Charlie Kirk: One year later, what did we lose?

0:00Buckle up everybody here, we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. He's spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job. Building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, turning point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Today is September 10th, one year, not around this time today. Charlie Kirk was assassinated live on the internet at Utah Valley University. A year ago this afternoon, shot the neck while doing the thing that made half of the country lose their minds. He was sitting in an open chair, taking questions, and refusing to apologize for loving Jesus, his family, and this country.

1:02So I kind of want to retrace my steps a little bit because I feel like that's the only way to really do the story and adjust this and to paint a picture of how I'm feeling today and how I was feeling then. I was in my living room when I heard he was shot. And when I worked at Turning Point, I had been a big part of planning campus events. So that year's fall tour had just really kicked off, just launched. And I was still in very, very close person with the person, close contact with the person that had taken my seat. And I was helping her through a lot of the logistics and stuff like that. So when I, when I heard what happened, I immediately picked up a phone and called her and she had heard too. And we were both just stunned and speechless. But at that moment, there was still like no information at all. And if I backtrack a little bit more, we had all known that something like this could happen. The threats were there at every campus event, every single one.

2:04And you don't continually send a 31 year old man onto a hostile college campus for what over a decade and pretend that the temperature there is normal. But even knowing all of that and even like honestly, mentally preparing ourselves for a day where that might happen, it all still felt very, very surreal. So I'm on the phone with her. We have no information. I get off the phone and I said, tell me the second that you hear anything. And then I'm texting a bunch of people the exact same thing. And all of this is happening very, very fast, three to five minute window. And then I see the video. And that was it. I mean, a new instantly. I think we all did. And I was a wreck, but I still needed confirmation. So I got that from another contact while I was watching the Fox News ticker, say critical, but stable. It's like an out of body experience.

3:10Thank God my wife was there. I made her that day. Promise me that she would never watch the video. And to her credit, she still hasn't. She may be one of the only people in America that hasn't. And she was my rock through all of this. And we're just sitting there. We're just shocked. She's like, I got to go get the kids. I have to, I got to pick them up. So it's okay. The kids come home and I'm an absolute wreck. And that's not an understatement. And I think I think that I need to tell you why it's because Charlie Kirk changed my entire life. Multiple levels on a courage level, the boldness, the delivery, the way this man could deliver savage truth and just let it sit there. And then on the flip side, on a career level trajectory.

4:12This guy was my boss. He absolutely blessed my life and he blessed my family's life. The job that I had there is not a line on a resume. It was an honor of my life. Being able to tell people that you were media director for Charlie Kirk, it's really special. And it's something that I can't say without feeling the weight of it. This was one of the most painful losses that I have ever experienced. And I know that that's not unique to me. I am not the only one. Everybody that I work with at TPUSA feels the same way. And I'm sure a lot of people in the audience and a lot of young men and a lot of young women across the country feel the exact same way. So it's me and my wife were sitting there were crying and we're listening to Murphy show.

5:14And then I just had to like push forward. I had to muster up the strength to get back to work like stuff doesn't stop. I don't know if you know this. I produce Pastor Allen's weekend show here on WTN. So Wednesday's usually my day where I kind of start lining up those dots. And I had a show to produce. So I slogged through it. And it felt like an eternity. And then after all of that, then I had to plan this show for the next day. And I absolutely hope that this show goes better than that one. Because I don't remember much about that show, but I do remember being just an absolute mess. And I apologize for that. I didn't deliver on that show the way I had hoped I would. And I still beat myself up for that. I felt like I was unable to do Charlie justice through my own sorrow.

