Since Charlie Kirk’s tragic passing, Turning Point USA and the show’s producers have been organizing a series of guest hosts to continue broadcasting “The Charlie Kirk Show” as a tribute to his legacy. Notable voices stepping in have included Vice President JD Vance, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, and Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec. Today, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, a longtime friend and mentor of Charlie’s, was honored to be the next voice that pays tribute to his enduring impact on the nation.
“To sit in [Charlie’s] studio right next to his chair is more difficult than I imagined,” Glenn says through tears.
He reflects on first meeting Charlie when he was just 17-years-old. “He was amazing. He was so well read, so smart, so clear,” Glenn says.
Charlie told Glenn back then that he wanted to be just like him some day — one of the great voices in radio history.
As part of his tribute to Charlie, who indeed became one the most celebrated broadcasters of his generation, Glenn pulls out Rush Limbaugh’s golden Excellence in Broadcasting microphone — a gift he was given by Rush’s wife after his death in 2021 — and sets it in front of Charlie’s microphone.
Glenn mourns the fact that he never got the chance to tell Charlie that he was “thinking too small” by wishing to become a great broadcaster. “Charlie was a broadcaster and a narrowcaster. Charlie was a pastor and a priest, and listening to the way he could argue and think differently, he was a rabbi as well — and one of the best. He was a political organizer; he was a political think tank himself. He was a compassionate friend,” Glenn says.
“He surpassed Rush Limbaugh by miles.”
Glenn is then joined by Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show” and Turning Point USA spokesperson, who says he and Charlie regularly fantasized about Rush Limbaugh’s golden EIB microphone.
He notes that as a high school student, Charlie watched Glenn Beck’s 2010 speech at the Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C, where Glenn famously said, “Somewhere in this crowd is the next George Washington. I know it. You know it. We are here together, and the next great leader is here. They may not know it yet, but they will rise, and they will lead us to a better tomorrow.”
At just 31 years old, Charlie was well on his way to becoming the man Glenn predicted 15 years ago. “I saw him young, and I saw his desires and how he builds and everything that he did. … Charlie would have been president … a great president,” he says. “He surpassed all of us. I don’t know if there’s another person in history on our side, at least in the last 150 years, that was like Charlie.”
To replace someone like Charlie, he says, we’d need a bare minimum of “six people at the top of their craft to cover everything that he has done.”
Kolvet recounts all the times he witnessed people begging Charlie to run for president. “Charlie would always say, ‘No, no, no, I’m happy doing what I’m doing,’” he says, noting that Charlie was rooting for JD Vance as the next in line.
Even still, “Charlie was in so many ways being honed and sharpened for such a job,” he says.
“People need to understand that, yes, Charlie was a brilliant communicator. Yes, he was an autodidact who kept studying the classics …. and he was deeply, deeply sincere in his faith. But he was also so skilled at the quiet things — the behind-the-scenes things — and he would honor people. He was trusted. … His goal was to keep people together.”
Just a few weeks before his death, Charlie sent Kolvet a Greek hierarchy of the highest virtues and callings. “He said to me, ‘Andrew, we are not the actors and the entertainers at the bottom. … We need to strive to be statesmen and philosophers up at the top,” he recalls.
“[Charlie] knew that God had put him in a position that he could keep people together.”
To see the full show, watch the episode above.
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