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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Kirk Shooting Suspect Being Held Without Bail in Utah County Jail; Interview with Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT); Kirk Shooting Suspect Confessed to His Father; Kirk Shooting Suspect Held Without Bail In Utah County Jail; Utah Gov." "This Is A Watershed In America History"; A Man Who Saved His Own Life. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired September 12, 2025 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Batteries are so cheap now, it makes so much sense for the grid balancing and for emergency power sources that it will sell itself, she says.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: All right, well, pretty incredible work.

All right, Bill, thank you so much.

WEIR: You bet.

BURNETT: And don't miss the "Champions for Change." The entire special is Saturday night at ten right here on CNN. Thanks so much for joining us. AC360 begins now.

[20:00:27]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening. Thanks for joining us.

We are expecting to hear shortly from Charlie Kirk's wife, Erika. It will be the first time she has spoken publicly since the assassination of her husband two days ago in that speaking event at Utah Valley University that she and her two young children were attending, along with some 3,000 others.

As you likely know, suspect is in custody, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson is his name. That is his mugshot charged with three felonies, including aggravated murder. Spencer Cox, Utah's Governor says that state officials will pursue the death penalty in this case. He is being held without bail and is reportedly not talking with investigators right now.

This morning on Fox, the President was first to deliver the news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AINSLEY EARHARDT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, "FOX AND FRIENDS": Any updates on the suspect?

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Well, a short time later, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel

and other law enforcement officials, Governor Cox said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We got him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: How they got him? How Robinson ended up surrendering to authorities 260 miles southwest of the crime scene was a direct result of his father's intervention. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation telling CNN's John Miller that yesterday at Robinson's family home just outside Saint George, Utah, the suspect's father noticed the resemblance between these pictures of the alleged killer and his son.

His dad confronted him about it, saying, according to this source, "Tyler, is this you? This looks like you." Also, late last night, officials released this video of a man authorities say was the suspect running across a building at Utah Valley University, climbing over the parapet, leaving foot and palm prints, then dropping heavily to the ground.

Now, according to that law enforcement source, the alleged shooter confessed to his father, who urged him to turn himself in. According to our source, Robinson said, "I would rather kill myself." His father persuaded him to speak with a local youth pastor with law enforcement connections, and Robinson was taken into custody late last night.

He was transported overnight, booked into jail just before 2:00 A.M. at a facility just 12 miles from where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. In the hours since, we've learned a lot about who the suspect is, but less about what drove him.

Tyler Robinson we've learned is in the electrical apprenticeship program at a state technical college. This is video we don't know exactly from when of him receiving or reading a scholarship letter to another state school, which he attended for a semester.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYLER ROBINSON, ALLEGED SHOOTER OF CHARLIE KIRK: Congratulations, you have been selected to receive the resident presidential scholarship from Utah State University. The value of this scholarship is approximately $32,000.00. This scholarship is available for four years or eight semesters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, we've also learned that he registered as a nonpartisan voter and had not taken part in the last two elections. According to Utah's Governor, a family member told investigators that Robinson had, "become more political in recent years." Also, that he had mentioned to one family member at some point that Charlie Kirk would be coming to Utah Valley University, and the two talked about why they did not like him. That, again, is according to Governor Cox, and we do not know what Robinson specifically said about Kirk.

Now, the governor also said that Robinson posted messages on the group chat app Discord, stating a need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point, leaving the rifle in a bush, watching the area where a rifle was left. There was also apparently a reference to having left a rifle wrapped in a towel, engraving bullets in the rifle being unique. Mention was also made of Robinson changing outfits.

As you know, investigators retrieved a bolt action rifle from a wooded area near the scene and shell casings found with it were engraved with inscriptions, including, again, according to the governor, "Hey, fascist! Catch!" Which one, New York City college meme and digital culture researcher we spoke to said could refer to a video game called "Helldivers II." The same for other inscriptions found on an up arrow or right arrow in three down arrows, which is how you drop a bomb in that game.

Now, another inscription, the Italian words "Bella Ciao" possibly refers to a World War II anti-fascist song. Yet another reads quoting now, "If you read this, you're gay. LMAO." So, there's a lot of details we still don't know about what motivated Kirk's assassin. What is clear though, and Governor Cox underscored it today, is how much Charlie Kirk's murder threatens the body politic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COX: I don't want to get too preachy, but I think it's important that we, with eyes wide open, understand what is happening in our country today. This is this is certainly about the tragic death, assassination -- political assassination of Charlie Kirk. But it is also much bigger than an attack on an individual. It is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment.