6:15But I did show up. So there's that. I don't remember much of that program at all. And to be honest with you, I just tried to forget it. I just pushed past it and moved on. And also to be honest with you, the next couple of days after that weren't any better. Let's not kid ourselves. But it seemed like as soon as I, as soon as it felt real that Charlie was gone, my wife and I were on a plane to Phoenix for the memorial. And that was another just unique out of body experience, something I had never been a part of. And I mean, in all honesty, not something I ever want to be a part of again. Not in a negative way, but just the reasoning behind it. And I made one phone called my parents. I was like, hey, we're trying to go to Phoenix. Can you guys come in? We don't have any family around here. So I said, hey, can you guys come in and watch the kids? Like my sister's an Alabama, she's got her own stuff. She got her own kids. So can you guys come in? They were like, yes, absolutely.

7:17And they were here like the next few hours. So they watched the kids all weekend. And my wife and I, we flew to Phoenix and we got in super late. And we immediately went to headquarters where I worked. And we saw the vigil that had been set up there. And we had gotten letters from Tennesseans and all these challenge coins from police departments and sheriff's office and TBI. I mean, you name it and we placed them at the memorial. And we prayed. And then we had to keep moving. I mean, like it just didn't stop. So then we go and we get our credentials at 3am. We get back to the hotel. We sleep from like 3.30 to 4. And then we're back up and we're ready to get to the venue by 5am. So like, when I tell you no sleep, there was no sleep. When we were leaving the hotel, we tried to call a new Uber, but we couldn't get one.

8:18Everything is gridlocked around the stadium because of the security level that this event was at. So we had a 20 minute walk and we had to meet at a hotel that was like right next to the venue, right next to the stadium to meet up with a few of the staff members. And we were all going to head over there together. There was like 10 or 15 of us there at that time. And we were trying to figure out how do we even get through this crowd? How do we navigate? Because I don't remember the exact number, but there was at least 100,000 people give or take that had camped out overnight. And there's one entrance. And again, it's super bowl level security. So we're standing there staring at this wall of people and we have no idea. How, like, is there a back way in? Nope. So how do we get through this? And then someone in the crowd catches wind that were staff. And I kid you not. The crowd starts to part for us, a crowd of 100,000 people. The compassion and kindness from strangers who had no idea

9:23if they were even going to get in that day. And they were, it wasn't just that they were moving. They were rubbing our backs. They were telling us that they love Charlie. They were telling us that they loved us that they were so sorry. We got hugs. There were people crying. I'll never forget that. And we didn't get treated that way because of who we were. We got treated that way because of who Charlie was. How many people he had actually touched. And that day everybody there was family. I'd never been part of a large crowd like that. That was so calm, so peaceful, so somber, so kind, so compassionate. So as we're moving through this crowd, we finally get to the venue and we get in about 530. At that point, it's just staff inside the building. But it's really just family inside the building. A family that I'm absolutely honored to be a part of. Maybe a hundred of us are in the building at that point.

10:26And then the stadium is eerily empty. And so we just all kind of took it in. We waited. We cried. We prayed. We told each other that we loved each other. And then we slowly made our way around the stadium. And we looked at the pictures and the tributes before. Anybody else was inside. It was crazy. And my wife and I, I don't know how it happens, but we sit like 15 rows back. Like we are, I mean, as close as close as I felt comfortable being. And there's a couple moments that stand out. Like I'll never forget a stadium full of people singing and worshipping with Brandon Lake. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. And while all that is happening, it's like a who's who of the of the conservative movement walking in.

11:26Literally right in front of us. Like there's Elon Musk. There's RFK. There's JD Vance. And as I'm looking at these people in front of me, I'm also looking behind me up into like the rafters of the stadium. And you realize that Charlie had the ability to touch these decision makers just as personally as he touched the young man who is literally in the very, very last row at the tip top of the stadium. And the speeches, I mean, the speeches were special, but the takeaway was simpler. It's just look how many people this man meant something to. The streams went into the billions. And in his death, it wasn't Charlie's name that got lifted up. It was Jesus' and that is fitting. Because that's who he was building towards.

