Ep. 2279 - BREAKING: CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSIN IN CUSTODY

Summary

Episode Overview

Episode Title: Ep. 2279 - BREAKING: CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSIN IN CUSTODY
Podcast: The Ben Shapiro Show
Date: September 12, 2025

This episode covers breaking developments following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro reports on the arrest of suspect Tyler Robinson and analyzes the ideological, cultural, and generational factors fueling political violence. The episode features detailed updates from law enforcement, reactions from political leaders across the spectrum, and a deep exploration of the online and ideological environments blamed for radicalizing young people. Shapiro reflects on Kirk’s legacy, the state of American discourse, and society’s collective responsibility in confronting political violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Arrest of Charlie Kirk’s Assassin

• Breaking News Announcement:

  • President Donald Trump confirmed on Fox and Friends that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, is in custody, crediting swift cooperation between local and federal authorities ([00:29]–[01:23]).

    “We have him in custody. Everyone did a great job... started off with absolutely nothing… so much work has been done over the last two and a half days.”
    — Donald Trump ([00:29])

  • Trump revealed that a close family member, possibly Robinson’s father, assisted law enforcement:

    “Somebody that was very close to him turned him in… person was involved with law enforcement, but was a person of faith, a minister, and brought him to a U.S. marshal.”
    — Donald Trump ([01:37])

• Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s Press Conference:

  • Governor Cox provided investigative details, including:
    • Robinson’s arrival at Utah Valley University (UVU) in a gray Dodge Challenger ([03:52])
    • Family and roommate interviews revealing growing political radicalization, and evidence from Discord messages indicating premeditation ([03:52]–[07:05])
    • Discovery of the rifle and engraved bullet casings with bizarre and disturbing online references ([07:34])

• Online Radicalization:

  • The shooter’s ideology reflects “too online” subcultures and left-leaning radicalization.

    “This person who had very high scores on some of his acts apparently and got deeper and deeper into online culture.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([02:45])

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2. Investigation Details & Shooter’s Ideology

• Weapon Evidence:

  • Rifle discovered: Mauser Model 98, .30-06 caliber, with online-style engraved bullet casings referencing memes, games (“Helldivers”), and anti-fascist slogans.

    “Inscriptions on a fired casing read ‘notices bulges, capital O W O. What's this?’… [and] ‘hey fascist, catch!’, ‘oh bella chow…’ and ‘if you read this you are gay. Lmao.’”
    — Governor Spencer Cox ([07:34])

  • Shapiro interprets these as ‘deeply online’ references unintelligible to most offline adults and evidence of extreme gamer/internet subcultural influence ([08:47]).

• Motivations & Ideology:

  • Robinson was radicalized within a political and digital environment that treats words, including right-leaning speech, as violence ([08:47], [09:42]).
    • Family said Robinson found Kirk “hateful” and “full of hate” ([03:52]).

• Warning on Media Consumption:

  • Cox and Shapiro both call out social media as a contributing cancer, urging people to “touch grass,” disconnect, and seek community offline ([10:11]–[10:26]).

    “Social media is a cancer on our society right now. Log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.”
    — Spencer Cox ([10:26])

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3. National Response Across the Political Spectrum

• Unity and Condemnation of Violence:

  • Both right and left leaders (Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries) publicly denounce political violence ([11:31]–[17:27]).

    “Freedom and democracy is not about political violence. Political violence… is political cowardice.”
    — Bernie Sanders ([13:42])

  • Shapiro notes similarity in immediate rhetoric but argues these responses are often too vague to address root causes.

• Analysis of Violent Ideologies:

  • Shapiro differentiates ideologies more prone to violence (trans/Marxist, white supremacist, radical Islam) and argues not all are equally distributed across the political spectrum ([17:27] and following).

    “Not all ideologies are equally prone to violence… There are three main wings that I get it from. Trans ideology/Marxist ideology, white supremacists, and radical Muslims.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([17:27])

• Collegiate and Generational Trends:

  • Cites recent studies (FIRE, Citizen Data) showing troubling levels of acceptance for violence to stop speech among Gen Z and Millennials ([21:30] ff.).

    “A record one in three students, ... say it is sometimes acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([23:00 approx.])

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4. Debate on Free Speech, Responsibility, and Mourning

• Campus Hostility Toward Conservative Speakers:

  • Shapiro shares personal experiences with threats and the escalation from hostile speech to real violence on campuses ([24:10]–[26:00]).

• Criticism of Political and Media Responses:

  • He calls out those using Kirk’s controversial views to justify or explain his murder, highlighting online posts celebrating Kirk’s death ([30:00]–[34:00]).

    “Cartoons of Charlie Kirk bleeding from his jugular vein saying, ‘debate this.’ … That is how you end up with that sort of trash.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([30:00])

  • Blasts both left and right conspiracy theorists—specifically, those who blamed Israel for the attack ([47:09]–[49:00]).

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5. Charlie Kirk’s Legacy and Closing Reflections

• Personal Impact:

  • Shapiro paid tribute to Kirk’s optimism, faith, and activism.

    “When you look at even pictures of Charlie or videos of Charlie, he's always smiling, right? He's always upbeat, he's always energetic, he's always optimistic. A light went out of the world. A true light went out of the world.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([55:51])

• Presidential Remarks:

  • Trump recounted the impact of Kirk and plans for Turning Point USA’s continued existence ([54:21]).

    “They want to keep Turning Point going... He had a very good staff, I think.”
    — Donald Trump ([54:21])

  • The Vice President's escort of Kirk's casket was described as a moving gesture ([52:09]–[52:38]).

• Call to Action:

  • Shapiro urges listeners to carry on Kirk’s legacy by defending free speech, family, faith, and community.

