Remembering our Friend, the Great Charlie Kirk

Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. It's nice to have you with us wherever you are around the country. And this is one of those just somber shows. Senator, you and I actually have not gotten to talk since the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, a dear friend of both of ours. You've known him for over a decade like I have. You've broken bread with Charlie. We have actually done Verdict live at Turning Point events down in Florida. You've spoken at other Turning Point events as I have as well. I saw him not too long ago, and we just talked about our kids. And I think about his kids, and I think about his wife, and this tragedy. And it makes me so sad that this is where we are in this country, that there are people that believe that this is the way to do things. And I want to get your reaction to that as well. Look, I'm heartbroken. Charlie was a good friend. As you noted, I've known Charlie for over a decade. I met him when he was 18 years old. He was a young kid. He was coming out of Chicago. He was just starting Turning Point. He had this vision. He had this vision for energizing young people. And as an 18-year-old, Charlie was impressive. You could see how smart he was. You could see how driven he was. You could see the clarity of vision that he had. He knew exactly what he wanted to do to energize young people. And it was something that when he first started talking about it, a lot of people disbelieved him. I gotta say, this week was a really hard week. Number one, it was the anniversary of 9-11. And that is a national tragedy that you and I both lived through and lost friends in 9-11. But then this week, out of nowhere, watching, first seeing the tweet of shots fired, and then Charlie Kirk shot, and then the fog of misinformation. I'll tell you, as soon as I saw just the tweet that he may have been shot, I pulled out my phone and texted him. And I just said, Hey man, are you okay? I'm praying for you right now. And I didn't know then if he was, it's hard to tell when the first tweet goes out what the truth is and what was not. I was obviously hoping maybe there'd been a shot fired, but it had missed him. It wasn't clear he'd been hit at the time. So I was really hoping I'd get a text back. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm here. Obviously, I did not get a response to that. I talked to Charlie just a few weeks ago. And I gotta say what happened, it is evil. It is wrong. Just about everyone I know is really shaken up by it. I will say one of the worst parts, when it happened, pretty quickly, the video got out there on X of his being shot in the throat. I'm sure you've seen the video. It's a graphic video. And on X for me, it was on autoplay. So I kept seeing the same thing over and over and over again. You couldn't look at X without seeing it autoplay. I don't think in my life I've ever seen a friend of mine be killed. And the afternoon it happened, I watched him shot and killed over and over and over again. And it's just screwed up. I mean, he was extraordinary. And he leaves a big legacy. And on Verdict today, we're going to talk about that legacy. We're going to talk about who Charlie Kirk was. We're going to talk about what he meant to me, to you, what he meant to millions across the country. And I gotta say, Ben, what the hell is wrong with this country that you have lunatics who say, I don't like what you're saying. I don't like your politics. And so I'm going to murder you. I mean, this played out almost exactly like the attempted assassination of President Trump and Butler with a gunman with a rifle on a roof. And had President Trump, had his head been two inches to the side, he would have been killed that day. And Charlie was. It's beyond horrific. Yeah, it is a moment that I wish I could never remember. But you said it the best way. It was there. You saw it. You watched one of your friends get gunned down, cold-blooded murder, assassinated in this way. And it is something that, as you said, what is wrong in this country where we can't have a grand debate of grand ideas? And that is what Charlie's legacy was all about. A lot of people don't understand that. We're going to go into that more as well in a moment. I want to take a moment and talk to you about our sponsor of the show today. And it is a company that is called Rough Greens. And Rough Greens is an awesome company that can really give a new step in the life of your puppy, your dog, your older dog. I've been giving it to my dog, Memphis, and it supports long-term health by providing live bioavailable nutrients, including essential vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, as well as omega oils. If you love your dog like I love mine, you need to try Rough Greens. 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Just add Rough Greens and it's offered a free jumpstart trial bag as well. You just cover shipping. Use the discount code BEN to claim your free jumpstart trial bag of Rough Greens at roughgreens.com. That's roughgreens.com, R-U-F-F, greens, G-R-E-E-N-S.com, promo code BEN, and you don't change your dog's food. Just add Rough Greens and watch the health benefits come alive in your dog. Roughgreens.com, promo code BEN, and you're going to get that free jumpstart trial bag as well. Senator, I want to go back to one of the things that I think people don't understand about Charlie Kirk and maybe that if you didn't follow him well, his mission and goal was to bring people actually together. If you listen to the media, they act like he was some extremist fringe guy that was trying to break people apart and pound people in these debates. He wanted people that disagreed with him to have a conversation with him, a grand conversation. He started this