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Washington — Vice President JD Vance hosted “The Charlie Kirk Show” Monday after Kirk was shot and killed last week at Utah Valley University.
Vance announced Sunday in a post on X that he had the “honor of hosting the Charlie Kirk Show” to “pay tribute to my friend.” Speaking from his office in the White House complex Monday, Vance said he was “filling in for somebody who cannot be filled in for” as he kicked off the show.
“But I’m going to try to do my best,” Vance said.
Kirk, a conservative activist, was assassinated last week during a Utah Valley University event hosted by his organization, Turning Point USA, in Orem, Utah. The 31-year-old was close to Vance, along with President Trump and his family.
After his death, Kirk’s body was flown on the vice president’s plane, Air Force Two, to Kirk’s home state of Arizona. Vance canceled a planned trip to New York to mark 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack to fly to Utah to retrieve Kirk’s body. Vance said Monday that he was honored to be able to “take Charlie’s remains from Utah to Arizona.”
Doug Mills/The New York Times/AP
Vance has described his longtime friendship with Kirk, who was also a key ally in his political rise. Vance said in a post on X after Kirk’s death that the slain conservative activist was one of the first people he called when he considered running for Senate in 2021, and he said Kirk advocated for him to become the vice-presidential nominee “both in public and private.”
The vice president described Kirk as a “true friend.” On Monday, Vance called Kirk “the smartest political operative I ever met,” saying “I owe so much to Charlie.”
Kirk’s youth turnout operation has also been credited with helping Mr. Trump’s 2024 election bid, while Kirk himself was known to have influenced some of the Trump administration’s personnel decisions. Vance said much of “the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” adding that Kirk “didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
The president announced last week that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images 
Andrew Kolvet, the executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said on CNN Monday that Vance’s hosting of the show “came about because he asked if he could do it.”
“Charlie and JD were friends. They were actual friends,” Kolvet said, adding that “a lot of the people that are running the federal government are personal friends of Charlie’s and they were in the trenches together, the campaign, and they’ve known each other for years.”
During the show Monday, Vance urged that “we have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice,” previewing discussions of what he called the “incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe, is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who was among the guests on the show, echoed the sentiment, saying “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.”
“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,” Miller pledged.
Vance said he has heard “many calls in the last few days for unity, and for healing” in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, saying “you have no idea how desperately I want that.” But he added that “first, we must tell the truth.”
“I really do believe that we can come together in this country, I believe, we must,” Vance said. “But unity, real unity can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth.”
The vice president claimed people on the left are more likely to celebrate and defend political violence, saying “this is not a both sides problem.”
“If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told,” he added.
Also among the guests was White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Vance said “it’s up to all of us” to “keep on the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
“We’ve got to carry on the mantle, we’ve got to carry on the torch,” the vice president said. “That’s why I’m doing this show today is I just wanted to, you know, send a signal that we’re not going to let Charlie’s mantle be discarded. We’re going to keep on carrying it.”
Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, said in her first public remarks since his death that “the movement my husband built will not die,” noting that “the radio and podcast show that he was so proud of will go on.”
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea,” she said.
A memorial service for Kirk is set to be held on Sept. 21 in Arizona.
