Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University has sent waves of shock and sorrow throughout the nation. Known for his staunch conservative values and charismatic leadership, Charlie’s influence reached far and wide, particularly captivating young minds. In this episode, we delve into personal anecdotes, mirroring the laughter and courage that defined Charlie’s life. We bid farewell to a passionate advocate and leader whose contributions have united voices in a common cause and remind us of the power residing in every individual to make meaningful change.
Welcome to the Mike Gallagher Show Week in Review podcast. It’s Friday, September 12th, 2025. I’m Eric Hansen, and we had a whole show planned today with topics and commentary, but then the unthinkable, the founder of Turning Point USA and our colleague, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated on the campus of Utah Valley University. Here’s Mike and Mark Davis remembering Charlie Kirk.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is the strangest thing, but it really happens all the time in moments of tragedy. Of course we have grief. Of course we have anger. We’re going to reflect all that. We’re going to talk about it with our buddy Mike Gallagher. But I also want to infuse the uplift of the message that God gives us, the God that Charlie served so well. Mike, speaking of service, what a great show last night. I was glad to be on it for a segment there. Did an amazing job last night.
SPEAKER 02 :
This is tough. This is really hard, Mark. We’re all gutted. We are angry, like you said. We’re sorrowful. I can’t bear to look at the images of his little girl running to him just two weeks ago on the set of Fox News saying, Daddy, Daddy. and knowing what Erica, his widow, is going through right now. Charlie was an only child. I spoke to Tom Sudeika, who is a dear friend of mine, who introduced me to Charlie many years ago. Tom mentored Charlie in Chicago. It’s certainly widely publicized. Everybody knows the story of Charlie coming up with Turning Point USA in his parents’ garage as a teenager, as a kid. Because he loved Rush Limbaugh. He was a radio fan and loved talk radio. And he told me and his right-hand man, Andrew Colvett, told me that folks like even a big mouth like me was an inspiration to Charlie as he was growing up. And that is profound. Look, this is going to be a tough, tough day. And so to be able to host Charlie’s first show today without him, with you, you and me… It is just a real blessing because, boy, we need each other right now, Mark. I heard your caller, Margaret, and I thought, man, I mean, I got to work on getting through today. And to hear her and her pain, and we’re just all gutted, Mark. I mean, this is… This is just beyond devastating. I can’t. It’s selfish. I can’t stop staring at my texts with him on my phone, you know, from just one from a couple of weeks ago. And I just can’t believe this has happened. Mark, it doesn’t feel real. It feels very surreal, doesn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
I see the slide that you put up on Salem News Channel that I’ve seen on various other visual media platforms. you know, Charlie Kirk, 1993 to 2025, and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s the slide you put up when somebody is dead. That’s the slide you put up to eulogize. We shouldn’t be eulogizing a 31-year-old. Everything is wrong about this. Everything. The way it happened. I mean, listen, somebody dies of cancer at 31 is wrong. But like this, what it says about our country, what it says about our society, there’s so much to be angry about, so much to be depressed about. And I feel all of those things. And it’s easy to talk a good game about leaning on the Lord and saying, OK, and, you know, one of the prayers, he’ll get us through all of this. But he will. He truly will. The God that Charlie served so well is there for all of us to help us through.
SPEAKER 02 :
Can I get to that point? Can I before you do that? I want to read something, if you don’t mind, because this this is very personal. You cannot minimize the impact that Charlie’s loss is having on high school and college kids all over America right now. And my son, Micah, is a huge, huge Charlie Kirk fan. Micah is a very spiritual young man. He’s a lieutenant in the Salvation Army. He knows how wrecked we are about Charlie’s assassination. And Micah wrote me a few minutes ago, Dad, the feelings are heavy. This is awful. And while those two are true, it’s also true that God still reigns. Charlie’s legacy will always overshadow the hatred that tried to silence his message. Remember, Dad, the events of 9-11 did not win the day. Love and mercy did. Nothing can undo the pain, anger, and sadness we feel. However, the love of God and his ultimate victory will remind us of how great a man Charlie was and that fear cannot defeat the will and strengths of good, godly people. This is why we need to continue to fight the good fight. I love you, Dad. I’m praying for you. I’m praying for his family, for Mark, for all of the Salem media staff, and for our country. That’s my kid. That’s my son.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’ve done good. You and Denise have done good there. That doesn’t happen by accident. Wow. Please thank him personally for me and from this audience. And with that kind of personal connection, let me ask the following of you, because yesterday was filled with, today will be filled with. All kinds of tributes, and they will be good ones and eloquent ones. There’s a type that I can deliver of someone familiar with his work. But there’s something only you and a really short list of people can do. Of the people who knew him and spent time in his company. You posted the most beautiful picture. You guys at an event. Lisa asked me last night. How much time had Mike spent around Charlie? I said, I’d seem like there was a stretch there where we were doing all kinds of things and you guys were on a stage together or doing stuff. So we all know what kind of man, what kind of Christian, what kind of leader, what kind of broadcaster. Can you just share just a snapshot or two of a video clip from your brain and from your heart of the moments that you got to just spend in his company and what it was like to hang with this amazing young man?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, tons of laughter. You know, he had a tremendous sense of humor, but he was fearless. And he had this deep, deep love of his family, his parents, his wife, his two little kids. That really was what he felt defined him. It wasn’t the legacy of Turning Point USA. He was proud of that. It wasn’t his job, his incredible position on the world stage with podcasting and digital media and all that. He was obviously proud of that, but he cherished his family. I keep thinking about in his final moments, your mind goes to a dark place. I don’t want to talk about what everybody witnessed because it was devastating, the bullet that hit him in the neck, but I thought… He probably was thinking, I don’t want to leave my family without a husband and a dad. You know, I don’t want to leave my family. Knowing him, that was the only thought he had in his final seconds here on earth before he was embraced by the loving arms of God and Jesus. We joked a lot about some very personal things. Some of it I feel is kind of a betrayal. I can’t stop staring at my text messages with him. and just laughing at some of the things that he said to me and I said to him. Somebody did a little—I congratulated him, of course, on South Park, and he loved being lampooned on South Park. Tell everybody that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have lampooned and made fun of everything on that weird, crudely animated little show that has been around at the cutting edge of comedy for a long time. And what an honor. I mean, imitation is the highest form of flattery, they say. They parodied Charlie just a few weeks ago, and he played it, and he loved it. And it involved Charlie being as rapid fire and as passionate as he is. And it was really, it was quite spot on. And he was honored by it and took it as he took everything with a glorious sense of humor.