    “Pick up that match or pick up a torch and carry it on.”
    — Ben Shapiro ([58:26])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• President Trump on the arrest:
  “I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody. Everyone did a great job.” ([00:29])

• Governor Spencer Cox on social media:
  “Social media is a cancer on our society right now. Log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member.” ([10:26])

• Bernie Sanders on political violence:
  “Political violence… is political cowardice. It means that you cannot convince people of the correctness of your ideas, and you have to impose them through force.” ([13:42])

• Ben Shapiro on root causes:
  “Not all ideologies are equally prone to violence… There are three main wings… Trans ideology/Marxist ideology, white supremacists, and radical Muslims.” ([17:27])

• On tragic polarization:
  “Cartoons of Charlie Kirk bleeding from his jugular vein saying, ‘debate this.’ … That is how you end up with that sort of trash.” ([30:00])

• On Charlie’s personal character:
  “A true light went out of the world. And in order for that light to be rekindled in any shape, I mean, in order for that torch that he was carrying to generate the same amount of light, millions of people are going to have to pick up a match and hold it up.” ([55:51])

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |--------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–03:52 | Breaking news, President Trump and initial details of arrest | | 03:52–08:47 | Governor Cox’s press conference, suspect profile, Discord & bullet evidence | | 09:42–10:26 | Governor Cox and Shapiro on social media and youth radicalization | | 11:31–17:27 | Responses from political leaders on both sides; praise and critique | | 17:27–26:00 | Root causes of violence, analysis of radical movements and generational shifts | | 30:00–34:00 | Online celebration of murder and hatred | | 41:41–44:54 | Attacks on Kirk’s legacy, criticism of political/media reactions | | 47:09–49:00 | Conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting; critique of rightwing disinfo | | 52:09–52:38 | VP and Kirk’s family, the casket honor | | 54:21–55:51 | President Trump on Kirk’s legacy and Turning Point USA | | 58:26 | Shapiro’s final call to action |

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Overall Tone & Language

• Tone: Urgent, emotional, polemical; combines factual reporting with strong conservative, combative critique.
• Language: Direct, confrontational, often mournful but unapologetically analytical.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode serves as both breaking news and a cultural-political analysis in the wake of a major political assassination in America. Ben Shapiro presents exhaustive details on the suspect, the online and ideological cultures purported to have radicalized him, and the dangers of escalated tribalism and digital radicalization. He insists that all sides—especially the left—must reckon with ideologies breeding violence, not just condemn violence superficially. The episode is a eulogy for Charlie Kirk and a call to defend civil discourse, free speech, and the roots of character and faith that Shapiro argues have been lost in contemporary America.

Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, folks, this morning the presidents of the United States went on Fox and Friends and announced that the murderer, the assassin alleged of Charlie Kirk has been found, is now in custody. Here's the president had to say on Fox and Friends this morning. This is shortly before a press conference held by the Utah governor, Spencer Cox, who added more details which we'll get into momentarily. Here was the president on the alleged murderer of Charlie Kirk.

[Donald Trump]

Any updates on the suspect? Yeah, can I always say, I think just to protect us all and so Fox doesn't get sued and we all don't get sued and everything else, but I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody. In custody. Everyone did a great job. We worked with the local police, the governor, everybody did a great job. You know, getting somebody that you start off with absolutely nothing. And we started off with a clip that made him look like an ant that was almost useless. We just saw there was somebody up there. And so much work has been done over the last two and a half days. You know, it's amazing actually, when you start off with that and then all of a sudden you, you get lucky or talent or whatever it is. But, yeah, we're, I think we're in great shape. Mr. President, he's in custody.

[Ben Shapiro]

The president said that actually what happened here is that someone close to the suspect turned him in. And we'll get into that in a moment as well.

[Donald Trump]

Essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned him in. And that happens when you had some of those good shots. Somebody is going to say whether it's apparent or whatever, I'd rather not say right now. They're going to announce it today, sometime later, probably talk about that. But somebody close to him turned and, you know, they said, whoa. It's interesting where we had very good pictures, but not great, not perfect. And when you look at it, what happened is somebody, and this happens a lot, it happened with the crazy Boston bomber, it happened with others, somebody that slows, recognizes even a little tilt of the head, which nobody else would do. And somebody that was very close to him said, hmm, that's him, and essentially went to the father, went to a U.S. marshal, who was fantastic, by the way. And the person was involved with law enforcement, but was a person of faith, a minister, and brought him to a U.S. marshal who was fantastic. And the father convinced the son, this is it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, obviously, this alleged shooter should get the death penalty without a doubt. Good for his father for apparently being involved in the arrest of his son, which is what baseline morality would suggest Spencer Cox, the Utah Governor, held a press conference this morning with an extraordinary amount of additional detail that gives a window into the identity of the alleged shooter and also into his ideology, the things that he was thinking. One thing became very clear from the minute that his name was announced. And again, we don't typically do the names of mass shooters or assassins on the show. It's out there. There's not much we can do about that at this point. His name is Tyler Robinson. The shooter in this particular case was clearly a sort of online. The way that would be described online would be like an online autist. This person who had very high scores on some of his acts apparently and got deeper and deeper into online culture. As we're about to hear from the Utah Governor, Spencer Cox here he was announcing that the suspect is in custody.

[Spencer Cox]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We got him. On the evening of September 11, a family member of Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office with information that was Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident. This information was relayed to the Utah County Sheriff's Office and scene investigators at Utah Valley University. This information was also conveyed to the FBI. Investigators reviewed additional video footage from UVU surveillance and identified Robinson arriving on UVU campus in a gray Dodge Challenger at approximately 8:29am on September 10, in which he is observed on video in a plain maroon T shirt, light colored shorts, a black hat with a white logo and light colored shoes. When encountered in person by investigators in Washington county on September 12th in the early morning hours, Robinson was observed in consistent clothing with those surveillance images. Investigators interviewed a family member of Robinson who stated that Robinson had become more political in recent years. The family member referenced a recent incident in which Robinson came to dinner prior to September 10th and in the conversation with another family member, Robinson mentioned Charlie Kirk was coming to uvu. They talked about why they didn't like him and the viewpoints that he had. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate. The family member also confirmed Robinson had a gray Dodge Challenger. Investigators identified an individual as the roommate of Robinson. Investigators interviewed that roommate who stated that his roommate, referring to Robinson, made a joke on Discord. Investigators asked if he would show them the messages on Discord. He opened it and showed several messages to investigators and allowed investigators to take photos of the screen as each message was shown by Robinson's roommate. These photos consisted of various messages including content of messages between the phone contact name Tyler with an emoji icon and Robinson's roommate's device. The content of these messages included messages affiliated with the contact Tyler stating a need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point, leaving the rifle in a bush. Messages related to a to visually watching the area where a rifle was left and a message referring to having left the rifle wrapped in a towel. The messages also refer to engraving bullets and a mention of a scope and the rifle being unique. Messages from the contact Tyler also mentioned that he had changed outfits. I know there has been speculation as well as to the, the writing on those casings, those, those, those bullet casings and I believe we have that as well and I will share that with you now.

