Vice President JD Vance became emotional when discussing how Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, asked his wife, Usha Vance, for advice about talking with her two children after her husband’s murder.
The Republican vice president and former senator for Ohio stepped in to host “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Monday from his office in the White House complex following the assassination of the Turning Point USA founder on a Utah university campus last week.
At the start of the show, Vance highlighted Charlie Kirk’s efforts to spread the conservative message into “hostile places” and inspire younger generations to “have courage.” The vice president and former senator from Ohio referred to Kirk as a “fearless debater” and credited the 31-year-old influencer with helping President Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election.
“The last several days have been extremely hard for our country,” Vance said. “They’ve been hard for me, hard for my family, hard for the countless people in this building who knew and loved Charlie Kirk.”
“And of course, they’ve been hardest most of all for his darling wife Erika Kirk and their two beautiful children,” he added.
On Thursday, the Vances flew with Kirk’s widow from Utah to Arizona aboard Air Force Two. The plane carried the TPUSA founder’s casket, which Vance later helped carry after arriving in Arizona. Vance said it is an “honor” to have met Erika Kirk, along with her husband’s parents and his sister.
The Kirks married in 2021. They have a son and a daughter under the age of 5. The vice president called Erika Kirk an “incredibly brave soul.”
Upon meeting Erika Kirk, the vice president hugged the widow and spoke with her for about an hour about her deceased husband.
“And she said that she loved him so much,” Vance recalled. “And I said, ‘Erika, he loved you so much. He died way too young, but he died a happy man because of you, because of the family that you gave him, because of the home and the life that you guys had built together.'”
Vance urged the public to listen to the speech Erika Kirk delivered days after her husband’s murder, highlighting the “raw grief” and “incredible courage” she displayed.
“And that’s what we need right now,” he said. “We need to grieve, but we also need this courage in this moment more than we’ve ever needed it.”
With the widow’s permission, the vice president revealed that, during a private conversation with the second lady, Erika Kirk asked for advice on how to tell her children that their father had been murdered.
“She asked my wife how to tell her beautiful kids that their father and my dear, very dear friend is no longer with us,” Vance said, appearing to choke up as he relayed the conversation. “And as she was doing it, there were people dancing on that father’s grave.”
The vice president condemned an opinion article published by The Nation magazine shortly after Kirk’s death. The article claimed Kirk once said, “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously.”
“He never uttered those words. He made an argument against affirmative action as a policy. He criticized a specific Supreme Court Justice as an individual,” the vice president stated. “He never said anything about black women as a group. He made an argument for judging people of all races and backgrounds by their own individual merits.”
The quote in reference came during a July 2023 episode of his show in which Kirk criticized several liberal African American political figures.
“If we would have said three weeks ago that [television personality] Joy Reid and [former first lady] Michelle Obama and [Rep.] Sheila Jackson Lee and [Supreme Court Justice] Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us,” Kirk said.
“Now they are coming out and saying it for us. They are coming out and saying, ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action,'” Kirk continued. “Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
The show jumps to footage of Lee saying during a speech that she was a “clear recipient of affirmative action, particularly in higher education.”
“I may have been admitted on affirmative action, both in terms of being a woman and a woman of color, but I can declare that I didn’t graduate on affirmative action,” Lee said in the clip played on Kirk’s show.
In response, Kirk laughed that Lee stumbled over her words when initially trying to say the term “affirmative action” during her speech.
“We know, we know, it is very obvious to us that you are not smart enough to be able to get in on your own,” Kirk said about Lee, criticizing the thought that “I couldn’t make it on my own, so I needed to take opportunities from someone more deserving.”
“This is how arrogant Joy Reid, Katanji Brown Jackson, Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee are. They are so narcissistic that they think this is persuasive. They think we are like, ‘That’s why we need affirmative action, because you have impressed us with your brilliance.'”
He went on to criticize what he called “anti-white and anti-Asian forced discrimination policies.”
On Monday’s episode, Vance argued that no matter what Kirk said, he didn’t deserve to die.
“But consider the level of propaganda at work. Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight, and well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder,” he continued. “This is soulless and evil.”
Vance said he has heard many calls “for unity and for healing” after Kirk’s assassination. Vance told listeners, “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.”
He claimed that people on the left are more likely to celebrate and defend political violence, arguing that the issue is not a “both sides problem.” He added that, if both sides have a problem, then one “has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told.”
While he acknowledged that most Democrats don’t champion violence, he argued that there is a “lunatic fringe” on the political left that is growing in popularity. He went on to argue that “there is no unity” with people who celebrate Kirk’s assassination or lie about him to justify his murder.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
