How Charlie Kirk Made MAGA Mainstream, Plus Maureen Callahan Unfiltered

Next Up with Mark Halperin

MK Media

News, Daily News, Politics

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mark Halperin opens the show with his reported monologue, along with personal reflections, on the life, assassination, and lasting legacy of Charlie Kirk. He traces Kirk's meteoric rise to becoming a conservative icon without the backing of media, Hollywood, or academia, and explains why his murder feels to many like an attack on the heart of the MAGA movement. Mark explores the rare mix of strategy, charisma, and cultural defiance that fueled Kirk’s rise and why his influence will endure well beyond both his life and politics. Then, Mark sits down with journalist, author, and The Nerve host Maureen Callahan, MK Media’s resident troublemaker, for a fearless look at the collapse of old media and the rise of unfiltered commentary. Callahan dissects Vogue’s decline under Anna Wintour, the persistent backlash to Meghan Markle, and the broader cultural shift from glossy narratives to authenticity, while also revealing her dream book projects and personal family history. Plus, Mark shares his own dream book he’d love to write. Chapter: For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 262-454-0503 or go to https://askchapter.org/mark Disclaimer: Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and standalone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don't directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all your options. Delta Rescue: Visit https://DeltaRescue.org to learn more

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome into Next Up, you Nexters from North America around the world.
0:06.1	I'm Mark Kalprin, editor-in chief of the live interactive platform Two-Way and the host here of everything next up.
0:12.8	Another week, it's Tuesday, and you know what that means, a brand-new episode.
0:16.7	We're happy to have you here.
0:17.7	I'll bring you my exclusive reporting on a topic that we've talked about a little bit, but I think it's super important now in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Stories that matter most to us are important, and this one is as big as anything. And then next up after that, Maureen Callahan, columnist for the Daily Mail, host of the Nerve, my sister program here on the Macon Kelly Network.
0:39.0	Maureen and I are going to talk about writing, rhythmic, pop culture, and celebrity.
0:43.4	So you won't want to miss that.
0:45.4	But first up is my new reporting on Charlie Kirk.
0:49.9	Put aside the day-to-day headlines of what's happened since his assassination.
0:54.0	I think the bigger thing here is what Charlie represented, the person and his death, of course,
0:59.0	matters extraordinarily to the people in his family, his friends, business associates, colleagues.
1:07.0	But I've been thinking a lot about what it means more broadly and talking to a lot of people in the conservative movement who can explain this so well.
1:16.4	MAGA folks who I've talked to in the last few days reflecting on Charlie's life and why this has been so impactful.
1:23.2	You hear about the impact not just from the president and the vice president and people who knew
1:27.7	Charlie personally, but I've been struck on two-way and other conversations as I've traveled
1:32.4	the last few days.
1:34.3	How much people who never knew Charlie and weren't even particularly aware of what his day-to-day
1:38.3	activities were, how much they've been struck by this?
1:41.5	Now part of it is just the horror of what happened and the horrible images
1:46.2	of his murder that resonate with any human being. But a lot of it is for people in this country
1:51.5	who supported President Trump, even in many cases, when they didn't like him. Why? Why is it so
1:57.9	powerful? I think Charlie biographically, and in terms of what he did in his career has so many of the elements that have caused the MAGA movement to grow.
	...

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