12:29Not a brand, but a man. Charlie started turning point at 18 in his garage. And that's not it. It sounds like a talking point, but it's not when you've seen these things up close like I have. It's a kid who looked at the country that had written off his generation, my generation, and decided that he wasn't going to accept the eulogy. He built chapters on campuses that treated conversation and conservatism like a hate crime. He put out a table and he said, prove me wrong. And he meant it. And Charlie would go on to these campuses and he would take that heat. So that way a freshman from a red county wouldn't have to take it alone. Charlie wasn't a mascot for the conservative party. He wasn't just a clip machine, even though the clips were everywhere. He was the older brother that a lot of us felt we never had. And he told us that it was okay to want a wife and kids and a house

13:32in a country that still believed in men and women. And that God wasn't embarrassed by us. And he told us that the game felt rigged against us because in some ways, it absolutely was. And you know what he did next? He said, get to your destination anyway. He meant a lot of things to a lot of people. I mean, to the donors, he was just some young guy that could still speak English. To the Trump world, he was the one who understood the kids. To the campus kid, he was the first adult who didn't roll their eyes when they said, I love America. And to the staff, and I was the staff. He was the boss who was the same guy on the radio that he was in the hallway. And that matters way more than you think. Because you can fake a monologue, but you can't fake a year's worth of director calls. Now, what he built is still standing. The chapters, the tour, the muscle.

14:34What he was is absolutely unexplainable and unreplicable. You can't inventory that. He made our coalition look younger than it is. He made courage look normal. He made arguing in public look like an act of love for the country. Instead of a content strategy, he kept factions in the same room long enough so that way we could fight the actual opponent. And laden his life, the conversations turned way more church and way less election. And that wasn't like a strategy pivot. It was a 31 year old guy still becoming the man that he was calling us to be. If you're listening and you felt like you never met him, you still felt him. You felt him. If your son started talking differently after a campus video, you felt him.

15:35If your church youth group suddenly had language for what they were seeing at school. You felt him if you were tired of being managed by consultants. And then all of a sudden you heard a kid from Illinois just say exactly what we were thinking out loud. The stadium in Phoenix at the memorial service, it was not a political rally that happened to have worship. It was a family realizing that the same man had been in all of our lives but in different rooms. The kid who was there camping overnight to get in. The vice president walked on the floor. This radio host from Tennessee who used to work for him. The widow and the two babies. Just one life stretched across all of us.

16:40He ran his race and he pointed to Jesus and he left a movement. He left a marriage and a whole that is still the shape of a very, very specific person. So today we're going to talk about what the left is doing. We'll probably get to that when we come back. We'll talk about Erica and his two babies. And what it means to the movement out of the sheriff is gone. But I really want this first break to belong to him. And not the assassination. The Charlie. The garage, the table, the tours, the text at midnight about the next decade. The staff who still talks about him like family.

17:41The strangers who parted a crowd of a hundred thousand. Because they loved a man that most of them had only seen through a phone. Charlie met so much to so many. He met that much to me. He absolutely blessed my house and he blessed my family. Any year later. I'm just still trying to say thank you. Let me remind you, you probably don't need a reminder today is September 10th. One year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus in Utah. Before the break, I was talking about, I don't know, a few things. Where I was the living room, my wife, the video, umorial and Phoenix.

18:44And that's all well and good. But I also think that we need to talk about what the other side is doing today. Because I don't think that that's a side note. I think that that's a big part of the story. And it's frustrating and furiating. Makes you downright pissed. They're celebrating. They even named it. They have a QC little name for it. They're calling it Kirk aversary. Kirk aversary. Happy Kirk aversary to those who celebrate. Gunamoji blood drop emoji. It's like they're having merch drop energy for a public execution. Last year, some of them cheered from a balcony while Charlie was still on the ground. Teachers, influencers, nurses, professors, giggling, dancing, saying things like I hope he suffered, saying things like good riddance. And I think that that's some of the PG stuff. There was a lot worse said that I don't even think we need to repeat.

