WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance said Monday while hosting Charlie Kirk’s radio show that he is “desperate” for national unity after the conservative political activist’s killing but that finding common ground with people who celebrated the assassination of his friend is impossible.
The Republican vice president filled in as host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from his ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. The livestream of the two-hour program was broadcast in the White House press briefing room and featured a series of appearances by White House and administration officials who knew the 31-year-old Kirk.
Vance, who home from Utah to Arizona aboard Air Force Two last week, opened by saying he was “filling in for somebody who cannot be filled in for, but I’ll do my best.” He recounted his conversations with Kirk’s widow, Erika, and her remembrances of him as a kind, loving husband.
In his closing remarks, Vance criticized what he said were lies about Kirk that he blamed for the killing. He also promised that the Trump administration will act to stop anyone who would kill another person because of their words. Kirk made comments over the years that some Democrats and others said were anti-immigrant, racist, misogynistic or offensive in other ways.
“I’m desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend,” Vance said on the program. “I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth. We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.”
Kirk’s influence with Trump and Vance
Vance’s self-described “moonlighting” as substitute radio host, as well as the broadcasting of the program from the White House complex, served as a powerful reminder of Kirk’s close relationship with the Trump-Vance team and the valuable role Kirk’s operation boosting youth voter turnout played on the campaign.
The Republican vice president, 41, was especially close to Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s with chapters on high school and college campuses. The two began a friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kirk advocated for Vance to be Republican Donald Trump’s choice for vice president last year. Kirk also was someone who had Trump’s ear.
Vance spoke in the show’s opening segment Monday about being at a loss for words as he sat with Erika Kirk last week. But he said she told him something he’ll never forget, which was that the father of their two young children had never raised his voice to her and was never “cross or mean-spirited to her.”
Vance allowed that he could not say the same about himself.
“I took from that moment that I needed to be a better husband and I needed to be a better father,” the vice president said on the program, which airs on Rumble, a streaming platform. “That is the way I’m going to honor my friend.”
White House and administration officials mourn Kirk
Others who joined Vance on Kirk’s program were White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., press secretary Karoline Leavitt and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
The conversation turned toward fighting what Vance described as “festering violence on the far left” with Miller, the first guest.
“With God as my witness, we’re going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, ɫɫland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Law enforcement officials have said they believe the suspect accused of killing Kirk acted alone.
The relationship between Vance and Kirk
Vance, who said, “I owe so much to Charlie,” elaborated on his close friendship with Kirk in a lengthy social media post late on the night of the conservative activist’s killing. Vance said it started randomly around 2017 after he appeared on program by conservative host Tucker Carlson. Kirk sent Vance a private message through social media telling Vance he’d done a “great job.”
“And that moment of kindness began a friendship that lasted until today,” the vice president wrote.
Vance said he and Kirk both initially were “skeptical” of during his 2016 presidential campaign but had come around to support the now-two-time president.
Kirk was among the first people to hear from Vance in early 2021 when the Ohio Republican was “interested but skeptical” about running for a U.S. Senate seat, the vice president said in a testimony to Kirk’s role in his political rise.
“We talked through everything, from the strategy to the fundraising to the grassroots of the movement he knew so well,” Vance said. “He introduced me to some of the people who would run my campaign and also to Donald Trump Jr., who “took a call from me because Charlie asked him too.”
Vance said Kirk arranged for him to speak to Kirk’s donors at a Turning Point USA event when he had no reason to help someone polling as low as he was at the time, “but he did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man.”
Vance and others credit Kirk’s efforts and influence with helping Trump win reelection.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance said in the post. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.
He added on the program, “If it weren’t for Charlie Kirk, I would not be the vice president of the United States ... it’s one of the reasons why I feel so indebted to him.”
Vance as radio show host
Jody Baumgartner, a political science professor at East Carolina University in North Carolina, said Vance’s hosting duty likely was possible because vice presidents have more free time than presidents.
“If President Trump had time to do something like this, don’t you think he would?” Baumgartner asked. “It’s an interesting question with respect to resources and time, but a vice president has the time that a president doesn’t.”
After Kirk’s assassination
After Kirk was fatally shot last Wednesday at Utah Valley University, Vance tore up his schedule for the next day — he was scheduled Thursday to attend the 24th annual observance in New York of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to fly instead to Orem, Utah, with his wife, second lady Usha Vance.
The couple accompanied Erika Kirk and Charlie Kirk’s casket to Arizona aboard Air Force Two.
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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed reporting.