years ago by himself with one guy recording and him sitting at a card table at university campuses, and it turned into something where 3,000 people, for example, showed up in Utah. It changed college campuses with turning point groups that were out there, and that is his legacy. Part of, I think, what the big lie has been is that he somehow was this aggressive, in-your-face guy. That is literally not his mission in life at all. Yeah, a lot of folks in the media, a lot of Democrats are trying to portray him as somehow extreme. Look, probably the thing that most characterized Charlie was his willingness and eagerness to engage in conversation with those who disagreed with him and to engage using compassion, listening to them, understanding them, treating them with dignity, treating them with respect. That's something we need a whole lot more of. It's something we try to do on Verdict, but Charlie did it every single day. Senator, you were mentioning that the media tried to turn him into something he wasn't, and this is an individual, a man that wanted to have a debate, and he wanted to fight for the hearts and minds of young people. Yeah, look, Charlie was, he was brilliant. He was bold and courageous. It takes guts. It takes guts to go on to college campuses with screaming leftists who would berate him, who would yell at him. That takes real courage. Most people are not willing to do that. He was assaulted many times, by the way. People don't realize that. He had things thrown on him, drinks thrown on him, things thrown at him. He was assaulted countless times on college campuses, and he kept going back. He was convinced that the mission was important. I still remember sitting in my friend's living room with that earnest 18-year-old when he talked about a vision that, you know, and this is 13 years ago, where a lot of young people at the time, it wasn't cool to be conservative. You know, Barack Obama was president. He was hip. He was cool, and Charlie had a vision that he wanted to make it cool to love liberty. He wanted to make it cool to believe in the Constitution, to believe in the First Amendment. He wanted to make it cool to love your country, and that was, his vision was there from day one. A lot of people disbelieved him, but he also, he approached it with a winsome spirit. Charlie was always smiling. Yes. He was 31 years old when he was killed. He's a husband and a dad of two little kids, and his wife Erica, his kids are one and four, and his children will never know their dad. They will know the legacy of their dad. They will know how extraordinary he was. They will know that he touched and changed literally millions of people's lives, but this deranged gunman, in one instance, made it that those children will never get to have a conversation and know their father growing up. He leaves behind his widowed wife, and it's, I will say, it is crushing. I can tell you, so when we heard the news and we didn't know what his condition was, and early on Fox News was reporting that he's in the hospital, he's in critical condition, but he's in the hospital, so we're hoping he's all right. I called Heidi, so Heidi knew Charlie very well also, and I called her, and she was just stunned. She was just sitting there staring in disbelief at the television, and actually the two of us called a dear friend of ours named Allie, whose living room we met Charlie, and Allie is the one who introduced us to Charlie 13 years ago, and Allie is a strong believer, a strong Christian, and I'll tell you, the three of us just on the phone just began praying for our friend, and we were in tears, and we were praying for him, and we were praying that God would save him, and that prayer did not come to pass, but we were all just in shock and disbelief. But I want to say this also. When you look at all of Charlie's characteristics, one that was most extraordinary was he was a deeply believing Christian. His faith was real, it mattered to him, and he was a voice for the gospel, and Charlie is with Jesus in heaven right now, and his role of presenting the good news of the gospel with intelligence and joy, that was a powerful legacy, and I gotta say there are very, very few people in particular who are doing that and spreading the gospel to young people. You have pastors in churches, but Charlie's mission was reaching a whole lot of people who might never go to a church, and that's a legacy, that's a legacy. Actually, I want to play a clip of Charlie talking about how he wants to be remembered. Give a listen to Charlie when he's asked that question. You want to be remembered? If I die? Everything just goes away. How would you, if you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered? I want to be remembered for courage, for my faith. That would be the most important thing. You know, there wasn't a time center on college campuses that he wasn't talking about his faith. In fact, I'll go back to the first time I ever had breakfast. Charlie asked me to have breakfast with him. We were at a CPAC event. It was about probably 13 years ago as I was doing the math, and we sat down, and he was like, hey, I know you've done a lot of college speaking. I feel like we've lost this generation. I feel like that the left owns them, and they're indoctrinating them on our college campuses. I'm actually thinking about not going to college because of this mission, and I feel like it's what God put me on earth to do. And he said, what do you think of that? And I looked at him, and I smiled. I was like, Charlie, I don't know you, but you can always go back to college. You can go to college at 50, or 60, or 70. What you're talking about doing is something that I think is more important right now than you going to college. And he was such a faith-forward person, even at 18 years old. And