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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk Shot And Killed. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired September 10, 2025 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Like this. What I would like to see is our leaders in this country, left, right, center, take a moment and not take advantage of a terrible action like this and ask for calm and not use it for partisan reasons. And that, I mean by the leaders in the White House and the leaders in Congress and the people who are online, we need to show leadership in this country to find a way out.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Leadership is what we need at this point. And of course, our hearts are with Charlie Kirk and his family at this time. "The Lead" with Jake Tapper starts right now.
[17:00:42]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Good afternoon. And we start with this breaking news, this dark era of political violence that we are in just got even darker. Trump ally, conservative activist, founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, only 31 years old, has been killed after being shot in the neck in an apparent assassination. Kirk was speaking at an event at a University in Utah. He leaves behind a widow, Erika, and two young children.
President Trump, moments ago on Truth Social posted, quote, "The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me. And now he is no longer with us. Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika and family. Charlie, we love you," unquote.
The shooting happened at Utah Valley University, which is about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. Kirk was kicking off a 14 stop campus tour with Turning Points USA, which is focused on young conservatives and especially university campuses. We are getting some new video of police arriving at the scene. A suspect is not in custody, according to a law enforcement source.
The video we're about to show you appears to show the moment Kirk was shot in the neck. It happened shortly after he answered a question about mass shooters in America and how many of them are transgender. We want to warn viewers that the video we're about to show you, it's disturbing. We freeze it when you hear the shot, although the audio keeps running. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
CHARLIE KIRK, RIGHT-WING POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Too many.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. (Inaudible) is five. OK. Now, five is a lot, right? I'm going to give you -- I'm going to give you some credit. Do you know -- do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?
KIRK: Counting or not counting gang violence?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down, get down. What the (BLEEP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Local reporters who witnessed the shooting tell CNN that they heard a gunshot and quote, "then you see Charlie go limp. His neck kind of turned and we saw blood immediately. It felt like so much blood came out of his neck immediately," unquote.
Video of Charlie Kirk before the shooting shows him wearing a white T shirt with the word freedom on it, throwing 47 and Make America Great Again hats to a massive, energetic crowd. CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller and former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis now join us to talk about this.
And, John, a law enforcement source says that there is not a suspect in custody. Tell us about how this investigation is going to commence.
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, and that's official from the university that the reports that they gave out earlier about a suspect in custody, and we saw the video of an individual who was taken into custody, handcuffed and led away. What they're saying now is that person is not believed to be the shooter and is likely not in custody. This apparently is someone who got pointed out by someone in the crowd. And we don't know what the story is behind that. But the key is there is no suspect in custody.
So let's use that for framing right now, what we have is a premeditated, apparently planned assassination of Charlie Kirk where the suspect appears to be at large. What we know from law enforcement and the university on the scene is they believe the shot was fired from a campus building. And the estimate that they gave in their statement was perhaps 200 yards away, which puts that really even further than the shot we saw in the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, going back to the campaign. So this is suggestive of someone who scoped out the right place, brought a rifle that had the correct distance and optics to make a shot like that from that far away, and a single shot with the kind of accuracy that resulted in taking Charlie Kirk's life. So it appears not to be a spontaneous event, but something planned.
[17:05:04]
Now there's a backdrop to that, which is this event was gathering steam as controversial. Six thousand students and faculty and community members had signed a petition against Charlie Kirk speaking at the school. A thousand or more had signed one in favor. But the university came down on the controversy by saying, we are here to exchange ideas and to be open for any speaker. And if you are opposed to that, you know, your options are don't go to the talk, go to the talk with an open mind or invite a speaker that shares your views.
So this was something that would have attracted the kind of attention that if someone had this in mind, it would have given them perhaps the time to plan. So where do we go from here? That means we have to answer one question now that we know there's not a suspect in custody, is there a weapon recovered? What can that weapon tell us? The serial number may take us to where it was last sold, at least commercially and a record that may tell us who the owner of that weapon was.
If a shell casing was recovered, it may tell us whether that weapon has turned up in any other shootings where evidence was recovered by police. But we haven't been told whether a weapon was recovered yet. The next step, of course, regardless of that, would be the video canvas. What is the area? Is it a rooftop or is it a window?
Is there cameras that tell us who entered that location proximate to the shooting and left after the shooting? So there's a number of investigative steps that have to be taken so that they can identify a suspect, or if they can identify a suspect, consider putting that image out to us so we can put it out to the public.
TAPPER: Ed, Turning Point USA aide traveling on the tour tells CNN that Kirk traveled with private security and that the university and local police were also assisting with security. How difficult is it to provide security in an open space like this? ED DAVIS, FORMER BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, it's very difficult, Jake. We provide these services so we deal with these problems every day. In the normal protective envelope around a protectee like this, you're really looking for close in threats. You're looking for people 10 to 20 feet away and you're prepared to take action if there's a threat that starts to present itself.
