Photo: Alamy
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday described the difficult moment he delivered the news to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office that conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been assassinated.
“I was the person who walked into the Oval Office and said, ‘Mr. President, I’m sorry but Charlie’s passed,’” Vance told Fox News’ Jesse Watters. “That was a very tough moment.”
The vice president said he and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles comforted each other as the news sank in. “We supported each other in that moment as you do with your friends, but man, that was a bad, bad day,” Vance said.
The 41-year-old vice president recalled that he had just finished a meeting in his West Wing office on Sept. 10 when he began receiving messages around 2:30 p.m.
“I looked at my phone and there were a bunch of group chats — frankly, a lot of them that Charlie was in — where they said ‘Charlie, praying for you, brother. Hope you’re doing OK,’” Vance said. “I opened up my door and someone said ‘Charlie’s been shot’ and it hit me like, ‘this is very real, this is very serious.’”
Authorities said the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Prosecutors have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in the killing.
Vance said he and his staff spent the “next hour” trying to confirm Kirk’s condition.
“The news was discombobulated. Nobody knew what was happening. It was a very chaotic moment. There was a brief period where we were getting good reports from the hospital,” he said. But they learned of Kirk’s death a short time later, about an hour before the news became public.
The vice president said he hugged Wiles, who broke down in tears. “She doesn’t show emotion. She’s even keeled the whole way. I just gave Susie a hug and I guess all of us kind of lost it,” Vance said. Trump, he recalled, was “very stoic.” “He was clearly upset. He just went quiet and let it absorb a little bit. And then just shook his head and said, ‘Man, he was a good guy and we really loved him.’”
Vance described Kirk as a “dear friend” and one of the reasons he pursued public office. “It felt like we were all mourning our friend before any of the politics or the thought about what a Titan he was, how influential he was to the movement, how could we possibly replace him, we were all just sad because our friend had died,” Vance said.