It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been and who we could be in better times.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[20:05:36]

COOPER: We're going to talk to Utah's governor in two minutes. First, CNN national correspondent, Nick Watt, is in Orem, Utah. So what more are you learning about the arrest? The suspect's motives at this hour?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, Anderson, as humans, we all want a motive, right? It perhaps makes this feel less random, more contained. We don't have a motive yet.

Listen, here's what we do know. Tyler Robinson grew up in Washington County, rural, religious, down in the Southwest of the state. Went 75 percent for Trump in the last election. So, it's hardly an Antifa hotbed, but listen, these days, geography doesn't matter. Anyone can be radicalized in any direction online. I mean, as the governor said today, you know, social media is a

cancer. Governor also made a very interesting, I thought, honest admission. He said he'd been praying that the killer was from out of state or out of the country. He said, you know, we don't do this in Utah. Well, apparently they do. They're still trying to work out why.

You know, we know that at a family dinner, this from investigators a couple of days before Kirk came here. We know that this kid did not like Kirk, called him a spreader of hate. And, you know, were told that he was talking initially after his arrest. We don't know what he said after he lawyered up. He quickly clammed up and was silent.

Is there a mental health component here? The Governor today wouldn't be drawn on that, but on that, "Hey, fascist, catch!" engraving, the Governor said of that. Well, that speaks for itself. You know, there's something very interesting as well.

The killer drove up here to Orem wearing plain t-shirt, pair of shorts, and changed before he carried, allegedly carried out this changed into a black t-shirt with an American flag and an eagle on the front of it. Is that somehow symbolic? Was he trying to say that what he was doing was patriotic? We don't know. We may frankly never know -- Anderson.

COOPER: And what else have authorities said about the gun?

WATT: Well, we still don't know. They haven't said publicly how we got it. It's a hunting rifle. This is a hunting state. So not unusual.

You know, what is interesting as well is initially when we heard that the shot had been fired from 200 yards away, everybody was speculating. Oh, this must be a very skilled rifleman. Not really necessarily. You know, we've analyzed it. It's down to 150 yards and frankly, this sounds just gruesome and ghoulish to say. But, you know, if you've got a good rifle and a good scope and you've got a sedentary stationary target, you know, you really don't have to be that good a shot in order to carry out a killing like this.

You know, interestingly, on the weapon that is really, I think, one of the things that confirmed to authorities that they were after the guy that they wanted to catch because there were those Discord messages with his roommate. He was saying that he'd stashed this rifle wrapped in a towel with those engravings. They found a rifle wrapped in a towel with those engravings. So that, I believe, helped them realize that they were on the right track and that they were going to be arresting the right guy.

But, Anderson, we do have some answers, still a lot of questions.

COOPER: Nick Watt, thanks very much.

Utah's Governor Spencer Cox is calling on the country to turn down the temperature after Charlie Kirks killing. I spoke to the governor shortly before air time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: Governor Cox, thanks for being with us. I'm wondering what

stands out to you, what you know about the suspect right now. Is there something about his history that really stands out to you?

GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): Well, I think maybe what stands out is that nothing stands out the way you would normally expect. You know, this is a good family, a normal childhood. All of those things that, that you would hope would never lead to something like this and sadly, it did.

So, there's so much we still don't know. But certainly there was a radicalization that happened in a fairly short amount of time. And again, that's not to -- sometimes when we talk about people getting radicalized, that's to blame others instead of the person and I don't want to take away that agency. This person made a terrible decision and will pay the price for that.

But I do think it is important and instructive that we try to do as much as possible to learn the types of influences that would lead someone to make just such an awful, awful, evil decision.

COOPER: And I want to talk to you about that because you've talked very strongly about social media. I don't do a lot of social media, but I was looking at it today and there was -- there's endless conspiracy theories about other people involved. There's videos of people making hand signals that seem to be people wiping their hair or adjusting their hats. Do you have any evidence that there was anybody else involved in this?