The idea of a sniper 200 yards away is outside the purview of a surveillance team or a protection team and only really applies to the highest level political figures. Presidents have counter sniper teams, but I just don't see it in day to day protection. So these individuals who are on the team may have been able to provide immediate medical assistance and rush the protectee away from the scene to try to get them medical assistance. But the type of wound that I saw on video doesn't lend itself to survival. It's just a horrible slaughtering of this poor young man.
TAPPER: And John Miller, Attorney General Pam Bondi says that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ATF, are on the scene. What are they focused on right now, trying to get surveillance video? MILLER: Well, the FBI's main role here is going to be to give assistance to the Utah authorities in this investigation by bringing every possible resource to bear. Whether that's -- whether that is helping with the video canvas, sweeping the Internet, working on tracking a cellular signal if they get a suspect and a potential phone, they're there to help. And at the same time, you know, there is the possibility if Charlie Kirk was the victim of politically motivated violence, that there's a federal statute that may apply here.
ATF, they're going to be focused on that weapon. If there's a weapon recovered, they can go to work on that right away. If there's a shell casing from that weapon and it appears there was a single shot, if that's recovered, they can go to work on that right away. But you can rest assured, given Charlie Kirk's relationships to the people in Washington, that whatever resources are required in this case are going to be there right away. ATF and FBI both have a footprint in Salt Lake City and resources there, but they can get additional resources from around the region.
TAPPER: Ed, what about the bullet itself? Can the bullet be traced to the person who shot it? [17:10:00]
DAVIS: It'll be very important to obtain that bullet either from the body or from the area it have passed through. So that'll be the main focus of the evidence recovery teams at the scene. And you need that bullet to compare it to the sample of the rifle when it's eventually discovered so that you can positively say that the round came from that rifle and that rifle may tie into someone else. ATF has the NIBIN system. They can check on the spent cartridges and see if they compare to any guns that were used in other crimes across the country.
So there's a lot of technical work that has to be done here. But it's extremely troubling that this guy is in the wind and he's heavily armed and obviously experienced. This is not a lucky shot. This is not somebody that just picked up a gun for the first time. This is experience. TAPPER: Yes, I mean, 200 yards away, that's somebody who has fired guns before.
Ed, before you go, what do you make of what appears to be yet another act of political violence in America? We've seen an alarming -- it seems like it anyway, an alarming rise incidents like this.
DAVIS: Right, Jake? It's not the country I grew up in. It's extremely troubling. I think the rhetoric is cranked up on both sides of the aisle and needs to -- leadership needs to step it down so that people who are prone to violence don't take this stuff literally.
But social media can't be discounted as a main motivator here. These people and bots and nation states that magnify and repeat stories and exaggerate them is having an effect on the human psyche here in the United States. And we need to dial it back, way back.
TAPPER: John Miller, Ed Davis, thanks to both of you. Let's bring in CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner.
Dr. Reiner, you just heard Ed Davis refer to the wound, this neck wound, as not survivable. You're a physician. Is that -- is that true? If you get shot in the neck, is it highly unlikely you can survive?
DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, not always. It depends on where the bullet enters the neck and the structures that are injured. When I saw the video initially, I thought that was a non survivable wound for two reasons. One was the massive quantity of blood that issued forth from the wound immediately. And also the fact that Mr. Kirk immediately, you know, slumped over, suggesting perhaps that the bullet also perhaps hit his spinal cord.
You know, the neck contains two large blood vessels on either side, carotid artery, which takes blood up to the brain and the internal jugular vein that brings blood back from the head. And the head gets a tremendous amount of cardiac output because the brain is so key. So with a wound that size, you can lose a tremendous volume of blood very quickly. You can lose a liter or two liters a minute of blood. And all the initial attempts to try and salvage the life of Mr. Kirk would have been focused on trying to contain the bleeding, put packing into the wound, hold pressure on the wound until he could get to a trauma center and have more definitive therapy.
The -- it sounds like he might have -- they might have tried, you know, a surgical intervention, and he might have held on for as long as he did because he was only 31 years old. But the massive amount of blood coming forth suggests that his internal jugular and or his carotid were basically blown apart by the impact. And there are other crucial structures there. The airway sits right in that area. The esophagus rides to the left in the neck.
And these structures are besides their usual function. Injury to them can be very difficult to fix. But the initial catastrophic event is the massive amount of blood loss.
TAPPER: And that is -- that is a way a lot of soldiers, service members, die on the battlefield no matter what -- how it's depicted in films or television, it's -- honestly, it can be like a leg wound and your femoral artery just -- you just lose too much blood too quickly. REINER: Right. So I don't know what type of trauma center he was taken to. There are various levels from comprehensive 2/47 trauma centers to other places where what they were trying to do is stabilize and then transfer. But most places that see trauma patients will have basic equipment like trauma bandages, which are bandages coated with a kind of powder that promotes clotting. And what the team in the emergency department, or maybe even in the ambulance would have tried to do is pack some of this trauma packing, you know, into the wound and try and contain some of the blood.