[Ben Shapiro]

So the governor went on to explain what the bullet casings actually said, which is a window into the peculiar strange and evil ideology of the shooter, which again was, was rife with too online. It was rife with apparently references to everything from furries to online games like Helldivers. Here was Spencer Cox explaining.

[Spencer Cox]

With trees on the edge of the UVU campus, investigators discovered a bolt action rifle wrapped in a dark colored towel. The rifle was determined to be a Mauser Model 98. 3006 caliber is 3006 caliber bolt action rifle. The rifle had a scope mounted on top of it. Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle. Inscriptions on a fired casing read notices bulges, capital O W O. What's this question mark. Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read hey fascist, exclamation point catch exclamation point up arrow symbol, right arrow and symbol and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing read oh bella chow, bella chow, bella chow chow chow. And a third unfired casing read if you read this you are gay. Lmao. We are indebted to law enforcement across the state who has worked seamlessly together, local law enforcement.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now again, notices bulges is presumably a reference to gay or trans and we don't know that for certain but that apparently is the online memory. Again, I think all of us who are not too online are kind of working in uncharted waters here because if you don't spend too much time online, if you actually have a normal life, then you are not going to be familiar with phrases like hey fascist catch. Which apparently again is from Helldivers, the game. You have to be a gamer in order to understand some of these reference references. It is clear from the available evidence that he hated Charlie Kirk's politics, that apparently he had called Charlie Kirk hateful, which Again, would suggest that this is a member of the political left or is radicalized into extraordinarily left wing viewpoints. Spencer Cox went on to say, words are not violence. Violence is violence, which of course should be obvious, but unfortunately is not.

[Spencer Cox]

Conversations. I, I think we need more moral clarity right now. I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. And there is one person responsible for what happened here and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable.

[Ben Shapiro]

Spencer Coxson went on to give what I think is a terrific message and a necessary message, something that of course you've heard a lot on this show, which is that social media is in fact a cancer and you need to touch some grass, a phrase that I've used repeatedly over the course of the last several years.

[Spencer Cox]

This is not good for us. It is not good to consume. Social media is a cancer on our society right now. And I would encourage, again, I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community. That is happening and it's happening organically right now. Had a friend in a small city in Utah who said, we're getting together. The Republicans and Democrats in my little town are getting together to have a discussion tonight, last night, just to find a way to find their better angels. So yes, this, this could be. I mean, you know, again, you have to go back to JFK to, to have seen a video live of something like this happening. I wasn't born until 1975, but, but I know that things were really dark in, in the late 60s. Sorry to some of you, I know some of you were there, but, but this is the, this is our moment. Do we escalate or do we find an off ramp? And again, it's a choice. It's a choice.

[Ben Shapiro]

All of that is true. Now. The responses from sort of the mainstream right and the mainstream left have been fairly similar in terms of rhetoric. The President yesterday said that he wants to see nonviolence and I will note here that there is in fact nonviolence as a response to. This is something Spencer Cox also noted correctly. There have been no riots, there's been no looting, there's been no violence done. Instead, you've seen prayer vigils, people coming together, even people of the right and left coming together to have discussions in honor of Charlie, because that's what Charlie's life was really about. It was about aggressively promoting his ideas through discussion and debate. Here was the President yesterday. How do you want to see your supporters respond to this? Charlie Kirk was a big advocate of nonviolence and free speech on campus. How do you want your supporters to respond?

[Donald Trump]

I think that way he was. He was an advocate of nonviolence. That's the way I'd like to see people respect.

[Ben Shapiro]

The president went on to rip what he called radical left lunatics. And I'll explain a little bit what I think what the President means here, because again, these are not arguments over. Over tax policy that we are talking about here. There's something deep and dark that is going on in American life. It is getting worse. It is not getting better. It is tied into deeper root ideologies and views of the world. You. Here's the President yesterday talking about what he called radical left lunatics. Are you concerned for your own safety?

[Donald Trump]

Not really. I'm really concerned for our country. We have a great country. We have a radical left group of lunatics out there, just absolute lunatics. And we're going to get that problem solved. I'm only concerned for the country.

[Ben Shapiro]

Bernie Sanders, from the left side of the aisle, put out a video in which he talked about the evils of political violence and said the discussion should be upheld. A sentiment with which everyone of good mind should agree. I despise Bernie Sanders as a politician. I think that everything that he stands for in terms of his politics is not just wrong, but actually horrifically wrong for the system. I can't think of a single issue on which I agree with Bernie Sanders. Obviously, when he says this, everyone agrees.

[Bernie Sanders]

I want to say a few words regarding the terrible murder yesterday of Charlie Kirk, someone who I strongly disagreed with on almost every issue, but who was clearly a very smart and effective communicator and organizer and someone unafraid to get out into the world and engage the public. My condolences go out to his wife and his family. A free and democratic society, which is what America is supposed to be about, depends upon the basic premise that people can speak out, organize, and take part in public life without fear, without worrying that they might be killed, injured or humiliated for expressing their political views. In fact, that is the essence of what freedom is about and what democracy is about. Do you have a point of view that's great. I have a point of view that is different than yours. That's great. Let's argue it out. We make our case to the American people at the local, state and federal levels, and we hold free elections in which the people decide what they want. That's called freedom and democracy. And I want as many people as possible to participate in that process without fear. Freedom and democracy is not about political violence. It is not about assassinating public officials. It is not about trying to intimidate people who speak out on an issue. Political violence, in fact, is political cowardice. It means that you cannot convince people of the correctness of your ideas, and you have to impose them through force.