[20:10:26]

COX: Absolutely none. And again, the investigation is still ongoing. There's a lot we don't know that were still piecing together. But there's enough that we do know that that makes it very clear that this was one person. And a very, again, tragic, terrible, awful decision but no one else involved.

COOPER: You've called this a watershed event in our history, and that the chapter is still being written about what kind of a watershed event is it? What direction the country goes from here. Can you just talk about that a little bit, and how do we all help write that history?

COX: Yes, so to me, I look at this, it feels like something happened. This is big and it's big for a reason. Again, somebody who was involved in political speech, political discourse, doing the very thing that is the foundation for our Democratic Republic and then losing their life, which makes it harder for all of us to do the thing that we should do, and that's dangerous in a different type of way.

And so, the question is, we've certainly been building to this. I don't think it's a surprise to most people that something terrible like this could happen. You know, President Trump was almost assassinated a year ago. So, the question is, is this the end of a very dark era? Does this wake us up in a way that we actually change, or is this just the beginning of something far, far worse? And what will write that history, what that will depend on is, is all of us. It's not any one person who's going to change this.

If we are waiting for a leader from Washington, D.C. or Utah or anywhere else, then it will never happen. And that's why I just feel so strongly that it's incumbent on every single one of us to look into our souls and decide, do we want this to continue? Are we going to be the part that continues, or are we going to try something different? And that's the only way we're going to break out of this fever dream.

COOPER: And, you know, there are entire, you know, media ecosystems which profit from outrage and which pump out outrage and that is part of the algorithm. You know, you have influencers on all sides of the aisle, but we've heard, you know, very well-known ones on, on the right, even one commentator on Fox News talking about war. When you hear that word being used, war. What do you say?

COX: Well, we say stuff like that, and that's normal. It's been part of the vernacular. We use it in sports terms, sometimes we talk about a battle, a war, right, and we now do it in political terms and I don't think most people actually mean it because, war is, my kids and my grandkids getting shot in the street. That's -- no one wants that. The problem is that there are people out there who, when they hear that, they actually believe it and it leads to, to things like we're seeing today.

But again, you know, people are angry and rightfully so. They don't need to be lectured by me or CNN or anybody else when they're feeling anger. But my question is, what do we do with that? And that's why I think, again, Charlie's words are so important on this. He did preach nonviolence.

You know, whether you loved him or whether you hated him, he truly believed that talking to each other would help us prevent violence and that we desperately need more of that. And so, that's all I'm trying to do is, is trying to turn that introspection in each of us.

Me, too, by the way, I screw up all of the time. The problem is that the incentive structure in social media, and quite frankly, the incentive structure in politics right now, it doesn't lead to depolarization. The radicalization that happens through those algorithms on social media. And again, that's why Charlie said when things get dark and rough to put your phone down, to read scripture, to hug your family, that's what we should be doing.

COOPER: Well, I actually want to put that social media post that he said, because you quoted this earlier. He said this in June. I'm putting it up on the screen is that, "When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it's important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember, internet fury is not real life. It's going to be okay."

It's interesting, you know, this suspect, from what I've read, his parents are registered Republicans. It seems like, you know, he has a good family. I'm not sure how much he is online and living online, but we have certainly seen many young men getting lost online. What do you about that as a legislator?

I mean, where -- you know, some schools are kind of slow to really figure out plans for social media, for phone use in schools, even.

[20:15:14]

COX: It's the greatest mistake we've made in the last decade and I'm very proud that Utah is leading the nation. We passed the most comprehensive social media bills two years ago. We're still fighting in the courts over those bills. We passed a ban on cell phones in classrooms this year.

We have to do this. The research is incredibly clear. Jonathan Haidt, who I know, you know, has been on the programs here. His book "Anxious Generation" lays that out very clearly, but we really are pushing and A.I. is only going to make this worse, especially for our young men.

We've got an entire generation that that is struggling that has been lost. They've lost purpose and meaning and we've got to find purpose and meaning again.

COOPER: Governor Spencer Cox, thank you for your time.

COX: Thank you, Anderson.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, next for us tonight, CNN's John Miller, with more on how investigators have been building their case and what they still want to know.

