Vice President J.D. Vance hosted an episode of his close friend Charlie Kirk’s radio and web talk show on Monday, five days after the conservative activist was shot to death at a speaking engagement at a Utah college. 

The guest hosting spot was to “pay tribute to my friend,” the vice president wrote on X Sunday night, as the killing of Kirk and news around the suspect, who was arrested late last week, dominated the news cycle since he was shot in the neck and later died at a local hospital. Kirk, who founded the super PAC Turning Points USA, was an ally of Donald Trump and helped usher him into the Oval Office, shoring up his conservative voter base in the 2016 election and again in 2024.

Vance’s appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show live from his White House office comes days after he accompanied the conservative debater’s widow, Erika Kirk, and her slain husband’s casket from Salt Lake City to Phoenix on a flight aboard Air Force Two. On Friday, she called Vance a “dear friend” of her late husband and thanked him and the second lady, Usha Vance, “for their love and support.” 

Vance’s guest-host appearance arrived on radio stations and online at 9 a.m. PT on Monday.

“The last several days have been extremely hard for our country. They’ve been hard for me, hard for my family, hard for the countless people in this building who knew and loved Charlie Kirk, Vance said in the opening moments of the episode. “Every single person in this building owes something to Charlie. He was a joyful warrior for our country. He loved America. He devoted himself tirelessly to making our country a better place. He was a critical part of getting Donald Trump elected as president, getting to be elected as vice president and so much of our success over the last seven months is due to his efforts, his staffing, his support and his friendship.”

The two-hour-six-minute episode saw Vance speak with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and White House chief deputy of staff Steven Miller, who discussed his “sadness and anger” in the wake of Kirk’s death. The two also brought up murder suspect Tyler Robinson; FBI director Kash Patel said on Monday that DNA matching Robinson’s was found both on a towel wrapped around the rifle believed to be used in the shooting and a screwdriver found on the rooftop where shots were fired. A note and text message also tie him to the broad-daylight killing on Wednesday at Utah Valley University, which was hosting a TPUSA event. 

White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, press secretary Karoline Leavitt and pundit Tucker Carlson all joined Vance during the episode to discuss Kirk’s legacy and share anecdotes of their time with him over the years. All three discussed Kirk’s integrity and the strong debate skills that consistently grew his audience and popularity. 

Speaking with Vance, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke on Kirk’s approach to politics and how it helped usher him into the Trump administration. After recalling his feelings and perceived injustices around the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy told the radio audience about how Kirk helped him land his current job. 

“He was a critical ally for me in calling President Trump…he really persuaded me that I should do it,” Kennedy said. “And then he helped me … he was an empresario strategist, and he understood the use of power, he understood what buttons needed to be pushed to move the ball across the goal line.”

On the streaming platform Rumble, the Vance-led episode was punctuated with “highlight” moments of Kirk’s appearances on college campuses, where he would debate students on political topics. In addition to the campus debate clips, several advertisements for guns, rifles and their accessories were shown. 

Vance closed out the show with a lengthy monologue where he demonized “vile” individuals who disagreed with Kirk and, since his killing, spoke of him in less-than-lionizing terms. The vice president also recalled for the audience the experience of taking Kirk’s widow to collect his body, quoting from a Bible verse as he shared how the second lady discussed how to tell Kirk’s two kids how “people were dancing on that father’s grave.”  He also shared unsourced statistics while insisting that liberals are more likely to celebrate political violence than conservatives. 

“This is not a both-sides problem,” Vance said. “If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told: that problem has terrible consequences.”