WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance said Monday while hosting Charlie Kirk’s radio show that he is “desperate” for national unity after the conservative political activist’s killing but that finding common ground with people who celebrated the assassination of his friend is impossible.
The Republican vice president filled in as host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from his ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. The livestream of the two-hour program was broadcast in the White House press briefing room and featured a series of appearances by White House and administration officials who knew the 31-year-old Kirk.
Vance, who transported Kirk’s body home from Utah to Arizona aboard Air Force Two last week, opened by saying he was “filling in for somebody who cannot be filled in for, but I’ll do my best.” He recounted his conversations with Kirk’s widow, Erika, and her remembrances of him as a kind, loving husband.
In his closing remarks, Vance criticized what he said were lies about Kirk that he blamed for the killing. He also promised that the Trump administration will act to stop anyone who would kill another person because of their words.
“I’m desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend,” Vance said on the program. “I want it so badly that I will tell you a difficult truth. We can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.”
Vance’s self-described “moonlighting” as substitute radio host, as well as the broadcasting of the program from the White House complex, served as a powerful reminder of Kirk’s close relationship with the Trump-Vance team and the valuable role Kirk’s operation boosting youth voter turnout played on the campaign.
The Republican vice president, 41, was especially close to Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s largest political organizations with chapters on high school and college campuses. The two began a friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kirk advocated for Vance to be Republican Donald Trump’s choice for vice president last year. Kirk also was someone who had Trump's ear.
Vance spoke in the show's opening segment Monday about being at a loss for words as he sat with Erika Kirk last week. But he said she told him something he'll never forget, which was that her husband had never raised his voice to her and was never “cross or mean-spirited to her.”
Vance allowed that he could not say the same about himself.
“I took from that moment that I needed to be a better husband and I needed to be a better father,” the vice president said on the program, which was streamed on Rumble. “That is the way I'm going to honor my friend.”
Others who joined Vance on Kirk's program were chief of staff Susie Wiles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., press secretary Karoline Leavitt and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
The conversation turned toward fighting what Vance described as “festering violence on the far left” with Miller, the first guest.
“With God as my witness, we’re 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,” Miller said.
Miller added that “it will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Law enforcement officials have said they believe the suspect accused of killing Kirk acted alone.
After Kirk was fatally shot last Wednesday at Utah Valley University, Vance tore up his schedule for the next day — he was scheduled Thursday to attend the 24th annual observance in New York of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to fly instead to Orem, Utah, with his wife, second lady Usha Vance.
The couple accompanied Erika Kirk and Charlie Kirk's casket to Arizona aboard Air Force Two.
___
Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.