Also, Scott Galloway on how today's social media sites are designed to stir up outrage and create partisan division.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT GALLOWAY, AMERICAN PUBLIC SPEAKER, ACADEMIC, AUTHOR, PODCAST HOST, AND ENTREPRENEUR: These algorithms have figured out that the best way to get engagement and more news on ads is to figure out your political leanings and then take you as far as they can tweet by tweet or reel by reel or TikTok by TikTok to an extreme.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:46]

COOPER: We're expecting to hear in this hour from Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika, her comments coming as the suspect accused of killing her husband in broad daylight in front of thousands of people is now behind bars.

That suspect, as we've been mentioning, is identified as Tyler Robinson, 22 years old, from Southern Utah, taken into custody 33 hours after the shooting. His father saw the FBI images of the suspect confronted his son about it. Authorities say Robinson is believed to have acted alone.

CNN's chief law enforcement intelligence analyst, John Miller, is with me. He's formerly with the NYPD and FBI. Also here, CNN law enforcement analyst and former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow.

John, what stands out to you at this point or are there any other details you're hearing?

JOHN MILLER: CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, the gaps you know, CNN, Jeff Winter from my team spent all day trying to find people who knew him, who dealt with him, talked to school friends, talked to former employers, an electrician, he worked who said, you know, the things you always hear -- quiet, kept to himself, never really talked about politics. Parenthetically, he said, you know, he didn't like Trump and he didn't like Charlie Kirk, but it wasn't something that that came up a lot.

Another gap is in the people we talked to, nobody talked about him being a shooter. You know, he had guns or he was always at the firing range. As we dig deeper, we may find that but as an entity, he came across fairly benign. The only documented piece is his father when he looked at the pictures and said, I think that's you, and --

COOPER: And so, I mean, Jonathan, that's what's fascinating. And, John, we were talking about this last night when we were looking at the newly released images. You both were saying, well, somebody who knows that person has got to recognize that person because -- but does it -- from what I understand so far, I mean, have or have you heard -- did any of the leads that were coming in from other people at all relate to this guy?

MILLER: Well, there's 11,000 leads.

COOPER: So, they would not have been able to go through all those leads.

MILLER: I mean, the way they track those leads, they could. You know, they feed them into a lead tracker so you can search it by any name, nickname, reference keyword. So, he may be in there, but the one that rose to the top in terms of credibility is --

COOPER: And it doesn't surprise you, Jonathan, that it would be the family member.

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: No and actually, this actually speaks to the value of crowdsourcing and getting that information out there as quickly as possible, those images, because that's what you're looking for. I mean, who better knows their son than the father, right? And, you know, it might have been, one just particular movement or the way that he was angled that the father just keyed in and goes, that is my son.

And now you have to think about the emotional toll that this father had in actually speaking to his son, saying, was this you? And then his son saying, yes, it was. That's a death sentence. That father knew right there and then.

But he was duty bound to make that notification to the minister -- he knew that his son had to be held accountable for that action. COOPER: Do you see, I mean, any crossover between, you know, the

profile of the school shooter and the profile of, you know, one of these gunmen who goes after a political figure? Are they of the same --

WACKROW: Absolutely, there's a model and we talk about it. We talk about it a lot after these school shootings. But it's the pathway to violence, and it starts -- the pathway to violence always starts -- it is rooted in grievance and from grievance that grievance metastasizes and oftentimes metastasizes into violence, right? You want retribution, you want to get back at somebody for something.

And how do you do that? Well, there's this you know ideation around violence. How can I hurt them? How can I harm them? All right, then the next phase is from there, well, actually, how can I harm them? Let me plan this, let me figure a pathway to exit.

And again, the pathway to violence is a continuum. It's this behavioral continuum.

COOPER: You know, John Miller, yesterday you were talking about how people -- some of these shooters, we know that they all -- they study each other, they study past shootings. They learn from each other, which is sickening of itself. But they kind of borrow things, the detail of the shell casings, I mean, that sounds like Luigi Mangione.

[20:25:10]

MILLER: And the long distance shot from a rooftop sounds like Thomas Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania, with Donald Trump.

I am pretty certain that if this is consistent with other like offenders, when they get into his computers, the kinds of searches that they often find are they look at all the similar attacks. They study things like body count in the active shooter realm, in the sniper realm, they study the distances of the shot to see you know, can I exceed that?

There is a key difference between the school shooter and Jonathan is exactly right. The pathway to violence is the same.