Upon arrival to the hospital, Mr. Kirk would have been in a major trauma center, would have been met by a trauma team with trauma surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, PAs. And then they would have activated something called a massive transfusion protocol, which is what it sounds. It's basically a protocol that allows the team to give literally liters of blood to a patient very, very quickly, unmatched blood. And they would have tried that and then try and stabilize him enough to get him to the operating room. And if it's injury to the internal jugular, they would have tried to ligate that, just tie it off.
[17:15:32]
And in a severe life, you know, life threatening or life, potentially life ending incident, even potentially sacrifice the carotid artery on that side to try and save his life. So it's a terrible wound.
TAPPER: In a lot of combat medicine, there's this thing called the magic hour where you basically have less than an hour to save somebody. And I don't even know if in a horrific shooting like this, it's -- you even have a minute. REINER: I think it's -- I think it's more like 15 minutes here.
TAPPER: Yes. Political violence is becoming more frequent in the U.S. When I was in Ukraine covering the war a couple of years ago, there were urban American doctors at the Ukrainian hospital teaching Ukrainian doctors how to deal with these kinds of wounds because they're increasingly commonplace in the United States, just day to day life, whereas in Ukraine it was just because of the war. From a public health perspective, are hospitals and universities increasingly ready for these types of horrific firearm, even mass casualty events?
REINER: Oh, we have to be. My hospital is in Foggy Bottom here in D.C. just 10 minutes away from the studio here. And VW Hospital sees a gunshot wound a day, at least one gunshot wound.
TAPPER: That's where Reagan was taken after he was shot.
REINER: Reagan was taken to our old hospital.
TAPPER: Yes.
REINER: And his life was saved by a great trauma team. And that's the terrible fact of living in America now. There are 200,000 gunshot wounds a year in this country. And if you live in a big city or anywhere in the United States and you work in a hospital, you have to be prepared to take care of people who get shot. And it's -- that nothing seems to change. You know, we give our thoughts and our prayers and nothing seems to change in this country.
TAPPER: Do you -- beyond the guns of it all, you just heard, and I'm not discounting that obviously, but you just heard Ed Davis talk about this hyper partisan, polarized world that we're in, where it's not enough to have political opponents, their political enemies --
REINER: Yes.
TAPPER: -- and you hear and see on social media and on other media a real demonization of people. It's not just that you disagree with somebody. You think their ideas are wrong, they're evil --
REINER: Yes. TAPPER: -- they're bad. They're bad people. And I wonder from a public health perspective if you think that that's also one of the problems here.
REINER: Oh, absolutely. In my practice, I take care of a lot of members of Congress and a lot of the sort of very senior members talk about -- have told me about a time when they would have dinner with people in the other party all the time. You know, they would argue on -- TAPPER: Reagan and Tip O'Neill used to, all the time.
REINER: Exactly. You know, they would argue on the floor of the House or in the Senate well, and then they'd go out and get a steak together and then talk about, you know, common ground. This country has to get back to that, and that has to diffuse into the -- into the public in general. You know, we can't solve our problems if we can't talk to each other, and we can't solve our problems if we're going to kill each other. TAPPER: Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thank you so much.
Moments ago, the organization that Charlie Kirk founded when he was only 18, Turning Point USA confirmed his death, his murder. In a note to employees and supporters, the organization wrote in, quote, "It's with a heavy heart that we, the Turning Point USA leadership team, write to notify you that early this afternoon Charlie went to his eternal reward with Jesus Christ in heaven."
I want to turn now to CNN's Chief Media Analyst, Brian Stelter.
And Brian, we know that Charlie Kirk was not only a fierce ally of President Trump, but tremendously influential, not only with young people, but in terms of cabinet picks and the like. Help us understand the scope of his influence in MAGA world, especially when it came to young conservatives.
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, Kirk really pioneered a new model for merging political activism and point of view media. He was envied by many of his rivals on the left for what he was able to build with Turning Point. You know, he was like a pastor and a political organizer and a radio host and a YouTuber and a TikTok influencer and a nonprofit leader all in one. And he leaves a huge void in the conservative media world as a result of this sickening murder.
[17:20:05]
Accessibility was really one of his virtues, Jake. He believed in the power to persuade. That's why he was launching this fall semester tour in Utah today. He had at least a dozen other tour stops scheduled across the country in the coming months. He liked to debate people he disagreed with.
In fact, that was the point of the tour. And that's exactly what he was doing this afternoon in the courtyard there at the university. He was taking on questions from people who disagreed with him. I remember getting an invitation from him once to debate with him back in 2021, I looked it up, I want to read his words because he said we should hear from him in his own words, he said, I'm trying to be proactive about encouraging dialogue between people who disagree. And that's what happened today at the university.
There were protesters holding signs saying, Charlie Kirk is a liar. But there were hundreds of fans gathered around him, around that tent and around his security. So this is a huge loss for Turning Point USA. As he recently said to a Utah newspaper just a few days ago, quote, "We want to be an institution in this country that is as well-known and as powerful as the New York Times, Harvard and tech companies, and we believe we are creating that." That's what Kirk was trying to build.