[Ben Shapiro]

Obviously, this is all true. Everything he's saying is true. I do have questions about why violence is arising. Excuse me. Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also suggested political violence was wrong. Now, again, it feels to me when people talk about political violence is wrong, that's like saying violence is wrong. Of course that's true. Does that change the underlying substructures of thought that are leading to a massive elevation in violence in the country of the political variety? I don't think it means anything to just say that political violence is wrong, because, as we'll get to in a moment, there are actual substrates of thought that lead to the elevation of the violent, that lead fringe actors to go out and do things like murder Charlie Kirk. And so having our politicians simply go out there and say, we got to take down the temperature. We all have to use better language. Of course that's true, but that isn't specific enough. It is not specific enough here. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries talking about this.

[Chuck Schumer]

The bottom line is this is a time that all Americans should come together and feel and mourn what happened. Violence, which affects so many different people of so many different political persuasions is an affliction of America. And coming together is what we ought to be doing, not pointing fingers of blame. This moment requires leadership that brings the American people together as opposed to trying to further divide us. Political violence in any form against any American is unacceptable, should be denounced by everyone. And moving forward, we have to figure out a better way to come together, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now, again, all this is nice. All this is incredibly vague. So now I want to talk about something that we all know is true, but nobody seems to want to say. Not all ideologies are equally prone to violence. When there is a shooting, a mass shooting at a synagogue, a mass shooting at a church, when Charlie Crook is shot, everybody's mind immediately go immediately goes to what are the likeliest probabilities in terms of who did the shooting? Everyone does this. We cannot pretend that we are sort of blind to the realities of the world. When there is a shooting at a Synagogue. I can tell you my mind goes to two places. Radical Muslim, white supremacist. Those are usually the options. If there's a shooting at a synagogue, if there's a shooting at a church, your mind now goes to trans radical or radical Muslim. That's where your mind is going to go. This is leaving aside people who just are generally mentally ill, okay. Where there's no political ideology involved. If there is a political ideology involved, your mind immediately goes to the movements that are likely to. To drive people toward murder. Not every ideology is prone to this. No one thought yesterday when the killer was being sought, literally no one thought the reason that Charlie Kirk was murdered is because of Charlie's stance on low taxes. No one thought that. Right? We differ on all sorts of politics in this country. Nobody thought that this was a debate about marginal tax rates and that is why Charlie was shot. Nobody thought that Charlie Kirk was murdered because of his stance on energy policy. Right. In order for an ideology, in order for a movement to coalesce in such a way that it allows for violence at the sort of bubbling of violence lies at the outskirts of a movement. There have to be some preconditions. Now, I've been talking a lot on the show about lions and scavengers. What we are seeing here is the scavengers at work. The basic philosophy of the scavenger is very simple. All morals and civilizations I don't like are guises for power. It's three principles. All morals and civilizations are merely guises for power. My failure is a result of one of those corrupt power systems. There's a great conspiracy out there. I am the victim. I'm being targeted. I am the actual victim. And number three, if there is a great conspiracy that is targeting me for destruction, I must respond in kind with violence. This is how you get to the idiotic notion that speech is violent and that, that that's just the reality. It's those three elements, morals and civilizations, that I don't like are guises for power. Right? They're not actual arguments, they're actual guises for power. It is power being used against me. That my failure within that system is a result of that great conspiracy. I am the victim and it is an existential threat to me. And therefore I must act out with violence and harm somebody. I'm gonna give you three examples and I'm gonna take them from the top. Death threats I receive. Now, I receive an enormous number of death threats. As I've said before, I have 24,7 security on me. On my family, I literally go nowhere without an entire team of security now at this point in my life. And that is because of things that. Like what just happened to Charlie. Charlie, by the way, had security there. I've said before, I think we're now at the end of outdoor political events after the attempted assassination of President Trump, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I do not think that anyone in public life is going to be doing outdoor events that are insecure for the foreseeable future. Okay. But I'm going to use the. I know where the death threats are coming from. Okay, we know this because we can chart it. Thousands and thousands of death threats. I'm sure Charlie had a bunch, too. And there are three main wings that I get it from. Trans ideology, slash Marxist ideology, white supremacists, and radical Muslims. So I want to go through each one of those and explain why these are likely. Why these particular ideologies, why these particular movements are likely to generate violence. A trans ideology says that your argument about biology, male and female, that that argument is in fact a guise for power. You're just saying that there are boys and there are girls because you hate me. You're doing it because you wish to erase me. I am a victim of your failure to accept my identity, such that you're erasing me. You're engaging in a quote unquote, trans genocide, and therefore you are threatening me. Your speech is a form of violence. It is wiping away my identity, and. And therefore violence ought to be met with violence. Marxist ideology, which is part of the same sort of idea in these. Kind of derived from the same general area. Marxist ideology, which is the idea that the governmental system, the free market system, is an imposition on me. It is a conspiracy from above to harm me, to destroy me, that my failures inside the market are actually not my own. They are the fault of a system. And you, as an advocate for the system, are going to. You're victimizing me. You're erasing me. You're destroying me. And I must act with violence. There's a reason why Marxist movements are so violent. Speech advocacy for the free market is, in fact, a system of power. It is to be met with violence. Okay, White supremacy. This is. In fact, I know that there is an attempt to pretend that this doesn't exist. It absolutely exists in online spaces. Pretending it doesn't is bullshit, and everyone knows it. Yeah, I know it because I've had to have the FBI literally arrest somebody who is doing this while threatening not just me, by the way, but Donald Trump Junior. Okay, that ideology says that white people are being put upon in the United States by an entire system. And if you are an advocate for that system, you are threatening me with destruction, with erasure, with white genocide, and thus you must be killed. Right? Violence is a proper response to an attempted genocide. That is the argument that is made at root by many white supremacists, which is why again, white supremacy has been linked with. And here I'm not talking about what the left calls white supremacy, which is anything to the right of Hillary Clinton. I'm talking about actual, honest to God white supremacists. Okay? And again, get an awful lot of that in my death threats. And group number three, radical Muslims who believe that the failures of the Palestinians, for example, are the result of evil Western systems. If you're an advocate for those systems, it's because you want to erase them and you want to kill people and you want to commit genocide. And therefore it is fine to shoot two Israeli embassy staffers dead in Washington DC. That is why it is fine to throw a Molotov cocktail at an 80 year old woman protesting hostages being held in Colorado. Okay? We all know this is true. Pretending it isn't true doesn't make it go away. Okay? Not all movements are equally likely to bubble up with violence. And so when we have politicians saying political violence is bad, if you're not speaking out against the movements that use this logic, if you're not speaking out against the movements that say that speech is in fact a form of violence, that systems are in fact a form of violence, and that violence is the proper response to that, then you are contributing to the environment in which this kind of stuff happens. Fact. Okay, now just in terms of numbers, this is not differentially split across the right and left in the United States. It is not. There are not that many radical Muslims in the United States, thank God. Okay? That's just a reality. By the numbers. There are not that many white supremacists in the United States. Just by the numbers. The increasing radicalism of the left in the United States is in fact a massive issue. And I'm going to show you the poll data that suggests that violence is linked with this. And all of these movements are linked with violence. They are. But not all of them are all that prominent or all that popular. And you can tell, you can see it. So, for example, FIRE recently did