But when you make that turn, the school shooter is very personal and impersonal at the same time. These are up close shootings. You're looking at the people you're shooting. Some of them you may know, some of them you might not know at all. You're going for body count, that's a trait.

The sniper is different, the sniper is long distance, rather impersonal, a god complex. I'm going to take this specific life targeted to one person and it's a its a difference that is just at the end of the same path.

COOPER: Yes.

WACKROW: And I think there the -- when you look at the attack dynamics and the investigators start looking at the selection of the weapon, the selection of the attack position and the elevated rooftop, all of that is going to be found in that computer because that's learned behavior. It's not something that you just pick up on the street.

COOPER: Yes, Jonathan Wackrow, thank you, John Miller, as well.

Still ahead, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination, politicians on both sides of the aisle calling on all Americans to tone down dangerous political rhetoric. Some solutions, and Scott Galloway coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:31:00]

COOPER: CNN's Nick Watt alluded to this earlier, Utah's governor calling social media cancer. You also heard the governor describe the moment we're now in, in his words, as a fever dream.

Right now some perspective on this moment and the machinery in many ways behind it from Scott Galloway, host of the Prof G pod and co-host of Pivot and Reaching Moderates podcast.

So Scott, Governor Cox of Utah called this a watershed event in American history and the, you know, the direction of where it goes is still to be ridden, still to be determined. Where do you think this country goes from here? Do you think this makes a change?

SCOTT GALLOWAY, PROF. OF MARKETING, NYU STEM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Well, first off, I think Governor Cox has been a real leader on this and whether it's a watershed moment or not, I think it's a function of if it results in any tangible action. And I would argue you need to diagnose the problem kind of honestly and openly before you can move to solutions, but I see the problem as having kind of three legs of the stool here.

The first is that our economy is basically, our stock market's being driven by 10 companies who are in the business of trafficking attention and have figured out their algorithms, have figured out that we used to think sex sells. What we found is something better and that is rage.

And these algorithms have figured out that the best way to get engagement and more Nissan ads is to figure out your political leanings and then take you as far as they can tweet by tweet or real by real or TikTok by TikTok to an extreme. And now that Americans get two or two thirds of Americans get their news from social media, the temperature has just gone up.

And I would ask all of us to do what Darth Vader suggested in search your feelings. You know, this to be true. The second thing is we have young men in this country who have a lack of opportunities, whose prefrontal cortex doesn't catch up to a woman's until he's 25, are sequestering from society and are up against the deepest pocketed, most talented companies in the world with godlike technology trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. The result is they're sequestering from relationships in guardrails. You have literally the amount of time young men are spending with their friends has been cut in half. They're not attaching to work, they're not attaching to school, they're not attaching to relationships and they're increasingly vulnerable to be radicalized online.

And then the third thing, and it's boring, but there's just no getting around it. I'm in London right now. Over the next 12 months, there will be 30 people killed by guns in the U.K. Since Charlie was assassinated yesterday, there's likely been about 120 deaths just in the U.S. from gun deaths.

COOPER: It doesn't -- I mean, I agree with your, you know, your, I mean, your bleak assessment of all the legs of the stool on this, but there's not a lot of off ramps there. I mean, there's the financial incentives for these companies are not changing at all. There's no call for regulation, really.

Individuals, families are waking up and trying not to have phones in schools. But even that's a struggle for a lot of families. I mean, the phrases engaged -- engraved on shell casings apparently discovered by investigators, you know, references to video game memes and an Internet message board.

And you have like social media influencers on, you know, on the right. And, you know, I haven't -- the ones I've seen have been on the right. But I'm sure there's, you know, outrage on the left and people calling for, you know, talking about war.

GALLOWAY: Yes, I do. I think I'm a little bit more hopeful and not as bereft. And I would argue that we need to be hopeful. And there are specific solutions around social media. Remove 230 protections for algorithmically elevated content such that if your company is not putting in safeguards and a young man enters into a relationship with a character AI and he or she is under the age of 18 and decides to kill themselves at the urging or at least the approval of that character AI, the company who has elevated that content is liable.

[20:35:10]

A certain amount of antitrust to make things more competitive. There's a lot -- think about the rents these companies are charging --

COOPER: But you know for -- I mean, all those guys are having dinner with the President in Washington. I mean, there's no appetite for regulation.