And you know, Jake, his wife of four years, Erika, she tweeted a prayer today before the shooting. She tweeted Psalm 46:1, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And we certainly have trouble today. We have trouble in this democracy when people try to solve with weapons rather than words. Jake.
TAPPER: Yes. And Charlie and Erika had two young kids together. They -- their father's gone. Whatever people think about Charlie Kirk's politics, those little kids are denied a father now.
In addition to his influence in the White House and in the MAGA movement, what can you tell us about his personal relationship with the vice president, JD Vance?
STELTER: Yes, it's a great example of generational change in the Republican Party. You know, Kirk was 31 years old. He got his start, you know, around 2012. You know, think about the time around Barack Obama's reelection. Kirk was a grassroots activist, barely 18 years old, launching his organization, gaining connections within the Republican movement before it became the Trump movement.
And he was an early ally of now Vice President JD Vance. The two men had a very close relationship, and Vance was one of the very first Trump officials we heard from when word of this shooting broke. It does speak to this generational moment in politics where Kirk was helping to get hundreds of people out to college campuses, sometimes very blue, very lefty college campuses, there would be controversies, there would be protests and counter protests. And that's partly what Kirk wanted.
You know, one of the names for his tour was the Prove Me Wrong tour. He didn't shy away from talking to folks from the other proverbial side. He wanted to engage in that debate. In fact, he sometimes described himself as a peacemaker. I think that's a really important and powerful word to think about today as you see so many vitriolic comments on social media already about this assassination.
TAPPER: Yes. And my understanding, and I got this from the great Robert Draper New York Times magazine report about Charlie Kirk earlier this year, is that he's the one --
STELTER: Yes. TAPPER: -- that convinced Donald Trump Jr. that JD Vance actually had converted legitimately from anti-Trump to pro-Trump. And he was the one that kind of brought JD Vance, who was just a Senate candidate in a primary to the Trump family and said, no, no, he's with us now. He's legit. STELTER: And that's the power of Kirk as a Trump whisperer and someone who worked as much behind the scenes as in front of the camera. You know, I said earlier that Kirk is a little bit like a new age Rush Limbaugh in terms of his power in the media marketplace, dominating online and on the airwaves. And Kirk was able to do that in a way where he was talking behind the scenes, talking directly with President Trump and his allies, and then going on the radio or his podcast for hours at a time. And the way that it works now, you know, he was able to connect on YouTube and TikTok, on Instagram and on old fashioned radio all simultaneously. It really magnified his power as a movement leader.
And that's what stood out to me a few minutes ago. Max Rose saying this is an assassination of a movement leader. You've covered a lot of stories in recent years, I don't know if there's a story quite like that, a movement leader being gunned down in the middle of a university courtyard.
TAPPER: No. Horrific. Brian, stand by for us.
New video shows conservative activist Charlie Kirk today just moments before he was shot and killed. Again, he was at Utah Valley University in the state of Utah attending a campus tour stop with Turning Point USA. It's the conservative youth organization he founded about 13 or so years ago. I want to bring in CNN's Kristen Holmes who's at the White House.
And Kristen, we heard the news from President Trump not long ago. He was the one that broke the news to the world that Charlie Kirk had been killed, was dead. What are you hearing from the White House now?
[17:25:11]
KRISTIN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I have talked to a number of White House staffers and advisers to Trump, people who are close to the White House. I just want to point out one thing before we get into the power and influential person that Charlie Kirk was. If you look at what you were talking about moments ago, Charlie Kirk was not just a political activist, he was also a father and a husband. And you have to remember something when you talk about Donald Trump's campaign and the team that got him elected, it was a very small, very tight knit group of people. It was loyalists, people who were gathered around Donald Trump, working in and out every day.
And Charlie Kirk was part of that movement. So when you're talking to these White House advisers and staffers and friends of the president, it's not just them looking at the death of an icon and a movement leader, as we've heard. It's also them looking at the death of a very close friend and somebody they spent an enormous amount of time with. Brian alluded to this, during the transition, Charlie Kirk spent most of his time in West Palm Beach, Florida, in Palm Beach, meeting with the different teams, meeting with the candidates, talking through the nominations. He was an integral part of the campaign of getting Trump elected and of the people who are currently in positions of power.
And that's why you're seeing such a sadness and a disbelief from so many people close to the president. And when it comes to talking strictly about his influence and his power within Washington, I think one of the things to keep in mind here is that this is somebody who had a direct line to President Trump, who could voice his objections to President Trump at times, could voice what he thought was important and not being covered enough by the administration. He's spoke to many, if not all of the Cabinet secretaries directly. He had a finger on the pulse of the MAGA movement, even more so than some people who are here in Washington who got government positions.