rankings of campus free speech. And what they found is that college campuses are replete with failure to speak your mind. Why? Because people are afraid of violence. This goes all the way back to when I was in college. There's nothing new here. I wrote my very first book in 2004 about the kind of discrimination conservatives faced on campus. And yes, there was the possibility of violence even in 2004. Not being shot, but the possibility of being physically assaulted, which is something that came close to happening to me multiple times when even I was an undergrad. And that's going back 20 years already, going back two decades. And I was warning that was going to metastasize and take over huge swaths of the political left. And people ignored it at the time. But that was true. According to Fire, after six years of surveying almost 300,000 college undergraduates, a sobering picture has emerged. Students are reluctant to speak their minds. The atmosphere isn't just cautious, it's hostile. Students continue to show low tolerance for controversial speakers or troubling. More believe it's acceptable to shout down a speaker or even resort to violence to silence campus speech than ever before. Ever resort to violence to silence campus speech. That's exactly what happened to my friend Charlie Kirk. He was shot to death doing campus speech. And that is not a wildly unpopular viewpoint on college campuses. It just isn't. It's the reason why I've had to have, honest to God, hundreds of police officers sometimes escort me when I want to speak on campus. And I've said before, I feel like an idiot today. Honestly, I feel like a moron. Because for more than 10 years, my first big speech along these lines came, I believe, in 2015 at the University of Missouri during the Black Lives Matter sort of upsurge, might have been in 2014, after Ferguson. And I remember people asking about safety. I said, I'm not worried about safety. There's some police there. I've got a security team. No one's gonna take a shot at me. This is America. You don't get shot in America for saying things on a college campus. This is America. I grew up in this country. This is my country. This is the country I love. This is where our fundamental value is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. No one's going to do this kind of stuff. No one. And I was wrong. I was an idiot. And it turns out it's becoming more and more common. A record one in three students, according to fire, the foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a record one in three students now holds some level of acceptance, even if only rarely, for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech. The answer is never. Not rarely. Never. That is the proper moral Answer Right now, according to FIRE, 71% of college students nationally say that they support shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus. 54% say that they approve blocking other students from attending a campus speech. 34%, more than 1 third say that it is sometimes acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech. Now, I'm sure not everybody who believes they're using violence thinks in terms of shooting someone to death. But when you are drawing from a pool at this point of legitimately tens of millions of Americans, young Americans, people who are too online by the numbers, who are atomistic and isolated and don't touch grass, and you're drawing from that pool, it is not going to be hard to find some unhinged people who decide to take that to its logical conclusion and fire a bullet through the throat of a man who, who is simply attempting to speak truth to people in the friendliest possible fashion. And unfortunately, this is not. This FIRE survey is not an outlier. It is not an outlier. Citizen Data did a poll in 2004 in which it found that Gen Z shows a higher tolerance for political violence against elected officials. If you take a look at this particular graph, what it shows is that the vast majority of boomers understand that as much as we hate the boomers, the boomers did grow up in a in a time when free speech was actually valued. Not even 10% of boomers believe that there ought to be some form of acceptable political violence against elected officials. For millennials, people aged 28 to 43, that number was about 1/3 for Gen Zers people aged 18 to 27. People aged 18 to 27, you are talking about nearly 60%. 60% believe that there are some times or people who should be targeted with political violence. The acceptance of political violence by the younger generation, particularly who have been too online for too long, is astounding. Astounding. According. And by the way, there are some weird outliers in these graphs. By the way, it turns out that actually an outsized number of millennials believe that it is okay to kill or physically harm somebody you disagree with. Political. I mean, these are. These numbers should scare the living hell out of you. And as far as free speech, a future of free speech Global survey showed this is back in March, that only 47% of young people in America aged 18 to 34 say that hate speech should be allowed. Now again, hate speech is vaguely defined. Hate speech just means a thing I don't like. That's what hate speech supposedly means because you could call it Hate speech if you say boys are not girls. You could also call it hate speech if you use the N word or you say the Jews are responsible for all the world's problems. Now, two of those three things are terrible and untrue. One of those things that men are not women is not. But if they all get labeled hate speech, and if hate speech is just a moving target, which it really is, then what you end up with is, is people who believe that free speech ought not apply to people with whom they disagree. Tolerance for religiously offensive speech has dropped from 71% in 2021 to 57% in 2025. So what does this result in? It doesn't mean that every single person on the left is a. Is a violent radical. It means these ideologies are significantly tied in with violent radicalism in a way that makes it more likely that you are going to. Again, there are many ideologies that do this, many conspiratorial ideologies that do this, but the ones that are most prevalent in America are among young people. They're on college campuses, they're online, and they are oriented to the left. It is how you end up with University of Louisville posters showing the day after Charlie Kirk was shot to death, cartoons of Charlie Kirk bleeding from his jugular vein saying, debate this. That is how you end up with that sort of trash. This is how you end up with graffiti at Seattle Central College that says kill all Charlie Kirks at Seattle Central. That's how you end up with this doesn't mean again, every. I don't like when people. I've said this yesterday. I don't like when people say they, they shot Charlie, okay? Because they isn't a person. A person shot Charlie Kirk and he shot Charlie Kirk for a deranged reason. With that said, there are movements that the substrates of their. Of their political thinking lead to an elevation in violence. Period. End of story. That is a reality. And it is not enough to just say political violence is bad if you are not calling out the movements themselves and either delinking them from violence, delinking, doing a cognitive behavioral intervention, delinking these movements from violence, saying, listen, we can agree on. Again, no one thinks people are getting shot over tax rates. Why? Because no one talks about tax rates as a giant conspiracy by the. By some against others that are an existential threat to you. That is why. But this is how you end up. This six sort of thinking is how you end up with Michael mann reposting a UPenn administrator who said, quote, Ezra Klein Whitewashing. Charlie Kirk is an upstanding political citizen of the world with just a few free speech controversies. Who started disagreements is the most predictable thing to happen. I envied what he built. Is this an abundance mindset, People just making excuses now, looking for reasons to say that, you know, well, that. That Charlie, let's not. Let's not be. Let's not be a fi. Charlie, let's not. Let's not give Charlie sainthood or something. Right? This is. It should not be necessary. In the aftermath, I was talking to a friend who's European yesterday, and he was. It was Douglas Murray, and Douglas was. I was talking to Douglas about this a little bit yesterday, and Douglas was saying that when he was covering the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France, one of the things that he found interesting is that the upsurge in this, the je suis Charlie. You remember this? There were people were posting, je suis Charlie. I am Charlie Hebdo. And he said. One of the things that was fascinating is no one felt the compulsion to say in. In France, I disagreed with Charlie Hebdo, but no one felt that compunction. Why? Because the basic idea is that whatever you disagree with is irrelevant. You don't get shot for saying a thing. You don't get shot. But in the United States, there is this very large group of people who feel the necessity to say, well, you know, not saying he had it coming, but there is that. There is that. Stephen King got himself in trouble yesterday for tweeting he advocated stone and gays to death. Just saying. Which is a lie. That is not true. Charlie never advocated that. Not in a million years. This is how you end up with the Oxford Union president elect, a person named George Abranier, who put out on social media, charlie Kirk got shot. Let's effing go. This would be a person that Charlie actually debated. A person that Charlie actually had a perfectly normal exchange with. Here is the video of him interacting with this person who was then essentially blessing his murder.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

