death are your friends the people who will dance on your grave
and laugh in the face of your grieving wife are your enemies in this in this battle and uh and so
that's where the unity needs to come the wretched demons honestly i i please yeah where
Where we go next?
You cannot have a marketplace of any kind of ideas or of goods if people are shooting up the marketplace.
And it's not even just the murderer in this case because there are freaks everywhere and horrible events happen.
But the loud and widespread celebration of that sort of thing shows us that there are three steps.
Step one is we want to have a robust conversation in a good country, right?
but we are where we are
in a degraded and dangerous place
step two question mark
step three
flourishing and speech
and national unity
but there is that step two there is that question
how do we get there and there is no liberty
without order and there is no civilization in which
half the country is going to dance
when the other half is murdered and so
that requires a cultural response I think you're starting to see that from a lot
of companies that's very good that requires
conservatives to let down their grudges that they're always
holding all the time for just a little bit
and rally at least around a person and a person whose clear vision has led us for a long time very
successfully. And it requires the government to get in and do its job as well. And then and only then
can you get back to the kind of country that at least I want. And if the people who celebrate
murder don't want it, too bad. I mean, I know we at Daily Wire, we trust you at TPUSA to do it.
I mean, that's really the answer. We're willing to provide, and we are providing any level of
material support, any level of support on the program, boots on the ground, helping you to do
what Charlie would have wanted to be done here. And I think that the reason that everybody trusted
Charlie, the reason we're all mourning Charlie, is because nobody did it better. You spelled out
two of Charlie's goals. He said, you know, he wanted to bring people back to Christ and bring people
back to church and back to biblical values, and he wanted to keep the mega coalition together.
And expand it. And the question is how you do that. And the answer is you focus on the first
and the second is a byproduct.
The answer is that, as Matt says, you have to unite around something.
And yeah, we can unite in the short term around the fact that there are a bunch of people
who hate our guts and want to murder us, which, of course, is true.
But long-term unity, big movement change, which is what Charlie was really trying to drive
and why he went to talk to people who disagree is about building around those core values.
And so the long-term vision, yeah, we'll have our petty squabbles, and yeah, some of those squabbles will be more than petty.
but the long-term vision has to be built around those original biblical conservative values
that Charlie stood for things like the Bible things like free markets things like family
all those things are things Charlie stood for you got to build the coalition around values
because we can't build it around the man but we can build it around the values that he left behind
and that he spent his entire life fighting for and you know we couldn't be frankly more honored
to join you guys as much as we can in the fight thank you for that and thank you for
donating the Daily Wire, a million dollars, breaking news on this show. Thank you guys for
honoring Charlie so well today. God bless you.
Thank you.