it goes back to what you were talking about. He lived it, and you knew what he believed in. Yeah, he never did graduate from college, but he touched an enormous number of college students and changed their lives. I want you to listen to Charlie on Bill Maher talking about his faith, because this is really powerful. Give a listen. He is risen. He is risen indeed, Bill. Why do we say that in the present tense? Because it is a constant truth in our life. He is risen. I always noticed that that was interesting to me. That's a really important question, actually. It is. Tell me. Well, because the fact that he is risen transcends time. It's not just in the present sense. It's that of all time, that promise is accessible to all of us. And so it's a proclamation to all people. Because if you said, hey, he was risen, it's like it's just merely a historical event. It almost underplays the metaphysics of it. I'm just always fascinated the way really, really fine intellectual minds employ themselves for the purpose of arguing things that are so inarguable. It's almost fascinating, though. It does, because it's almost like a challenge. Like, I'm so smart that I can make this thing, which is so stupid, seem like a real... No, no, it's fine. No, but you get where I'm coming from. I'm going to take something that is so anti-intellectual, even though I can argue like an intellectual. However, but you have to acknowledge even the greatest minds of history have been mesmerized by the scriptures, Isaac Newton, Thomas Aquinas. Isaac Newton wrote more about biblical prophecy than even physics. And so there's something about the scriptures that are intellectual, that does push your limits. And that's what I think is so beautiful about our faith is it can be accessible to everyone, but also infinitely nourishing and exploratory. Charlie Kirk sprang the gospel to Bill Maher. That's not something that many people can say. And he did it in such a kind and respectful manner, even as Bill Maher was almost mocking his belief in God. Yeah, look, look, I mean, it wasn't almost. Bill was mocking it. And you and I both know Bill Maher. He is a brilliant man in his own right. But Maher is not a Christian. He's an atheist, and he proudly proclaims that he's an atheist, and he has deep skepticism of faith across the board. And Charlie went on his show and talked with him, and you're right, talked with him with compassion, but also talked in a way that was accessible. And actually, the clip we just played, the way I found it right now is when I saw it online, I texted Charlie at the time, and I texted that clip back at him, and I just said, this was beautifully done, bravo. And that was just another day with Charlie. That's what he was doing. Every day he was making people think, but he was also, look, the proposition that he was defending, the phrase, he is risen, and Bill Maher was saying, well, why is is in the present tense? And Charlie's message is because Jesus is in the present tense, because it is a fact today in our life. It didn't happen just 2,000 years ago. He is risen today. And that message, Charlie could deliver it. There were people who were watching Bill Maher who, again, might never go to church, might never hear the gospel, and yet they would hear it from Charlie, and they'd hear it delivered in a way that would make an impression, and you know, the Bible talks about planting seeds, and some seeds fall on rocky soil, and some seeds fall on shallow soil, but some seeds fall on good soil, and they take root and grow, and that's a parable Jesus tells, and what Charlie was doing there and what he did every day is planted seeds, and many of those seeds landed on fertile ground and took root, and the number of people whose lives Charlie touched, we will never know, but it is easily in the millions. You know, one of the things that he did that was, I think, incredible was be an advocate for families, for getting married, for having children. I want to get into that. For being a dad, being a good dad. For being a good dad, being a present dad, being there for your kids, and we're going to talk about that in just a moment. I want to tell you real quick about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. I tell you now more than ever, I want to align my dollars that I spend with companies that are aligned with my values. Patriot Mobile is a company for the last 13 years that has been giving back every time you pay a bill. Patriot Mobile can save you money on your cell phone bill, but this is where the magic happens. They take about 5% of your bill every month, and they give it back to conservative causes that fight for our First and our Second Amendment rights, that fight for the rights of unborn children, that fight for our fallen soldiers and their families to make sure they have what they need, and our wounded warriors, our men and women in uniform. I love standing with a company that stands with my beliefs. 