19:44But I think it's important to point out that that wasn't a glitch. That was not a few sick people on the internet. That reaction was genuine. And it was a peak inside of how they actually feel about you and I. That's how they feel about us. You understand that, right? Not not a simple, we dislike your tax plan. But when one of ours dies on camera, a portion of their coalition feels relief, joy, they bring punchlines. Today, these same psychotic lunatics will find compassion for Lindsey Clancy. They'll find context for Carmelo Anthony. They'll lecture you that white replacement is a conspiracy theory while they treat demographic change like sacrament. And then they'll celebrate a father getting shot in the neck on a college campus because he wouldn't lie to students. It's disgusting. These people are gross. People don't throw a party for a death unless they believe the dead man had it coming.

20:50And I think that we need to call that what it is. It's evil and it's demonic. Now, look at these two pictures at the same time. You have members of the left celebrating and throwing a party. And then you have Charlie's two babies. Charlie and Erica have two. And that mean for years and years and years, they have fought to keep them out of the circus. And after he was killed, everybody, I think remembers this line, Erica told the country what she said to Gigi when she ran into her arms and asked where daddy was at the time she was three. And she said, daddy loves you so much. Don't worry. He's on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget. Gigi's four now. She turned four last month.

21:51I hope you get that four is when the story stops working that way. Four is when the work trip with Jesus starts sounding like what it is. It's a permanent assignment. Daddy's not going to walk back through the door with a suitcase full of blueberries. He's not. There's a little brother too. He was one when Charlie died. He's not going to remember the sound of his dad's voice. So that's robbery. That's theft. So I'll ask those of you that pray to pray for Erica by name today. She is raising those two without the covering that was supposed to be over that house. She is going to be leading that organization that Charlie built. She is doing it in public on the anniversary that the other side is turning into a punchline.

22:58A year doesn't make widowhood easier. And if you look at the last year that Erica Kirk had, yeah, it's only gotten harder. And I think it's only going to get harder. I mean, even if you were just a normal widow, a year doesn't make things easier. The castle rolls stop. The kids keep growing. The questions get sharper. That's to be so difficult. And again, it's not going to get easier. And if you have a four-year-old, you know what breakfast sounds like. I have a four-year-old at home. You know what breakfast sounds like. So pray for her. Pray that those children know their father as a man who loved Jesus and loved them, not as a clip that the internet argues about. This loss means a lot to a lot of people. It means a lot to the movement. And I want to be precise in my language because I worked inside the building. The movement, the conservative movement still has the machine.

24:00And I think that that was on full display last night with the R&C midterm convention. But we are missing the guy that held the machine together in public. A year later is the gap. Now, turning point chapters have grown. Turning point staff has grown. The calendar is full. But what's thinner is the thing that Charlie actually was. He was a young guy who could sit in a chair, take the hostile questions, keep the factions from fighting each other, and make conservatives that conservatism feel like a real live fight instead of a brand. Nobody is referring the room the same way today. They're just not. Charlie could talk to campus kids, influencers, donors, and Trump world in the same week. And he wouldn't sound like he belonged only to one of them. After he was gone, and since he's been gone, the right has kind of gone back to the default settings.

25:04Public feuds, conspiracy lanes, purity tests. I have a friend who said the quiet part out loud. He said, you know, Charlie was the sheriff. And a lot of the current drama that we're seeing is what happens when the sheriff is dead. That's not poetry either. I mean, that's just how the last year is looked. The debate chair is empty. The organization can continue to send speakers, but it can't send Charlie's specific presence. 31 years old, unscripted, willing to look stupid on camera if the exchange was real. A lot of young conservatives are trying to copy the table and the mic. None of them have his stamina or his ability to absorb heat without the without turning the event into a rally. And the left is noticed and the far right is noticed. And campus space is being contested again, including, including mind you by people that Charlie kept at arms length for years. The youth vote in this country today does not have a face that

