By Vice President JD Vance took to the airwaves Monday, stepping in as guest host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” for a two-hour broadcast from the White House that doubled as both a memorial and a call to arms. The special episode honored Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist killed during a campus appearance at Utah Valley University last week.
Vance, a close friend of Kirk’s, used the platform to recount personal memories, recite scripture, and issue sharp rebukes against those he accused of celebrating Kirk’s death. His guest lineup included Tucker Carlson, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, along with several of Kirk’s colleagues and friends, wrote The New York Post.
At moments the vice president grew visibly agitated, particularly when addressing a recent opinion piece in The Nation. Responding to the article, titled Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning, Vance accused its author, Elizabeth Spiers, of dishonesty and cruelty. “He made an argument for judging people of all races and backgrounds by their own individual merits,” Vance said in defense of Kirk, before calling Spiers a “hack” whose work smeared a man unable to answer back. “The very evidence she provides, this hack of a writer, shows that she lied about a dead man and yet she wrote it. An esteemed magazine published it,” he continued. “It made it through the editors, and of course, liberal billionaires rewarded that attack.”
Spiers had described Kirk as “an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct,” and wrote, “He had children, as do many vile people.” Vance said he thought of Kirk’s widow Erika while reading those lines. “I thought of Erika as I read that disgusting attack on Charlie,” he said, adding that he turned to prayer: “I said the Lord’s Prayer.”
From there, Vance broadened his critique to the networks he said fund such rhetoric, citing George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation. “Did you know that the George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie’s death, do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment?” he asked. “They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer, and how do they reward us by setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.”
The vice president framed the episode as a plea for unity, but only on certain terms. “I’m desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend. I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth,” Vance said. “We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country.”
If we want to stop political violence like what happened to Charlie Kirk, we have to be honest about the people who are celebrating it and the people who are financing it.
My closing remarks on today's episode of the Charlie Kirk Show: pic.twitter.com/pEAqbAL3yr
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 15, 2025
Vance also described harassment of White House officials and their families in the days after Kirk’s assassination, recalling how activists distributed flyers with the photo and address of a senior staffer. “While he was mourning his dead friend, he and his wife had to worry about the political terrorists drawing a big target on the home he shares with his young children,” he said. He pressed the point further: “Are these people violent? I hope not. But are they guilty of encouraging violence? You damn well better believe it.”
Turning personal, Vance spoke of a July trip to Disneyland with his wife and children after a California fundraiser. “Most of the guests said very nice things or they just left us alone,” he recalled. “But there was a loud … minority that would shout at my children who were 8, 5 and 3, whenever they got the opportunity.” One woman yelled at his 5-year-old, “You should disown your dad, you little s–t!” Another shouted, “Tell the Secret Service to protect the Constitution, not your father!” Vance labeled the behavior “deranged.”
In one of the program’s most emotional moments, Vance described a private conversation with Erika Kirk, who asked him how she should break the news to their children—a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. “Vice President JD Vance in a heart-wrenching moment on a special episode of his late friend Charlie Kirk’s podcast Monday said that the conservative activist’s widow asked him ‘for advice on how she should tell her children that their father had been murdered.’” He contrasted that anguish with what he described as the cruel celebration of Kirk’s death in certain quarters. “And as she was doing it, there were people dancing on that father’s grave.”
In his closing, Vance was clear: there can’t be unity with Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that their calls for violence have ramifications.
That’s my VP pic.twitter.com/0zNa9YcMAh
— homans top guy (@passcoderonald) September 15, 2025
Broadcast live from the White House, the episode was part eulogy, part manifesto—a tribute to Kirk’s legacy and a warning about political violence that Vance insisted the nation must confront before healing can begin.
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