GALLOWAY: But you had mentioned phones. My colleague Jonathan Hyde is getting phones banned in, I think, it's 19 states now, and we have never seen an acceleration in test scores like we've seen over the last 12 months because we are banning phones in schools.

We age gate pornography, the military and cigarettes, but we don't age gate social media. In my view, there's no reason that anyone under the age of 16, maybe even 18 should be on social media. Marc Benioff compared social media to cigarettes, but 17 year olds don't pick up a pack of Marlboro's, smoke them and get radicalized.

There is evidence showing that social media's impact on young girls leads them to self-harm and its impact on men is also mostly self- harm, but also external. They can start harming others. And to be clear, the majority of young men, I don't want to pathologize them, are not going to pick up a gun.

But I absolutely think there is regulation, and there are things that can be done. We need to get more people, specifically more male role models, more economic opportunity presented to young men who are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to be addicted and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated.

There are absolutely common sense solutions here to address some of these things. And the illusion of complexity is weaponized by the incumbents. It's weaponized by big tech who doesn't want to take responsibility for common sense solutions. It's weaponized by the incumbents, whether it's the NRA.

We fall into this illusion that it's a democracy. It's not. The passive majority has bested by special interest groups that are well organized and well-funded, as evidenced by the gun lobby and the tech lobby that seems to be dining with the President every other week. But no, resist. There is an opportunity here to change things.

So is this a watershed event? We'll see.

COOPER: Scott Galloway, thank you.

GALLOWAY: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: Up next, can Charlie Kirk's murder be a turning point in how Americans on all sides of the political spectrum speak to and treat each other?

Also ahead, tonight's champion for change. Some good news. A young doctor repurposing drugs to treat diseases, and he began his mission by curing himself from a near fatal condition.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:41:41]

COOPER: As we mentioned, Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika, is speaking publicly tonight for the first time since her husband's killing. Here's some of what she said next to his chair at his desk.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

ERIKA KIRK, WIFE OF CHARLIE KIRK: But most of all, Charlie loved his children and he loved me with all of his heart. And I knew that. Every day I knew that. He made sure I knew that every day.

Every day he would ask me, how can I serve you better? How can I be a better husband? How can I be a better father? Every day. Every day. He's such a good man. He still is a good man. e was the perfect father. He was the perfect husband. Charlie always

believed that God's design for marriage in the family was absolutely amazing, and it is. It is. And it was the greatest joy of his life.

And over and over, he would tell all these young people to come in and find their future spouse, become wives and husbands and parents. And the reason why is because he wanted you all to experience what he had and still has. He wanted everyone to bring heaven into this earth through love and joy that comes from raising a family. It's beautiful.

Charlie always said that if he ever ran for office, I know a lot of you asked if he ever was going to, but privately, he told me, if he ever did run for office, that his top priority would be to revive the American family. That was his priority.

One of Charlie's favorite Bible verses was Ephesians 5, verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." My husband laid down his life for me, for our nation, for our children. He showed the ultimate and true covenantal love.

I will never, ever have the words to describe the loss that I feel in my heart. I honestly have no idea what any of this means. I know that God does, but I don't.

But Charlie, baby, I know you do too. I know you do. So does our Lord.

And our world is filled with evil, but our God, you guys, our God is so good. So incredibly good. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

COOPER: Erica Kirk, just moments ago.

[20:45:01]

Joining us now is CNN Political Commentator Michael Smerconish, host of CNN Smerconish and Erick Erickson, host of The Erick Erickson Show on WSB Radio. Erick, I keep thinking about Charlie Kirk's three-year- old and one-year-old and his wife and, you know, the -- them going home tonight and the new reality of their lives and these little kids. It's obviously sickening.

I'm wondering what you made of what Governor Cox said today, that history will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. Do you think it is?

ERICK ERICKSON, HOST, " THE ERICK ERICKSON SHOW" ON WSB RADIO: Yes, I do think it is. I wrote a column about that for the Atlanta Journal- Constitution and pointed out that it was the name of Charlie Kirk's group, but no pun intended. We have to decide as a country how we go forward.

It was 90 years ago that Huey P. Long was assassinated and it was his son, Russell Long, who said ballots or bullets, we have to decide the destiny of the country and we should choose ballots. People these days on both sides, they hate each other. They don't know each other.