If you look at the crowd that had gathered around Kirk, that was just one example of the kind of crowds that Kirk would draw. He was truly a movement leader, as we've heard. He would bring thousands and thousands of people together. And that was why he was so critical beyond just the personal to the campaign, to President Trump. He was the one who really crossed him over the finish line with many of these young voters, getting people reaching people who had never cast a ballot before, which we know was a huge part of President Trump's strategy.
So there are a lot of different levels of all of this. The influence, the power, the connection to the base, but also the family and the relationships that Charlie Kirk had built with all of the Trumps. We have seen the children responding, each individually about their relationships with Charlie Kirk, saying to pray for him and his family. Again, he was a fixture here in Washington, even though he doesn't live here, because he was constantly coming in to sit for the swearing ends of various officials, because those were officials were the people he was close to. So this is a great loss for this White House, not just for the MAGA movement, but even personally for the people who are inside the building there.
TAPPER: Yes, it's tough. And I should note also, even if there are people watching right now who are only kind of peripherally or maybe even not even aware of who Charlie Kirk was, ask your kids, ask your grandkids, even if they're not MAGA, if they're on phones, they know who Charlie Kirk is. Teenagers, people in their 20s, they know who Charlie Kirk is. Even if they disagree with them, they know who he is. He really was a voice for this young generation again, even if they didn't agree with him.
Kristen Holmes, stick around. I want to bring in David Urban now, former Trump campaign adviser.
David, I'm sorry to be talking to you under these conditions. What are you hearing from your friends and your colleagues, people who know and follow Charlie Kirk right now? Tell us -- tell us what people are going through.
DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, you know, Jake, it's a tragedy for America, not just for the Republican Party or for MAGA, Jake, as you -- as you know. I met Charlie back in the 2016, during the 2016 race and used to joke with him. You know, Charlie, he was an Eagle Scout. He's all American kind of boy. Want to go to West Point.
I went to West Point. So he and I joke about that. But he was doing it the right way, Jake. He was doing -- he was. You heard Brian Stelter talk about he didn't agree with Brian, he knew Brian wouldn't agree with him, but he offered to sit down and talk with him, to debate him on the merits.
He'd put a card table out on college campuses and say, prove me wrong. Talk to me about this. This was a guy who was trying to change hearts and minds. He was a happy warrior out there doing this, and he was very powerful. And so, to see his young life snatched away, it's heartbreaking, Jake.
The guy is 31 years old. He was a father. He's got young kids. He was a husband to his wife Erika, now who's a widow. Those kids, as you alluded to, Jake, they don't have a father now because of someone who didn't like his political standpoint, didn't like his views.
I mean, it's heartbreaking. It's disgusting. And everybody, I think, in America should take a step back. And really, whether you like Charlie Kirk, you don't -- whether you like the President or you're not, you got to say, this has got to stop. This can't happen.
Here's a guy who's going about it the right way, and he's stricken down in a very graphic manner. It's just disgusting. It's heartbreaking. And you got to just -- you got to pray for his family. They can get through this somehow.
TAPPER: A lot of Democratic officials have been quick to share their condemnation of the shooting and calling for an end to political violence and saying that there's no justification for any of this. But here we are, another instance of politically-motivated attacks in our country.
You're from Western Pennsylvania, where that attempted assassination on President Trump took place last year. We've also seen, obviously, the assassinations of Democrats in Minnesota. We've seen the shooting at the Catholic Church.
URBAN: Steve Scalise is -- Steve Scalise almost assassinated Gabby Giffords.
TAPPER: Yes.
URBAN: I mean, too many people. If you don't -- if you disagree with someone's political view, you don't kill them. You don't have the right to take them down.
You saw Gavin Newsom and Charlie Sat down earlier this year. They don't you think those two agree on anything? Nothing. But they had a civil discourse. They're doing it the right way.
TAPPER: David, stand by. I want to bring in a witness to the shooting. Dallin Smith. Dallin, I understand you're a former student at Utah Valley University, where this apparent assassination happened. You were there with your sister. Tell us, what was the atmosphere like before the shot rang out?
DALLIN SMITH, SHOOTING WITNESS: Yes, the atmosphere was buzzing. I wasn't expecting that many people to be there. You know, I wanted to go and I wanted to be there a little bit earlier to ask Charlie a question. I wanted to have a little bit of a debate with him.
But when I got there was thousands of People there more than I expected. And it was buzzing. There was a lot of energy. A lot of people were smiling, calling on the phones, taking videos. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.
TAPPER: Where were you standing? How far were you from him? And could you make out at all the direction of where the shot may have been fired from?
SMITH: The direction of the shot, no. I wasn't in the crowd, at least on the ground. There was a walkway above Charlie's kind of tent where normally, you know, on a normal day of campus, you can walk back and forth between the two buildings. But they had it taped off.
And up to the degree of where it was taped off, I was on the right side, I guess, the left side of his tent. And I was overlooking the entire crowd. And it was -- I could see basically everything. I couldn't necessarily see Charlie because his tent is kind of, you know, blocked off from all corners except for the front. But, yes, I could see everything, and I couldn't tell the direction the shot was made out of, unfortunately.
