Five days after the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, Vice President JD Vance hosted a special episode of Kirk’s namesake podcast to join calls for a sweeping government effort to investigate and dismantle left-wing organizations in the country that he says encourage violence.
“We are going to go after the NGO network that foments and facilities and engages in violence,” Vance said on The Charlie Kirk Show, referring to non-governmental organizations.
Investigators are still learning about what motivated a gunman to shoot and kill Kirk during a college event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said on Sunday that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in custody, was not cooperating with investigators.
Political violence has surged in recent years. Trump has been the target of at least two assassination attempts, Democratic politicians have been attacked and killed, and violent rioters beat police officers and stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump and other senior political leaders have used Kirk’s killing to call for a crackdown on specifically left-wing political violence.
As his first guest on Kirk’s podcast on Monday, Vance brought on senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller to discuss “all the ways we are trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence we are seeing on the far left.”
Miller said that one of the last messages Charlie Kirk sent him was to say that the Trump administration needs a strategy to go after left-wing organizations promoting violence. “I will write those words on my heart and I will carry them out,” Miller said. Miller said that since Kirk’s killing, he’s feeling sadness and anger. “Unfocused anger or blind rage is not productive,” Miller said. “But focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history.”
Vance started the show by telling the story of how, during Trump’s 2024 campaign, Kirk was one of the people encouraging Trump to pick Vance as his running mate. Kirk “was advocating for me,” Vance said, and he wanted to “use this show today to advocate for him.”
Other guests on the show were Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tucker Carlson, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and White House Communications Director Taylor Budowich.
The post J.D. Vance Vows Crackdown on ‘Festering Violence’ From ‘Far Left’ While Hosting Charlie Kirk Show appeared first on TIME.