There are other factors outside of simply just going respectfully.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

You're scrambling for an excuse to get away from the truth that's right in front of you. Maybe men should get married and have children, okay? But I think because it's worked for 2000 years, I just think it's a.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

Very dishonest way to go about this argument that there's only one issue.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

Interesting. Can I challenge you on that, though? Why is it that the men of much poorer African and Asian countries don't have suicide issues, yet they have no money.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

How do we know that?

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

Oh, we know again by empirical third party reported data from the un, from the US State Department. There is not a suicide crisis in sub Saharan Africa. There's not a suicide crisis in, in Southeast Asia with young men. So explain to me that phenomenon. They're materially wealthy. Not. They're not materially wealthy and yet they're harming themselves. So why would you then say it's austerity.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

Sorry, say that again.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

Okay, you're, you're, you're looking for another explanation for male unhappiness. I'm pointing to you, to a part of the world that actually does value marriage and, and does have children, but they have no money. So therefore, how could you say it is a material problem why the men of London who can dress how they want, go to whatever bar they want, are not happy?

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

Because it's more than one reason. Like there are multiple factors. It's not just like, it's not even just economic. There's economic, there's social, there's like religious pressures. There's like, there's so many. Like, you cannot boil down a societal issue to like one.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

And I acknowledge that, right? I even at the beginning, remember, I'm saying the biggest, the one that has an exponent on it is that we have a biological urge that God gave us when he designed us, which is to be fruitful and multiply for men, to provide for the family. And when we suppress that and we say that you can go live whatever lifestyle you would like, as already happens in the west, we have exhibit A. We have a serious suicide, mental health, anxiety, depression issue. So I would just ask you to think over the next couple days, months or years, why is it that men in countries that barely have toilets and do not have two pounds to rub together, but they do have kids and they do have a wife, are much happier than someone with a big flat in downtown London? Something to think about.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

I mean, I think happiness is a difficult idea to conflate in that sense.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

I mean, there are, they're less likely to kill themselves. Forget all these happiness indexes. If you kill yourself, you're not happy, right? So these poor countries do not have male suicide problems.

[Ben Shapiro]

Why.

[Unidentified Male Guest 1]

I do not both think about it.

[Unidentified Male Guest 2]

Thank you very much.

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, that is a perfectly respective respectful back and forth with this person who celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday. Okay? Think about the ideology that leads to that. Think about the ideology that leads to the. Glad the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation put out a statement, quote, it is a demonstrable fact that Charlie Kirk spread infinite amounts of disinformation about LGBTQ people. Lies and vitriol about transgender people were a frequent part of his rhetoric and events. We need leaders and all those with platforms to prioritize safety over disinformation, irresponsible politics and profit. Now, again, when they say we need leaders and all those with platforms to prioritize safety, what they are saying is that Charlie Kirk made people unsafe by saying things again. I've. I've had an. I've had this a lot myself. This is always the argument used to ban me from campus was, you're going to threaten safety. And I'd say, who's threatening safety? Me. Talk. Say, no, no, no. People here are going to get so angry, they're going to threaten safety. So. So they're threatening safety, so I'm banned. This is the sort of stuff Charlie faced down as well. A columnist over at Slate, Ayman Ismail, said the Overton window shifted partly by his own hand. Kirk pushed the idea that people's identities or political beliefs make them inherently dangerous. He called Muslims like me incompatible with America. Just this summer, he released a podcast episode literally titled Islam Incompatible with With the West. Okay, well, I mean, him criticizing Islam as a. As a full fledged philosophy is not the same thing as people calling for his death. He is not saying that every Muslim needs to be killed. He never said anything remotely like that. He was talking about the compatibility of ideology with Western ideologies, which is sort of a normal conversation that's been taking place politically for, I don't know, several hundred years at this point. But the goal is, again, to create a permission structure, a permission structure that ends with violence. It's the same permission structure that happened with Luigi Mangione. And I got ripped by people both right and left for saying that Luigi Mangione was a piece of shit and that what he did to Brian Thompson was utterly despicable. I got ripped for that. Comedian Bill Burr went on national television and said, free Luigi. Why? Because his idea was that Luigi Mangione. Again, I talk about Marxist substrates that end with violence. His idea was that Luigi Mangione represented the common man, standing up against the predations of a conspiratorial and evil health care system that killed people. Therefore, Brian Thompson deserved to die in some way. Don't pretend that's just a quote unquote political violence problem. It's too vague. It doesn't mean anything. If you actually want to fight violence, you have to stand up against the movements that generate it. Mehdi Hassan and Representative Ilhan Omar, who both have spent enormous amounts of time over the past several years finding strange justifications for terror allies playing a double game. Oh, yes, we condemn terrorism of all sorts. Of all sorts. And by that they mean that they condemn, for example, Israeli military action against terrorists, but they also kind of condemn terrorism. But really they're not gonna. They're not going to do anything about. The both of these people decided that yesterday would be an excellent day to attack Charlie Kirk.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