TAPPER: How are you and your sister doing? This is a horrible thing to witness.
SMITH: Yes, it was definitely a little bit surreal. You know, it was. We heard two pops and we ran. And some -- a lot of people ran with us. When I was standing by the door, kind of overseeing what was happening, some people were standing there still taking videos.
So I went back out to look over the railing to see, like, maybe someone just did some firecracker or something like that. But more and more people were screaming, crying, dispersing super quickly from the scene. More and more people were headed Charlie's way.
And, yes, just pure craziness. Then after getting back in the building, just tons of people flooding to go outside, get away from the scene. A lot of tears, a lot of phone calls. Me and my sister, we're good, for sure. We're good.
You know, obviously prayers up for Charlie's family and anyone else who's a little bit shooken up. But, yes, it was definitely scary in the moment, for sure.
TAPPER: Dallin, what kind of law enforcement or security presence did you see when you came there and after you heard the pops? Was there a big security presence or what? SMITH: I would say it was fairly mild for the amount of people that
were there. I don't know if they expected that many people. I don't know. It seemed like a little bit more than some of the other events that you can, you know, kind of watch.
When I was, you know, coming through the doors of the campus, I didn't see any security that wasn't really my impression of what was going on. I didn't see many security. I thought, you know --
TAPPER: Maybe we just lost Dallin Smith. Well, thank you to Dallin. And we're thinking about him and all the witnesses to this horrific event.
[17:35:00]
The shooting has brought on a swarm of reaction from elected leaders pleading to anyone who will listen that violence, specifically political violence, is never acceptable. We're going to bring you some of that reaction next.
We're going to squeeze in a very quick break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: And we're back with our breaking news. The deadly shooting of conservative commentator and Trump ally Charlie Kirk at the age of 31. The apparent assassination happened in the middle of a live event at a college campus in Utah. And obviously, Charlie Kirk had a lot of fans on Capitol Hill among the Republicans who control Capitol Hill.
Let's go straight to CNN's Manu Raju there. Manu, tell us what you're hearing.
CNN's Manu Raju: Yes. A lot of members absolutely horrified and not just Republicans, Democrats alike because of the -- just the increasing amount of political violence that we are seeing here in this country from the time of the shooting of Gabby Giffords, the assassination attempts of President Trump, to the shootings for Minnesota lawmakers that happened earlier this summer and so many other events in between, and now this.
[17:40:14]
So you're hearing a lot of calls from both sides of the aisle to increase security, to do more for -- to bolster security for members of Congress, and also to do more to tamp down on the harsh political rhetoric that have really defined this era of politics. I caught up with a lot of the Republicans, to other Republicans who are close to Charlie Kirk, who knew him very well, particularly the members of the more conservative flank of the House GOP and Senate GOP.
And they're the ones who particularly hurt perhaps the most because they had, some of them had a very personal relationship with Charlie Kirk, and had been worked with them very closely over the years. And I also caught up with Senator John Curtis, who represents Utah, and this is, as he told me, happened in his backyard, which he said is a very painful moment for not just him, but for his community as well.
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SEN. JOHN CURTIS (R-UT): This is my backyard.
RAJU: This is very personal because of that?
CURTIS: Yes. It really is escalating, we know that. I think it's time for all of us to reevaluate how we're talking about issues. I think that if we're honest, we're having conversations within families that are too heated. We're having conversations among friends that are too heated.
And then, that obviously escalates as it gets to a broader conversation. It's not healthy. It's not who we are.
When I was in college, used to be able to walk in those doors and just walk right into the Capitol, and didn't have any of the security. Obviously airports are the same. And the more we just have this, like, sickness in society. The more we have to clamp down and the more you have to have, you know, security barriers and lock down our society because people are just sick.
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RAJU: And also, just after that moment, the Speaker of the House tried to ask for a moment of silence. Ultimately did get a moment of silence, but before that, there was a back and forth that occurred between Democrats and Republicans as one congresswoman tried to seek as for a prayer for Charlie Kirk and his family. That led to some back and forth about some of the political violence that we are seeing in this country.
Just showing just the raw emotion and the tension that is happening right now, particularly in the aftermath of all this, as members grapple with this, particularly ones who are very close to Charlie Kirk. He had a lot of allies on the in the GOP side, particularly in the House over the years. And they're feeling this very personally.
TAPPER: He and Speaker Johnson, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, very close friends. Manu Raju, thanks so much.
Just in, a law enforcement official confirmed to CNN that there remains an active manhunt for the person responsible for this apparent assassination. And the initial search, they say, did not recover any sort of firearm. Much more as we cover this story. Stay with us.
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[17:47:23]
TAPPER: And we're back with the breaking news and our Politics Lead. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed while speaking at an event in Utah. Let's get to CNN's Brian Todd to give us a better sense of the scene where this apparent assassination took place. Brian? BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, Jake. Here's what we know. This shooting occurred at Utah Valley University. It is in Orem, Utah. We'll kind of zoom in with a map here.