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I've been using them now for years, and the service and the coverage is phenomenal. patriotmobile.com slash VERDICT or 972-PATRIOT promo code VERDICT. Get that free month of service. You know, I want to go back to one of the things also the media has just not talked about. Charlie Kirk was a guy that was a massive advocate for getting married, being equi-yoked, marrying the love of your life, having a family, being involved in that family, being a good husband, being a biblically leader in the household, and he would say that to college kids. Don't add garbage to your life. Don't be out here partying and acting a fool and doing stupid things. You can do great things now at 18, 19, 20, 21. You don't have to wait until you're 40 to get it together. Don't add baggage to your life, and I love that that's part of his message. Look, I want to read to you a text I got from a good friend of mine named Dan, and he sent me a text, and he said, I first met Charlie at your Deer Valley Retreat in October 2015. I was so impressed and taken by his vision of bringing conservative values to college campuses that I was an early funder and introduced him to many others who had greater capacity than me. We stayed in touch. I mentored him until his knowledge exceeded my own, and I saw him reshape the political balance, particularly, but not exclusively, with the under 30s. Looking back at his evangelism, his courage to go to the very heart of the evil that afflicts and brainwashes our youth and give those souls hope, I am wondering this morning if he may have been a saint. Not in the sense he was perfect, as none of us are, but because God moved through him, and he was the vehicle God chose. Jeremiah 4, Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you, I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth. But the Lord said to me, Do not say, I am a youth, for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. God bless our brother in Christ, Charlie. Thank you for bringing me into his orbit. It's the sentiment that so many have had about him. I said last night on Fox News Channel about him, I said his legacy is going to be one that is gonna know no bounds. I am so thankful. Last time I saw him, we just talked, I mentioned this earlier about his kids and my kids. I've got three boys, you and I know we do that. And I laugh because I was thinking about funny moments I've had with Charlie. People give me a hard time a lot because I don't really drink alcohol. And I got hit by a drunk driver who died and we lived. And it just had a major impact. Well, neither did Charlie. And so we always, when he was like 21, 22, getting a little older, when we saw each other at parties, I would look at him like, You want me to get you regular on ice? And he's like, Yes. And that was our joke because we would drink our Diet Coke with a lime together. And I love that he was not ever given into the peer pressure. He was going to be authentic in who he was. I will say I am so thankful that his children are going to have countless hours of video of him doing what he did. Yeah. Because they're going to be able to go see what their dad, who their dad was. There's so many kids that lose parents. They don't have videos like we have videos of Charlie, where he was out there spreading the gospel. He was standing up for what he believed in. He was making a difference. And I said this last night on Fox. I said, I truly don't believe Donald Trump would have been elected if it wasn't for Charlie Kirk and turning point and what they did to get out the vote in swing states. I think that's why he was so emotional the night that Donald Trump was reelected. I don't think we'd have control of the House and the Senate if it wasn't for Charlie Kirk and what he did to get out the vote in swing states. It had a massive impact in this country. And that's the reason why the president announced his passing and lowered that flag to half mass, because I think Donald Trump knows it too. Yeah, it's a good question. When is the last time you can remember that somebody's death is announced by the sitting president of the United States? It was the president that let America know that Charlie had passed. And the president, he put out on Truth Social, quote, the great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America 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. Yeah. And that you're right. There's a very good argument that that Donald Trump doesn't win, maybe not in 2016, maybe not in 2024 without Charlie Kirk's incredible hard work. And I got to say, look, you and I have been to a lot of Turning Point conferences. I've probably spoken at a dozen of them. Yeah. This podcast has been intertwined with Turning Point. We have done several verdicts from Turning Point, where virtually the entire podcast is us answering Q&A from the young people there. And I got to say, the atmosphere of a Turning Point conference, it's like a rock concert and you have strobe lights and fires and you'll have thousands and thousands of young people, high school kids and college kids. And there's energy. And you come out to these rock star promos. And it was amazing. And that was Charlie's vision. Senator, I also want to talk about, there is a question. I'm sure you've gotten it. I've gotten it too. And that is what's next. This is a moment where my nine year old asked me that I think the toughest question I've ever been asked by him when I put into bed last night, he knew that daddy's friend had died. And he said, daddy, is someone going to shoot you for what you do? And I gave him the best answer I could. I said, buddy, you know, daddy carries a gun, you know, daddy shoots back. And he just started crying. And I think there are so many people right now that are worried about where we are in this divide. And this feeling that the left is just wanting to take out anybody that is successful in articulating conservative or Christian views. I do worry about where we are as a country. I also think that that you and I and so many others that do this, everybody that I've been texting and talking with, I don't think any of us are going to back down. We may be do things a little differently. We may take different precautions, but I don't think they're going to silence any of us. I'm not backing down. This is my mission field. I think you feel the same way I do. Absolutely. And listen, I think Charlie inspired many people to speak up and to be brave, to be courageous. I think more people will be inspired. I will say his assassination, it wasn't just a murder, it was an assassination. He was taken out because