You know, Charlie was someone who once said, you know, guns save lives after a school shooting. Charlie was someone who was willing to debate and downplay the death of George Floyd in the hands of Minneapolis police.

[Bernie Sanders]

Called him a scumbag.

[Ben Shapiro]

Right.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Have no regard downplay slavery and what black people have gone through in this country by saying Juneteenth should never exist. And I think, you know, there are a lot of people who are out there talking about him, just wanting to have a civil debate, rewriting of.

[Ben Shapiro]

A complete rewriting of history.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

Yeah, there is nothing more effed up, you know, like, than to completely pretend that, you know, his words and actions have not been recorded and in existence for. For the last decade or so. And, you know, you have people like Nancy Mays who constantly harass, you know, people that she finds inferior and wants them not to exist in this country or ever. And you have people like Trump who has incited violence against people like me. And so these people are full of shit. And it's important for us to call them out.

[Ben Shapiro]

Vile, vile human beings. Truly vile. Charlie got shot two days ago to death. And their first reaction is, let me find things I disagree with him about, and then say that he didn't contribute to political debate, that it would be ridiculous to suggest that he was just trying to nonviolently hold debates. Which, by the way, is the story about Charlie. You can disagree with all the things he said, but the notion that because he criticized George Floyd or because he said that Juneteenth shouldn't be a holiday, that somehow it's ridiculous, rewriting of history to say that Charlie was a free speech advocate who engaged in respectful debate. F off. I mean, truly, especially coming from, I'm sorry, Ilhan Omar and Mehdi Hassan. This is the way that we're going to play the game. We're going to find the thing I disagree with you about most. The one thing that you said or the. Or the multiple things that you said that we find, you know, the most difficult to swallow just politically. And then we're going to essentially imply that he created the environment for his own death. I have some clips. Here's Representative Ilhan OMAR talking about 911 in 2019. I just like to remind you this is a person who is welcome to this country. This is a person who is welcomed to this country as a refugee. And here she was talking about 911 on 20 in, in 2019. This was just six years ago.

[Unidentified Female Guest]

CARE was founded after 911 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

[Ben Shapiro]

This is a person who advocates permission structures for terrorism. I mean that in the most specific possible way. This is a person who literally wrote a letter to a judge named Michael Davis in 2016 asking for clemency for people who were recruited to ISIS. Don't tell me that you are an advocate for nonviolent debate and discussion when you're doing that and that you're going to criticize Charlie Kirk who's just shot to death because. Because, because he said they didn't like Juneteenth. Spare me. She literally wrote in this letter that compassion should be used in a restorative approach to justice. Concluding quote, this ruling can set a precedent and has the potential to be a landmark case in addressing extremism by granting clemency to a bunch of people who tried to join isis. Who tried to join isis. That was Ilhan Omar just a few years ago. Quote, the desire to commit violence is not inherent to people. It is the consequences of systemic alienation. People seek violent solutions when the process established for enacting change is inaccessible to them. Fueled by disaffection turned to malice. She wrote, if the guilty were willing to kill and be killed fighting perceived injustice, imagine the consequence of them hearing, I believe you can be rehabilitated. So in other words, she believed that these people tried to join ISIS because of shortcomings in American society. That's the ideology that I'm talking about. That generates actual violence. That is the ideology. This is Mehdi Hassan some years ago saying that non Muslims are animals. Should we use that as a way to gauge whether or not he has elevated the debate?

[Bernie Sanders]

And we never lose the moral high ground.

[Donald Trump]

If we know anything of Shia Muhammad, we know that that keeping the moral high ground is key. Once we lose the moral high ground, we are no different from the rest of the non Muslims, from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfill any desire.

[Ben Shapiro]