26:09it trusts the same way. He wasn't just good at Gen Z content. He was the person that a lot of people felt like was on their side and not just managing them. And that's a big deal that you can't franchise that. A widow as a CEO can hold together an institution, but she can't be the older brother on college campuses. And when kids go looking for a new voice, some will stay in the Laney belt and some will drift to whoever is louder and whoever is less constrained. His faith turn was personal. So it doesn't transfer cleanly. Like later in his life, the conversation with the people close to him got way less, way less elections, way more church. And that shift worked because it was him. It was his restlessness after 2024. It wasn't a new vertical. The movement can say faith, family, freedom, but it can't recreate a 31 year old who is becoming

27:12that guy in real time. I don't know. Maybe you feel the same way. The intensity's gone. People who have worked with them, I spoke with, we all say the same thing. He didn't stop. In auguration night in 2025, he was texting people about 2028. The last conversations that he had were about insane chapter goals for the organization. Guy was living on coffee in the next campus. Institutions can run on process, Charlie ran on obsession. Now you can staff around that, but you can't schedule it. And he made the coalition look younger than what it was. And without him, the current state of the right looks a lot more, like it actually is, older donors, professional operators, online personalities, and a youth organization that's trying to keep the energy that used to walk in the room with one guy. Now that's not a failure of the people that are left.

28:22It's the cost of building a movement so tightly or out of a single communicator. We're not missing the infrastructure. That part is scaled. I hope you understand that. What we're currently missing is that human center of gravity. The person who could walk into a hostile amphitheater, keep the family from splitting on air and still be texting a friend about the next decade at midnight. So I guess the question would be is how do we move from here? And I think it's easier said than done. I think we do what he did. And I've been trying to do this and I know I don't do a good good job. I'm not Charlie Kirk. I'm just Chris Hand. But I think we all have to acknowledge the shortcomings. We can't shout, shout down the kid with a bad question. We have to listen to the grievances. And then we have to make our case. Charlie recorded those collisions on purpose.

29:23He said numerous times and you'll see all these clips today all over the internet. Like you can't go on Instagram or Twitter without seeing these today. But he said when people stop talking, that's when you get violence. And we have issues in this country. Affordability and gas are not side issues. There are why a 24 year old can't see owning a home or having a family as a realistic life goal. Charlie hammered that when he was alive. Inflation, insecurity, insanity, keep it simple, wages, groceries, energy. And to the young men, especially find your destination and aim at it. Provide, lead, get married, have children, build that legacy. Charlie said the young men are more conservative than they've been in 50 years. And it's because we want a movement that doesn't hate us. We're sick and tired of hearing about toxic masculinity when we are drowning in toxic femininity.

30:27And we've seen the toxic femininity. Just look at the Lindsey Clancy trial. But that's the assignment. Today, the other side of the aisle is going to be celebrating a murder. While a four year old girl is still learning that her daddy's work trip with Jesus doesn't have a return date. So that sucks. But we can't answer their bloodlust with more bloodlust. I think we answered it the way my boss answered it. We show up and we speak plainly. We love this country enough to fight for it. We lift up Jesus' name the same way that we did in the stadium that day. We got a pray for Erica. We had a pray for Gigi. We got a pray for their little boy. Charlie changed my entire life. He blessed my entire family. I still owe him a better show than I gave him through tears a year ago. Today, I'm trying

31:32to pay a little bit of that back. God bless Charlie Kirk. God bless the work that is unfinished. The left today, just look at them. Look at the party they're throwing. And then let's get back to work and let's focus on the things that matter. The loving church. Love God. Love people. You love people by telling them the truth. And where the modern church has messed up, the church with the homosexual flag, they think the greatest sin is judging. They'll say, well, Jesus says, do not judge. The Bible does not say that. Great. Jesus says, do not judge. Less you not be judged. Oh, hypocrite. By the way, is a judgment. Jesus was telling us how to judge. Not, not to judge. It is one of the misquartered, most misunderstood scriptures. And instead, what we need to do is we need to talk about the perfect standard that Jesus puts up and how we fall short of it and that we as the church need to constantly be aiming towards the holiness. Some people say, well, Charlie, you know, I just