It's about 40 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, about an hour's drive. You see it's right next to the Utah lake there. And here is a diagram of the campus. Now, according to university officials, this was the site of the shooting. This is where Charlie Kirk was at the time of the shooting.
University officials have said that the shots were fired from a building on campus. Again, you can see there are several buildings here which conceivably could be the building. It is unclear right now at this moment which of these buildings it might have been.
But you see the names of them, the Sorensen Center, the Losee Center, Woodbury Building and the Fugal Gateway Building there. But again, this was the site of the shooting, university officials saying that the shots were fired from a building there. And let's take a look at some of the surroundings in the town of Orem, Utah, where this occurred.
What we can tell you also is that according to law enforcement sources reporting from John Miller and Holmes Lybrand from CNN. According to law enforcement sources, no gun has been recovered as of yet and the suspect is still at large. Now, here are the surroundings of Utah Valley University. You have Utah Lake right here. You've got mountains here.
And again, I'm pointing this out because if there's going to be a manhunt underway, which there clearly must be right now, this, these are some of the surroundings that law enforcement officials will have to navigate, Jake. But again, why don't we just go ahead and take a look at the campus again just to kind of illustrate for our viewers where Charlie Kirk was.
He was here. It seemingly looks like an amphitheater here. And he was this -- and by the way, this was a packed scene, a large audience was here. And he was here when he was shot. There were security people seen on video jumping over fences and running toward him, seemingly what looked like security detail.
We do know that he was traveling with a security detail there at the campus and some of them were seen jumping bicycle fences running toward him in the moments after the shooting. Jake?
TAPPER: All right. Brian, thanks so much. My panel is here. And we should note the influence of this young man, Charlie Kirk. President Trump credited him with helping him swing voters towards Trump in this past election. Take a listen.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: I won the young people by 37 percent. No Republicans ever won and I won by 37 percent. And Charlie Kirk will tell you TikTok helped, but Charlie Kirk helped also. [17:50:09]
Charlie is fantastic. I mean, this guy don't believe this stuff when you hear the kids are liberal. They're not liberal. Maybe they used to be, but they're not anymore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: OK. It's not true that Trump won young people by 37 percent, but it is true that they swung towards Trump and it is true that Trump won young men. And Charlie Kirk had a lot to do with that.
ASHLEY DAVIS, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL G. W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Absolutely. And you know, you and I talk about our boys every so often. The first text I got today was from my 16-year- old son that, I mean, we don't talk a lot of politics at home. He learns his politics from him, from Charlie Kirk.
And I think that's an amazing movement. Whether you believe in what he believes in or not. The fact that he's connecting with not just college students, but 16-year-old hockey playing boys, you know, and he's obviously very religious, which is something that you don't really wear on your sleeve a lot as a young child sometimes.
So listen, the whole thing is a horrible situation. And no matter what side of the aisle you are on and you were saying before we started, just the anxiety of it all because of just what this -- what we've become, absolutely.
ASHLEY ETIENNE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER, SPEAKER PELOSI: I would just, I mean, I think I can't say it enough that my heart goes out and prayers go out to him, his wife and he's got very two young children. And this is just tragic. But, you know, where we are right now is, you know, what we're seeing is a dangerous escalation of violence where political debate is met with guns rather than decent conversations.
And I think that's problematic for all of us. And what I would love to see in this moment is what we've really not seen ever as these escalations have started to happen, which is leaders from both sides of the political aisle coming together, disavowing this and saying that we as a nation should be above this. We're better than this.
This is not how we resolve our issues with guns. We resolve our issues with debate and voting and the ballot box rather than taking up arms to hurt each other. So that's what I would love to see in this moment. But also I would say in addition to that, I think this moment also demands that leaders no longer pour gasoline on the fire.
That they are modeling for young people. To your point, because I have a friend that's at a high school right now and she said it's all -- that's all the talk from among the young kids, but starting to model this decent behavior for young people. And so, those are the two things I would love to see happen in this moment.
TAPPER: And in fact, on that note, Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, tweeted very early, the attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in every form.
When Newsom launched his podcast, I think Charlie Kirk was his first guest. And, Jeff, we should note, this year alone, we've seen an arson attack on Democratic Governor Shapiro, the assassination on a Minnesota lawmaker, on and on. We don't know the motive here.
We don't know if this killer was from the far left, from the far right. We have no idea. But still, this is just a dark time when it comes to political violence.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Incredibly dark time. And in our lifetimes, we have not seen a period like this since the modern age of guns and the weapons that we have now. But I think even more than that, I was struck by a comment from a former President Barack Obama, who sent this out just a few moments ago.
He said, we don't know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. I am thinking of Charlie Kirk, who grew up as a high school student from Illinois. He largely rose through his political strength, through the Tea Party movement.
He had very unkind words for Barack Obama. But President Obama saying that there has to be an end to a political violence. So, look, this is a moment we're going to hear from President Trump later, we believe. It's a horrible moment in our politics.