You mentioned Jonathan Haidt (ph) a lot tonight and, you know, back in 2017, he warned of the dangers of teaching people that words are violence and we're seeing this manifestation come out of people who think I can attack someone's words with physical violence because their words are violence. And I think we've got to move beyond that as a nation.

Look, I know there are people out there who don't like me because of what I say. I'm conservative and a Christian. People who are listening to Erika Kirk tonight and baffled how she could think something good can come from this. And where is your God now? I get that with my wife who's got stage 4 cancer. How could you believe in him?

And they don't understand. But this is a time to understand other Americans.

COOPER: Michael, I mean, do you think Governor Cox's reaction to this -- I mean, it seems like it's gotten a lot of tension. Do you think it will break through? Do you think it changes how other political leaders approach things?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that he was pitch perfect. My view is that the nation has a fever and it's an illness with many causes. Neither side has a monopoly on violence or on mental health. We're isolated. We're lonely. We're fragmented.

Our kids are bearing the brunt of it. And I think what's most lacking is social engagement for people of all ages. We are not leading lives the way that our parents did, and they weren't up against the challenges of so called connectivity.

We are not joiners. We're isolated. And I endorse everything that the governor said. I like what I've heard from Erick. Scott Galloway is always spot on. But I would add to the prescription that everybody needs to join.

Join what? Depends on who you are and what your passion might be. But sitting behind closed doors and engaging via a screen is not enough. We need human contact with one another. We need to restore shared purpose that only comes from common experience.

Volunteerism. Get active in your community. Support local media. I could rattle off 20 things that Robert Putnam writes about in bowling alone. They all hold true today, more so than when he wrote that book 25 years ago.

COOPER: I mean, Erick, I mean, I -- what Michael says makes sense, but there is a tsunami of AI coming. There's already, you know, we're awash in floods of social media and algorithms and things which are designed to give us dopamine hits and enrage us and make us angry and suck us in deeper.

ERICKSON: You know, yes. And to Scott's point earlier, rage really is what boosts the algorithms right now. We've got to be intentional about it. And we've got to talk. I had the conversation with my son tonight. It does appear that the assassin got a computer and started spending a lot of his time online.

And, you know, just echoing something Charlie Kirk has said and what his wife would say is -- it's my favorite passage of scripture from the Old Testament and it's the letter to the Jews in exile saying seek the welfare of the community in which you live. Plant gardens, have kids, have a family, pray for it. There you'll find your welfare.

And we're either so focused on Washington, D.C. and Washington is the fount of all problems and all wisdom. And we forget where the battered women shelter is in our town or the homeless shelter or the food bank or how we can get engaged. And we look at the homeless guy down the street. So that's not my problem, but actually it is.

And we all have to on both sides stop yelling at each other, stop both siding it, stop saying which side is worse and just turn around and get to work in your own community. If you do it in your community, I do it in mine. We actually improve the nation, but we have to do it and turn off the phones.

[20:50:02]

COOPER: Michael, are you optimistic at all?

SMERCONISH: I'm kind of devastated about the assassination of a guy that I personally didn't know. I mean, it's such a low point and there have been so many in just the last five or 10 years. And what I'm concerned about beyond the algorithms, that's a huge part of this, is this industry that is predicated on the perpetuation of division.

And I'm talking about the media and politicians, because the clearest path, you know, to stay in office is to be incendiary, a fundraising magnet to say appalling things and then raise money and get re- elected. I don't know how we get beyond that.

COOPER: Yes.

Michael Smerconish, Erick Erickson. Erick, please give my best to your wife. Thank you for being with us.

ERICKSON: Sure will. Thank you.

COOPER: Coming up on this dark night, a story of hope, Dr. Sanjay Gupta's "Champion for Change." You're going to meet this extraordinary man who used science to save his life and is now saving others.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:55:23]

COOPER: Tonight, I want to bring you the story of Dr. Sanjay Gupta's "Champion for Change." His name is David Fajgenbaum, diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder without any cure. He found his own treatment by repurposing already approved drugs for his disease and is now trying to do the same for others.

Here's Sanjay Gupta with more. (BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DR. DAVID FAJGENBAUM, CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, EVERY CURE: When I got the phone call from my dad saying, David, your mom has brain cancer, that just changed everything for me, Sanjay. I'd made a promise to her just before she passed where I said, Mom, I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life trying to find treatments for people like you.

And then in my third year of med school here at Penn, I just got critically ill and everything changed. The doctors told my family I wasn't going to make it. My family said their goodbyes to me. A priest came into my room and read me my last rites.

I had so many things that I wanted to do in my life that I wasn't going to be able to do. I had this amazing girlfriend, Caitlin, that I wanted to have a family with one day. The diagnosis came back, Castleman disease.

They started me on chemotherapy right away because there were no approved treatments and they just wanted to try something.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So David Fajgenbaum decided to look at his own blood samples, his own lymph nodes, as sort of a Hail Mary, trying to find a clue and hopefully find a treatment that everyone else had missed.

D. FAJGENBAUM: These are actually a couple slides from these early experiments I did. This is a typical lymph node. We saw that it's a brown means that the pathway is turned on. And as you see, there are cells that stain brown.

But then we stain my lymph nodes. Wow. This result really stood out to me, and exactly I thought, OK, if this thing is so turned on, I know to turn it off because the drug sirolimus is really good at turning it off.

GUPTA: Sirolimus is a drug that's actually been around for decades, primarily used to treat transplant patients. For David, it worked. It helped tamp down his immune system, treat his Castleman's and only cost him about $20 a month.

You saved your own life. What point did you say, hey, look, I need to widen the mission?

D. FAJGENBAUM: Sanjay, I've never been able to walk past a CVS since then without just thinking to myself, how many hidden cures are just sitting in there that we're using them for this disease or that disease, but they can also be used for that disease and that disease. It gives me goosebumps.

In 2016, my uncle Michael was diagnosed with metastatic angiosarcoma. I went with Michael to see his oncologist and I started asking questions. Well, could we, you know, think about existing medicines that could be repurposed? And the doctor said, David, no one with angiosarcoma responds to these medicines. DR. MICHAEL FAJGENBAUM, ANGIOSARCOMA PATIENT: So I then went back to my doctor in Raleigh. I asked if he would send tissue for this advanced DNA testing. I was convinced because of David that this was the right course to follow.

He finally sent tissue off and it turned out that I was exact match for a drug that was already in existence. Here I sit nine years later.

D. FAJGENBAUM: In Michael's story, that for me was this incredible moment to think, wait a minute, are there breadcrumbs out there for other diseases too?

GUPTA: In some ways, this is a little bit of an indictment of the existing medical system. Like how did they not find a $20 a month drug that you could take orally that has saved your life now for over a decade?

D. FAJGENBAUM: You know, drug companies pursue single drugs for a few diseases and then the drug becomes generic and they move on. There's never really been the kind of computational power to really look across 18,000 diseases and about 4,000 drugs.

GUPTA: David is trying to change those numbers. So far, him and his team at Every Cure, they have repurposed 14 drugs offering hope for diseases that previously didn't have a lot of hope.

David is a champion for change. He not only saved his own life, but he's now using what he learned to save many more lives.

You're doing well today?

D. FAJGENBAUM: I'm doing well, yes.

GUPTA: I mean, are you physically 100 percent?

D. FAJGENBAUM: I'm 100 percent. It's been 11.5 years. Today also happens to be my sweet daughter's seventh birthday. I mean, Sanjay, I'm not supposed to be here.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

COOPER: I mean, that's incredible. How long does it take David and his team to, you know, find these treatments?

GUPTA: There's 18,000 diseases. There's 4,000 drugs. That means for 14,000 diseases, there's not an identified drug to treat them. It took them about 100 days to basically look at all the diseases, look at all the drugs and try and do matches. 75 million calculations to figure this out.

With AI now, they can do what used to take 100 days in 17 hours. So they've already repurposed 14 more drugs, you know, since David's first drug that he repurposed, which is incredible because those people did not have any hope for that diseases.

COOPER: Yes. GUPTA: So now they can do it much, much faster.

COOPER: Wow. That's just incredible.

GUPTA: Yes.

COOPER: What an amazing guy.

Sanjay, thanks.

GUPTA: Yes.

COOPER: Appreciate it.

Tomorrow night, CNN journalists, including Sanjay and me, present a look at eight trailblazers who are making groundbreaking changes across communities. "Champions for Change" airs Saturday, 10:00 p.m. on CNN.

The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.