32:36want to be happy in marriage. No, you don't want to be happy in marriage. You want to be holy in marriage. It's a big difference. Charlie, I just want to live a happy life. You should want to live a holy life, not just a happy life. Holy means separate. Holy means elevated. Holy means that I'm striving towards something that I can't always touch and I can't quite understand. The modern church messes us all up and they finally mess up the most important question. Destination. Steve crushes this every Sunday. Every Sunday, Steve is doing alter calls. It's the most important question of all the questions. Most important question is not how am I going to pay my mortgage? Most important question is not how much money I have in the bank account. There is one question that matters. It's who is Jesus Christ? The answer is that if you wanted to all right, am I right, Steve? Absolutely. You wanted to still all the teaching. I could just give you the whole ball game. Write it down and remember it for the rest of your life because we'll ask a lot of questions here, right? Well, how do you feel about this? And what do you think? It's the most important question. Who is Jesus Christ? The answer to that will either give you eternity or damn

33:40nation. And that is destination. But you'd only need Jesus or you believe you need Jesus. If you know, you're off the mark. You cannot talk about a savior if you never talk about sin. And the modern church is afraid to talk about sin. Why? Because I might judge somebody. I might offend somebody. To the modern church happiness is the goal. Judgment is the ultimate sin and God is just the guess. In a true biblical church like the one you're sitting in, God is the ultimate truth. Holiness is the goal. And the greatest sin is clasping in the name of God and defiling the name of Jesus Christ. That's how you know you're sitting in a Bible based church. This is a tribute that was put out by Turning Point USA. This was the day after Charlie was assassinated, which actually adds to how incredible it is. If you're watching on Super Talk TV,

34:42you'll see the video. I know the team that put this together. And I can only imagine how hard that was for them to go back to the studio and put this together the very next day after learning of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We're we're acting about 15 campuses and we're growing very, very quickly and keep in mind. This is not just a flash in the pan movement. We're going to become an institution to give them the power and the confidence to stand up and let their voice be heard. I started this organization when I was 18 years old. I decided not to go to college. I didn't get my dream school, which was the United States Military Academy at West Point. I have this idea to galvanize and motivate the future youth of this country around a core set of ideas, not just political parties or politicians and the ideas are really America's the greatest country in the history of the world. Constitutions, the greatest political document I've ever written in Free Enterprise the most sure to way to lift people out of poverty and create prosperity for all.

35:43Those are the three big ideas. And I think that's something that can win. We as Christians are called to go into the public arena to correct error with truth. So I go to college campuses and there's a lot of error. We're all sinners. We are all living error. I'm far more interested in what God wants of me, that what I want of from God. I have to say this without getting emotional, but I'm very proud of my husband. And I know many of you are too. You have worked so hard and I know a lot of you have seen obviously this video is on TikTok and all the stuff he does on campus. But no one gets to see him from my angle except for myself and our children. And the sacrifice is that he made this year. He's amazing. I'm very blind. And I would

36:49not have been able to do any of it without Erica. And that's the real truth. I'll tell you what. You are here as a grassroots response to the top-down revolution happening in this country. I want our turning point USA students to receive a round of applause. These are the freedom fighters of America. And the media said the turning point could never run a ground game. They weren't experienced. They didn't know Charlie, right? This is the greatest generational realignment since Woodstock. This generation is the most conservative generation that we have seen in well over 50 years. And the numbers show it. What young people especially are screaming at is they say give me a structure that I can live my life by. And especially with young men. More challenging of them. More saying, you know what? Honestly, I'm not going to talk down to you. Stop being a boy and become a man. You want to learn what that means? Con the church. And I'll tell you what it means to become a man.

37:49Because we have the greatest story ever told. What can I do to save the country? You answer that question every single day. Because you are doing the work to save this beautiful republic. You are doing something that is bigger than you. If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered? I want to be remembered for courage from my faith. That would be the most important thing. Most important thing is my faith.