But what leaders will step forward here? And will there be any change?
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I hope so. I think we are in a terrifying moment in our politics. As others have said, these kinds of incidents have continued to ramp up. We're also in a moment of just hyper partisanship where so much of our politics is about scoring points and winning an argument, and is not so much anymore about trying to find common ground, find solutions.
And I think that the -- I hope that we are going to see this universally condemned. I think we are seeing leaders say this is appalling. I would hope that nobody is out there celebrating this kind of --
TAPPER: You haven't logged on.
BEDINGFIELD: Horrific -- I try not to --
TAPPER: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- because I find all of it to just be incredibly demoralizing. And I'm sure the conversation around this is particularly demoralizing.
[17:55:02]
TAPPER: It's pretty bad. BEDINGFIELD: And so, I just, you know, I really hope that we can get back to a place in our country where we have debates with words and not with guns.
TAPPER: Yes. And debate ideas and not demonize opponents as subhuman evil, that sort of thing. Everyone stick around. I want to bring in CNN's Donie O'Sullivan as well as Hadas Gold.
And Donie, you've been to Turning Point USA events. You've spoken with young activists who admired Charlie Kirk. What did they to say?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake. As some of your panel mentioned, I mean, what the movement Kirk built was admired on both sides of the political spectrum. And we were at one of his conferences, Turning Point USA conference, in Tampa, Florida, back in July. And here's what one young conservative told us about the importance of what Kirk had built.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm here because I love Turning Point USA. I have a chapter where I'm from, and I just love Turning Point USA. I love everything about it. I love the energy that we bring. I love the fact that we are now becoming like -- we're becoming the cool kids now.
Like, for a very, very long time, especially during the Biden presidency, were told that we aren't cool anymore. We were defeated, and now we're just -- to be at an event like this is just such a celebration of what we've overcome.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'SULLIVAN: And, Jake, I mean, what Kirk had built was the envy of Democrats. In fact, we reported over the summer how some Democratic activists were finally trying to build infrastructure in place to try and reach campuses, and to reach young voters in the way Kirk had.
So, I mean, even people who vehemently disagreed with Kirk and his political policies still talked about how impressive an organizer and a mobilizer he was for young voters.
TAPPER: And Hadas, on that note, Turning Point events have attracted controversy and protests, including today's. Tell us about that.
HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, Turning Point USA has chapters across the nation, and they would also have, you know, these big events that would often invite sometimes controversial figures who were making big waves in the news. And these events would often attract protests. Sometimes these would get very tense, and sometimes they would actually get violent.
In fact, just earlier this year in April at UC Davis, violence erupted when protesters started assaulting Turning Point activists, tearing down their equipment. At least two people during that event reported being assaulted in 2023, San Francisco swimmer Riley Gaines, who is speaking at a Turning Point USA event about transgender athletes. She says that she was accosted by protesters. She said she had to be barricaded in a room for several hours. And then in 2019, a man actually ended up facing felony charges for assaulting one of their activists for the group at UC Berkeley who was trying to recruit students.
And today's event, actually, there was a petition online trying to get the university to cancel the event. Now, that petition had less than a thousand signatures, but they said Kirk's presence and the messages he delivers stand in contrast to the values of the university. And actually, a petition was also launched for a similar event that Charlie Kirk was supposed to be speaking at, also at a Utah University on September 30th. And that event or that petition had more than 6,500 signatures on it.
Charlie Kirk actually even tweeted about these protests, about these petitions posting online what's going on in Utah, along with screenshots of some of the headlines about the controversy about these events.
TAPPER: And, Donie, within minutes of the shooting, the video of him being murdered in its graphic, horrifying detail was not only on social media, it was amplified. How does that happen? Who controls the spread? Why does it feel like these platforms are constantly showing us the worst of us?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes. I mean, Jake, that is the nature of what we're seeing in any really violent breaking news event right now. And of course, obviously, the guardrails on a platform, particularly like X, have been taken off. I mean, And deliberately so by Elon Musk, you know, who is pushing this sort of free speech, unfiltered agenda. So, you know, for many of users on those platforms, they say that is what they want to see.
I just want to mention, though, to Hadas' point about, you know, petitions and things like that, for not bringing Kirk onto campuses, I will say for -- as crude and as crass, and sometimes as (inaudible) as debates often would get. And Kirk was recently featured on South Park. Such was his influence in this was that at least there was these debates happening on campuses.
And certainly the Democrats I spoke to who showed up at these events, they wanted to have that dialogue. They wanted to not just fight online, but actually argue their points back and forth on campus in person. And that's what Kirk allowed them to do.
TAPPER: That's right. I mean, that was one of the things about his events, is that he embraced. He didn't just allow questions that were challenging his point of view. He embraced them. He wanted to do that.
And whatever people thought about his ideas, he was in the -- he was in the, I don't want to use the word battle place because I don't want to use a violent word, but it was the battle place of ideas.
