Charlie Kirk “was a critical part of getting Donald Trump elected as president, getting me elected as vice president, and so much of our success over the last seven months is due to his efforts,” JD Vance said Monday while hosting The Charlie Kirk Show.
Staying in the political realm, Vance told viewers and listeners that “we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the Left from becoming more and more mainstream.”
The VP-hosted podcast comes just five days after the 31-year-old Kirk was shot dead on the campus of Utah Valley University in front of students and his own young children.
“Violence is not okay in our system,” the self-described “Vice President of these United States” added of the September 10 shooting. “I really hope that this assassin didn’t silence Charlie’s movement,” Vance said of the college-campus-focused Turning Point USA co-founder and MAGA activist, who he Monday called a “dear friend.”
Since Kirk’s death last week, Trump and other members of his White House have pointed the finger at the “radical left” being the instigators of political violence in the country in recent years. Often, as one example, leaving out the fatal June shooting of top Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband by conservative-leaning Vance Boelter, the assertions by Trump and his team contradict law enforcement data that shows right-leaning individuals are the primary proponents of political violence in America.
After some premature announcements by FBI director Kash Patel, Utah native Tyler Robinson turned himself in and was taken into custody as a suspect in Kirk’s shooting. Said to not be cooperating with authorities and with no motive yet clear, the 22-year-old is expected to be formally charged Tuesday, according to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.
Once a harsh critic of Trump (who he compared to Adolf Hitler), Vance has adopted a distinct heir apparent approach over the past few years since he successfully ran for the Senate in Ohio. To that, weaving himself deeper into Kirk’s extensive organization and role is a logical political move for the ambitious Hillbilly Allergy author heading towards 2028.
To that, Vance’s first guest today from his White House office was powerful Trump Deputy Chief of Staff and architect of the administration’s ICE raid and deportation policy Steven Miller, who called the admittedly confrontational Kirk a “treasured friend.”
The tone of the podcast became ominous as Miller promised that another crackdown from the administration was coming.
In stark terms, and with the VP warning the influential staffer to “be quick,” Miller told Vance that the administration is going to “channel all the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination.” With scant evidence surrounding the suspect’s reasons for killing Kirk, Miller went on to warn that “we are going to use every resource we have … to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”
Miller and Vance did not identify who precisely they were referring to beyond the VP speaking of the “NGO Network.” (Update: Towards the end of the podcast, a much more aggressive Vance lashed out at MAGA critics and made a point of singling out longtime GOP foe, financier George Soros – who current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used to work for.)
Other guests on the Rumble-hosted podcast included Turning Point’s USA staffers. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt showed up, with Tucker Carlson on the slate too. Trump and other top cabinet members are expected to attend the September 21 memorial for Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ.
More than 220,000 people joined the podcast livestream today during Vance’s opening, with the numbers rising steadily as more guests came on. It encountered a number of glitches, with audio issues and repetitive video inserts. There was also no mention on the Vance-hosted podcast of Kirk’s insistence that Trump’s DOJ release the full files on convicted sex offender and former Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein.