I'm so very sorry to have to join everyone right now, unexpectedly live.

My friend Charlie Kirk, the leader of young conservatives in America, founder of TPP USA,

one of the most important political voices in the country, certainly of his generation, probably the most important, has died.

He was shot at a speaking event in Utah.

He was shot in a horrible irony at an event where he was willing to hear out everyone's point of view and take questions and debate topics in a civil and political way, as he demonstrated better than anybody, for years at this point.

The president has confirmed Charlie's death.

He tweeted out,

The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.

No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States better than Charlie.

He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now he is no longer with us.

Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica,

and family, Charlie, we love you. Obviously, President Trump has a longstanding relationship with Charlie. Charlie was a big part of how President Trump was elected in 2024 and how he was

elected in 2016, for that matter, a generational voice, the generational

voice in politics.

And it's on that point that, as we're all processing this awful news, the first thing that

comes to my mind beyond the sadness for his family,

for his wife, his young kids, his millions and millions of admirers and his many, many friends,

is that Charlie Kirk would have been president. Charlie Kirk would have been president.

His friends knew it. His many, many admirers knew it, and his enemies to whom he was always so gracious, they knew it too. Everybody knew it.

I remember from, actually, I think even before I first met Charlie so now we're talking many many years ago

people would joke they'd say well we're all going to be working for Charlie Kirk someday

the first time I met Charlie was in a green room of a cable news outlet I think we were in

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