We can play this game all day long. Now, again, I don't want to pretend that you can tell. Charlie tweeted this a few years back. You can tell who people are by how they respond to a death. And that is certainly true. And how many people on the left have responded to the death is sickening, frightening. You go over to Blue sky, you go over to X, you go over to. You go over to TikTok and these various other social media outlets and you can see it. The reaction to all of this. There is a conspiratorial strain on the right that needs to be called out here. And the people who have associated with this and promoted this. Let's just say you've made a massive moral error. Ian Carroll, who's been promoted by a wide variety of larger figures. He was on Joe Rogan's show. He used to host Candace Owens show. Ian Carroll yesterday was tweeting out in the middle of the search for the suspect that actually, actually what was happening here was that Israel had assassin. I know it's like a game of Clue, but you can just skip right to the end and say it was Israel. Of course. Ian Carroll tweeted. Yesterday was a turning point for Israel US relations. Less than 24 hours and the Internet already figured out who the most likely culprit was. He was their friend. He basically dedicated his life to them and they murdered him in front of his family. Israel just shot themselves. That person was hosted by some of the biggest hosts on the man on the man pod. Bro Man, Right. That. That person was elevated from obscurity, deserved obscurity to prominent to promote this kind of horseshit. And that was going around a lot on the Internet yesterday. You have people who are literally part of disinformation systems, like legitimate Iranian disinformation systems, suggesting to the retweets of millions of people, literally millions of people, that Charlie was assassinated because I was on Charlie show the day before and he asked me questions about Israel. The algorithms are broken. They are benefiting the worst people. Social media is benefiting the worst people. They are generating the conditions for violence. There is no question that that is the case. And all the people who've been playing footsie with these folks, all the people who have been promoting it in the name of just asking questions or, or trying to unmask the great conspiracy that will suddenly change the world forever. All those people have elevated precisely the kinds of scavenger movements that I'm talking about that end with violence. Everyone knows where the violent death threats are coming from. Everyone knows it. It is a variety of movements. It is not just One. But it is also not a mystery and it is worth calling all of that nonsense disgusting, awful trash out. And by the way, I should mention that the number. The number of Jews who have. Who have expressed to me their absolute heartbreak at the murder of Charlie Kirk is extraordinary. Extraordinary. It was the Prime Minister of Israel who put up a full statement lamenting the death of Charlie Cransey. Anything from Qatar or Saudi Arabia, like, this is Charlie. Charlie was an Israel supporter. Charlie supported a lot of things that a lot of people didn't like. The people who, who have created the permission structures for. For this sort of violence. Those permission structures need to be called out wherever they are, right and left. I do not think that they are equally distributed right and left. I think they are significantly more common, significantly more deeply embedded on the left. They need to be called out. It is imperative to do that. It is imperative. Well, Charlie is. Was a real human being with a real life. He was a married father of two. They had to ship his body. It's un. Unthink is just inexpressible. Yesterday his body was shipped back from Utah to Arizona where he lived with his wife and his two children. He was escorted by the Vice President of the United States on Air Force Two, which of course, is a tremendous posthumous honor. Here's the video of the Vice President escorting Charlie's casket.

[Donald Trump]

It.

[Ben Shapiro]

The. The plane deboered in Arizona. Here's video of ushavance, the second lady of the United States and Erica Kirk, Charlie's young wife, deboarding the plane, holding hands. I can't even imagine think the movements that make a woman like this, the widow, make children like Charlie's two little kids, orphans. They put them. There are no words. There are legitimately no words. There's a fairly moving picture of Charlie's wife Erica raising her rosary outside the window. One of the things that Charlie relied upon in his life, as we saw over and over, was faith. His wife Erica was Catholic. Charlie was Protestant. It's. Charlie will leave an extraordinary legacy for all people of faith, for people who believe in a better country, of community and family, of traditional biblical values and free speech, and aggressive and interesting debate and discussion about the key issues that matter. Charlie's legacy will never die. The President of the United States yesterday talked about tpusa, of course, as Turning Point usa, Charlie's massive and powerful organization, and talked about keeping TP USA going, which we hope to help in any way that we can here at Daily Wire.

[Donald Trump]

I spoke to his wife yesterday. She's like, devastated. But in between the devastation. They want to keep Turning Point going because so many people called in to me with donations. They went, I don't know who do we give donations to? Her? Do we give it to Turning Point? Do we give it to, you know, any one of the hundreds of colleges that he worked with or universities? And they want to keep Turning Point going. They think they can do it. He had a very good staff, I think noticed, you know, Charlie would call me up, I'm President of the United States, and I get a call like a day before, sir, could you come to Arizona tomorrow? I said, charlie, I'm president, I can't just come. He said, it's so important. Could you. And then usually try and get there. He's the only 1,000. Yeah, he was, he was such a great guy that he had to end this way. But, you know, in many ways he's bigger now because of what happened. He was, he was really big, important. And I guess this doesn't help his family very much when I say this, but in terms of, you know, very, very important, getting that. Such a good word, such a solid word. You know, we have so many bad people, so many bad philosophies, ideologies, politics. His was basically just good family. He talked about family, talked about get married, go get married. You know, sounds old fashioned when you think about it. But he's right. He was just. He was just on. And it's a shame that that voice has been stopped.

[Ben Shapiro]

I was going through my text with Charlie yesterday, and he had sent me back in December a picture of his newborn son because we were having some conversations about things we could do together. That's who Charlie was. And those values came out of him. When you, when you look at, even at pictures of Charlie or videos of Charlie, he's always smiling, right? He's always upbeat, he's always energetic, he's always optimistic. A light went out of the world. A true light went out of the world. And in order for that light to be rekindled in any shape, I mean, in order for that torch that he was carrying to generate the same amount of light, millions of people are going to have to pick up a match and hold it up. And some of those matches will become tortures themselves. But that's the only way to spread the light that Charlie Kirk really was. And the people who are smearing his memory, the people who are part of movements that make the world worse, those people do need to be defeated. They need to be defeated and people need to speak out against that. They need to Debate it. They need to discuss it. They need to point out that these people are wrong and those movements are bad and those movements are horrible for America. And what Charlie stood for more than anything else was a non victim mentality. He stood for the prospect that any American, even one who never went to college, could start an organization that became the most important political organization in the country and become the, the confidant of the President and Vice President of the United States at the age of 31. And that's the thing that Charlie stood for, that, that if you make the right decisions, you get married, you have kids, you find religion, you find God, you spend time in your relationship with God, that your life will get better. That is the thing that Charlie stood for. President Trump talked yesterday about, or this morning rather, about attending Charlie's funeral again. The date has not yet been released for Charlie's funeral. I assume it will be sometime next week. He suggests maybe next weekend. Here's even talking about Charlie's funeral is just, I keep using the word unthinkable because it is, it does not compute. Does not compute. Here's the president.

[Donald Trump]

And I also go to a funeral for a great gentleman named Charlie Kirk, who should not be having a funeral right now. He should be out there in front of people. He loved doing it. He was so good at it. And I mean, he had a big impact on the election. You know, I won. I got so many young voters that no Republicans ever gotten anything close. I dominated with young people and it's never happened before. And I give him so much credit.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yes, well, that is for sure true. You know, we will obviously keep tabs as more information emerges on the shooter and the ideology that drove that shooter for the moment and for the rest of our lives. Hug your family. Recognize that what makes this country great, what makes this country good, is the stuff that Charlie was doing and then pick up that match or pick up a torch and carry it on. We'll see you here a little bit later today if there are more updates. If not, we'll see you here next week. Say a prayer for Charlie. Say a prayer for Charlie's family and say a prayer for our country.