The influence of Charlie Kirk is proving to have outlasted his mortal life, including his impact on people at the highest levels of government. That includes President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

We knew that President Trump had announced that he had planned on honoring Charlie Kirk posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but now he has said that this presentation will happen at his public funeral next Sunday.

Vice President JD Vance, while offering personal and logistical support to Erika Kirk in the aftermath of the assassination, also announced that he would be honoring Charlie in another way on Monday.

Tomorrow, I will have the honor of hosting the Charlie Kirk Show. Please join me as I pay tribute to my friend.

12:00PM EThttps://t.co/oemvxJ18Mq pic.twitter.com/eSMpx8xE3X

— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 15, 2025

Vance’s intro at the beginning of the show paid tribute to Charlie Kirk as a leader, a debater, a political force, but also as a husband and father.

Vice President Vance pays tribute to Charlie Kirk on The Charlie Kirk Show:

“Every single person in this building, we owe 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.” pic.twitter.com/L5LMXSMdfq

— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) September 15, 2025

The vice president also joked that he was doing the show in order to see what Marco Rubio’s life is like by doing multiple jobs, which added a moment of levity in a very somber time.

JD Vance went on to bring on several members of the Trump administration to share their memories of Charlie Kirk, from Stephen Miller to Karoline Leavitt to RFK Jr. to Susie Wiles. All of them agreed that Charlie Kirk was a force of nature, who was a natural-born cheerleader whom they all personally credit with helping the Trump campaign win the election, and then shape the transition. The entire show can be seen here:

JD Vance kept referencing Charlie’s support to him personally during the election, and credited him for his vice presidency.

“If it weren’t for Charlie Kirk, I would not be vice president of the United States,” Vance told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“I thought about that a lot in the last few days,” the vice president went on, “Charlie was maybe the most important person in both getting us across the finish line but actually getting me the nomination to begin with — it was his grassroots army.”

“Obviously the president makes the final determination, but,” added Vance, “it takes a team, and Charlie was such an incredibly important part of that team. It’s one of the reasons why I feel so indebted to him.”

Stephen Miller spoke in generalized terms about the investigation into Charlie’s assassination, and the administration’s efforts to deal with this kind of political violence.

As a result, Miller said the administration was “going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”

“The organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that is designed to trigger [or] incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence,” Miller explained. “It is a vast domestic terror.”

“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 and make America safe again for the American people,” he declared.

Vance said earlier in the conversation that “you have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re gonna go after constitutionally protected speech.'”

“No, no, no, we’re gonna go after the NGO [non-governmental organization] network that foments, facilitates, and engages — that’s not OK,” the vice president added. “Violence is not OK in our system, and we want to make it less likely that that happens.”

The FBI investigation into whether there was a coordinated online plan to assassinate Charlie Kirk between the alleged killer and others is continuing, and I am certain that we have not heard the end of it.

And at the end of the radio show, JD Vance ripped into those in the media who are telling lies about Charlie Kirk, and called out the growing problem that this country now has with those who believe that violence is a justifiable response to speech.

“He made an argument for judging people of all races and backgrounds by their own individual merits,” Vance defended his late friend before discussing “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning” by The Nation’s Elizabeth Spiers.

“The very evidence she provides, this hack of a writer, shows that she lied about a dead man and yet she wrote it. An esteemed magazine published it,” the vice president went on. “It made it through the editors, and of course, liberal billionaires rewarded that attack.”

“I was struck, not just by the dishonesty of the smear, but by the glee over a young husband’s and young father’s death,” he also said. “She says, he was an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist.”

Vance went on to quote from the piece that Spiers said Kirk “had children, as do many vile people.”

“I thought of Erika as I read that disgusting attack on Charlie,” he recalled, mentioning Kirk’s widow. “I said the Lord’s Prayer.”

The vice president did say he was “desperate” for nation unity after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — but added it could only come “after climbing the mountain of truth.”

“There are difficult truths we must confront in our country,” he went on.

“One truth is that 24% of self-described, ‘very liberals’ believe it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a political opponent, while only 3% of self-described ‘very conservatives’ agree,” he said, apparently referencing a recent YouGov poll.

“Another truth is that 26% of young liberals believe political violence is sometimes justified, and only 7% of young conservatives say the same,” he added.

“This is not a both sides problem,” he said. “One side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told. That problem has terrible consequences,” Vance declared.

“The leader of our party, Donald J. Trump, escaped an assassin’s bullet by less than one inch,” he recounted. “Our House majority leader Steven Scalise came within seconds of death by an assassin himself.”

Vance concluded: “Now the most influential conservative activist in generations, our friend Charlie, has been murdered. This violence — it doesn’t come from nowhere.”

WATCH IN FULL: @VP's powerful closing remarks on The Charlie Kirk Show pic.twitter.com/X8FBeSIyaX

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 15, 2025

JD Vance is older than Charlie Kirk was by nearly ten years, but is the youngest vice president that the country has had since Richard Nixon was Eisenhower’s vice president over 70 years ago. By reaching out to Charlie Kirk’s listeners on his platform, Vance is making a personal appeal to the young people listening, while also paying a heartfelt tribute to his friend. Charlie Kirk is irreplaceable, and everyone acknowledges that sad fact – in very much the same way that we all realized that Rush Limbaugh was irreplaceable when he passed away. JD Vance is not looking to be the next Charlie Kirk – but he may be looking to be the next president of the United States. And if so, moments like today, where he honored his friend in the midst of his grief, and talked directly to people, are going to be crucial in convincing this younger generation of voters that JD Vance can speak to them and for them.

Featured image: Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office on September 9, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok), cropped, public domain