Joe Rogan learned of Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting while recording with Charlie Sheen. Photo / Getty Images
Joe Rogan was recording an interview with actor Charlie Sheen when he received news that conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been shot.
The United States podcaster and his guest had just returned from a break, two-and-a-half hours into the episode, when Rogan addressed the breaking news of the fatal shooting of the Turning Point USA founder at a college in Utah at around midday on Wednesday, local time.
Sheen, 60, appeared on the episode released the next day to promote his new memoir, The Book of Sheen.
“Should we bring this up? I guess we have to,” Rogan said, clutching his head.
“So this has just happened. We just found out that Charlie Kirk got shot.”
“That’s f***ing awful,” Sheen said.
“And … is he dead?” Rogan asked his producer Jamie Vernon. “One of the guys out there just said it was confirmed that he was dead.”
“Murdered for having a different opinion from somebody else,” Sheen said. “Different ideology from somebody else … beliefs that didn’t align.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Rogan said, at a loss for words. “I mean … I don’t know who did it or …”
Vernon then confirmed news reports that Kirk had died.
“Rest in peace. F***,” Sheen said. “He didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that.”
“F***,” Rogan said.
“There’s going to be a lot of people celebrating this. It’s so scary. It’s so dangerous too, to celebrate or to in any way encourage this kind of behaviour from human beings. He’s not a violent guy, he’s talking to people on college campuses. He wasn’t even particularly rude. He tried to be pretty reasonable with people.”
“Everything I saw seemed reasonable,” Sheen said.
“He’s a very intelligent guy whether you agree with him or don’t,” Rogan said. “And there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t agree with him on, that’s fine. You’re allowed to disagree with people without celebrating the fact that he got shot.”
“Sure, but you can’t disrespect his passion,” Sheen said.
“What you’re supposed to do with a guy like that if you’re opposing him is debate him, have a conversation where your argument is more compelling than his,” Rogan said. “That’s what people should be celebrating, discourse, we used to do that.”
“Do some homework and bring it to the table,” Sheen agreed.
“This is horrible, but I know people are going to celebrate it because this is a f***ed up time,” Rogan said. “People have really fallen into this trap of us against them.”
“But it’s also going to make people not want to be as courageous and as forthright with the things they believe,” Sheen said.
The Two and a Half Men star said it was the kind of incident that was always “in the back of our minds” as celebrities during public appearances.
“Right now it doesn’t seem real,” Rogan said. “It seem so crazy … it’s not registering.”
Rogan said he had met Kirk once at a gun range. “He was a nice guy,” he said.
“This is a f***ed up time, people are so divided in this country. There’s so many people that love it, that profit off that division. It’s so gross. One of the most horrific things you could do after someone dies horribly like this is celebrate. It should be a wake-up call for everybody. This is nuts.”
“It’s a dark day,” Sheen said.
“One of two things is going to happen – either people are going to realise how f***ing insane this is and we have to have a conversation about being able to have conversations, or it’s going to get a lot worse,” Rogan said. “That’s what’s scary.”
Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck with a single bullet from a high-powered rifle about 150m away while speaking to a large crowd at an event at Utah Valley University.
He was rushed to hospital but died a short time later.
A massive manhunt for the shooter is still under way.
The FBI released the first images of the “college-age” suspect, as they revealed that the rifle used to kill Kirk had been recovered.
The images of the alleged shooter show a man wearing a baseball cap, dark sunglasses and a black long-sleeve shirt with an image on it.
In one of the pictures, he appears to be walking up a stairwell.
FBI Salt Lake City special agent in charge Robert Bohles earlier said authorities had “recovered what we believe is the weapon in yesterday’s shooting, a high-powered bolt action rifle”.
Bohles said the firearm was found in a wooded area where the assassin had fled.
US President Donald Trump said authorities were “making big progress” in their investigation into Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“I hear they’re making big progress, and we’ll have to see what happens,” he told reporters at the White House as he departed for New York, without providing further detail.
Trump added that the shooter was “an animal, a total animal”.
“Hopefully they’ll have him,” he said.
Asked if he had any thoughts on the shooter’s motivation, Trump said, “I have an indication, yeah, but we’ll let you know about that later”.
He said he was “not really” concerned about his safety following the shooting.
“I’m really concerned for our country,” he said. “We have a great country. We have a radical left group of lunatics out there, just absolute lunatics, and we’re going to get that problem solved. I’m only concerned for the country.”
Trump also told reporters he spoke with Kirk’s widow Erika.
“She’s devastated. She’s absolutely devastated, as you can imagine,” he said.
Kirk, who founded the conservative campus organisation in 2012 and rose to become one of the most influential political figures in the country, leaves behind a 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.
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