of who he is and because of what he was saying. And he was taken out because of fear that what he was saying was so persuasive that people wanted to hear it. Look, when he went to a college campus, he welcomed leftists to come argue with him, to present their side of the story, but the power of the truth he was saying was what was dangerous. And look, I gotta say I feel a little bit, you and I were not alive when JFK was shot or Bobby Kennedy was shot or Martin Luther King was shot, but I do kind of wonder if that's a little bit what that felt like. Just, I have to say, seeing this happen, particularly the parallel to President Trump's being shot in Butler, that it was the same thing over and over again, and it was almost a successful assassination of the president, and tragically it was a successful assassination of Charlie. What is going on that there is this hate? And I gotta say, by the way, we have seen leftists, we saw people on MSNBC cackling. I saw an image on Twitter of this one soulless young woman dancing and singing that Charlie Kirk had been shot in the neck. It made me physically sick, the joy at his being murdered. But rather than focus on that hate, and we could play those clips, but you don't need to hear those angry haters. I want to focus actually on some people on the left that took a right message, and one of them was Cenk Uygur, who's, I don't know him, but he's liberal and very vocal on Twitter. He's a hardcore liberal, yeah. He's the Young Turks guy, and he got it right, by the way. So here's what he posted on X. He said, a while ago I put out these rules for the internet. One, when we disagree, we fight. Two, we have a beer afterwards. Three, when we agree, we unite. I got a lot of flack, surprisingly, for the line about the beer. People would ask, oh yeah, would you have a beer with Charlie Kirk? Well, I did, and I'm glad I did, because now I won't get to. Yes, Charlie and I disagreed a lot about really important things, but somehow we didn't lose our humanity. We were still fellow Americans. We can all choose to hate each other now. That's a normal human reaction. We can choose to blame each other, and I'm sure we will endlessly, or we can defy the voices of division in the country and have a beer together, this time in grief. If you really want to strike back at whoever did this, listen to each other instead of hating one another. They want us to hate each other. Treating one another as brothers and sisters, as a united America, would be an historic act of defiance. Since I'm on the left, I'll go first. For everyone on the right, and most especially the Kirk family, I am so sorry for your loss. I share your grief, and I want you to know that our hearts are with you. I appreciate Cenk saying that. I retweeted it and just said bravo. Like that, I don't want to focus on the haters, on the anger, on the rage, on the evil bile that we see, because that was not Charlie's message. Charlie's message was one of love. It was one of liberty. It was one of the constitution. It was one of the gospel. It was one of hope. It was one of faith. That's where we should focus, and I hope that that is a powerful, powerful legacy coming out of the 31 short years that Charlie had on this earth. You know, one of the conversations that I had with someone that was older, they called me, and they were like, hey, I'm just checking on you. I know y'all are friends, and he said, you know, Ben, I'm older. He said, every generation has a leader that leads them. He said, you were lucky enough that you started with Ronald Reagan, and then you got Rush Limbaugh. This next generation needed a leader like no one else, and they got Charlie Kirk. Yeah. And that is a, I think, to look at it that way, and to talk in the sense of like, who is really influenced? Look, without Rush Limbaugh, I don't think you would be probably doing what you're doing right now. I certainly wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. Without the inspiration of Ronald Reagan, I wouldn't have even known what politics was, and to fall in love with it the way that you have fallen in love with it and I have. It's our mission field. I say that, and I mean it. I feel like God put me on earth to do what I'm doing right now. I have no doubt God put you on earth, Senator, to do what you're doing right now, and God put Charlie Kirk on this earth to do what he's doing, but I do think he is a once-in-a- in ways that none of us could imagine, and how many warriors for Christ, how many warriors for conservative values and principles, and I think how many young people on college campuses that witnessed a real-life assassination in HD may be inspired to say, I'm Charlie Kirk. Amen, amen, amen. I want to close the show today by listening to Bobby Kennedy, right after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, and the message of unity that he had is one that I hope and pray we all hear in the wake of the tragic assassination of your friend and mine, the great Charlie Kirk. Give a listen, Bobby Kennedy. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black, considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible, you can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country and greater polarization, black people amongst blacks and white amongst whites filled with hatred toward one another. I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times. Make sure you pray for Charlie Kirk's family, for his kids, his wife, his in-laws, his parents, all the loved ones around him, his staff. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them. We'll see you back here on Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz all week long on the podcast. Make sure you follow us and download it there and we'll see you back here again real soon. God bless.