SPEAKER 02 :
He loved it because, frankly, he loved South Park. And he thought, even though they’re making fun of me, you know, you’ve kind of arrived when they’re lampooning you on South Park. But that’s the kind of humor he had. Somebody did a baby Charlie Kirk meme that I sent him just a couple weeks ago. The AI babies? The AI babies, and he loved it. He said, LOL. He said… And then, you know, a few weeks ago, a while ago, we were talking about how I noticed he’s always, always sucking on lozenges at those college campus events. Have you noticed that? He was always popping stuff in his mouth. And I always said, I said on the air one morning, is he eating? What’s he doing? He always feels like he’s eating something. And he immediately texted me. He was listening. And he said, Mike, lozenges, lozenges, lozenges. That’s right. Preserve the voice. I’m out there for a long time. And he did. He sat out there for hours. And of course, tragically, that was the environment he was in yesterday in Utah. He was under a tent. He was going one-on-one like he always did with critics or cynics or people who wanted to debate him. And look… Today, it’s just the shock and the awe of all of this. We’re trying to absorb it and get through it and just put one foot in front of the other. But we can probably take a moment to observe. This was no ordinary, random, fly-by-night shooting. Now they’re saying 250 yards away. I know a lot of folks who are skilled with shooting guns and arms today. are saying, well, 250, that’s not that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know. I just use it against my own skills. I’m surprised to hit something at the range that’s 50 feet away, much less a couple of football fields. Two and a half football fields away, Mark.
SPEAKER 02 :
And one shot and had an escape plan because this person. That worked. It did work. And I have to believe that the entire weight of the federal government, this has hit the Trump family hard. Don Jr. and Charlie were dear, dear friends. They were so close. Of course, Charlie was front and center at the inauguration. And let’s acknowledge. It’s very likely President Trump isn’t president right now without Charlie Kirk.
SPEAKER 03 :
Distinctly possible because we had more black vote, more Hispanic vote, more youth vote. And that youth vote was enormously influenced and attracted by the appeal of Charlie Kirk. The unique value, the unparalleled value of Charlie Kirk was that he would carry into what is often enemy territory, college campuses filled with venom. And he would take these questions, these challenging, these often snarky questions and listen to them. And simply give back biblical logic, constitutional logic, which people accept it, reject it. That’s what free speech is all about. It’s what he was always about. But he did it with good humor and grace and goodwill. And it was disarming. And he was a master of that craft.
SPEAKER 02 :
There will never be another Charlie Kirk. However, there’s a theme that has emerged since his assassination, and that theme is there were millions of Charlie Kirks created yesterday. Greg Gutfeld passionately said if they thought they could silence… His voice. They were sorely wrong. They were sorely mistaken. Look, I know there’s a lot of ugliness on social media right now. I would advise everyone to follow my personal practice right now and avoid social media because there’s a lot of rotten, awful, evil people. Teachers. School administrators. Public officials. Celebrating this.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, listen, FAFO, you saw what happened to Matthew Dowd. And this is funny. This isn’t even a dyed-in-the-wool lib. This wasn’t Al Franken or Al Sharpton saying this. He was a bushy. And I’ve always said that liberals are going to hate Trump. Duh, that’s baked in. But these soft, weenie, weasel, rhino Republicans whom Trump showed up to be the ineffective warriors they always were. Their hatred is a whole special brew. And so for Matthew Dowd brings that Bush era hatred of Trump with a particular volume, then transfer it over, triangulate it over to Charlie Kirk, who loved Trump, help him get elected. As such, Charlie must be hated. And that’s how you find Matthew Dowd on MSNBC yesterday saying, hey, you spew hate stuff like this is going to happen. And that’s what got him fired.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Mark Davis is a man that I respect and admire with a great deal of wisdom, and I invoked you last night when I was covering this, and we reported on the apology by NBC and then the subsequent firing of Matthew Dowd, which didn’t take very long. There’s a man I know and love who frequently says, This derangement syndrome makes nice people mean and makes smart people dumb. And Matthew Dowd is a walking, talking example of that. Sadly, there are many, but I don’t know about you, my friend. Today, I choose to sort of avoid and ignore the ugliness. I want to focus on the legacy of this young man. In his honor, let’s plow forward. Let’s honor him and let’s honor one another and let’s lift each other up during this very difficult time. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
A life well lived and ended far too soon. That’s the Mike Gallagher Show Week in Review podcast for Friday, September 12th, 2025. Be sure to subscribe to all the podcasts and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the show, be sure to share it with a friend. We’ll see you back here next week on the Mike Gallagher Show Week in Review podcast.
