Our inspiring statesman: The Charlie Kirk legacy



Charlie Kirk was only 31 years old when he was taken from this Earth, but his time here has undoubtedly left a lasting imprint on not just the nation’s youth — whom he was dedicated to reaching — but all Americans.

Blaze News editor in chief and BlazeTV host Matthew Peterson, BlazeTV host Jill Savage, and Blaze Media Washington correspondent Christopher Bedford are devastated by the tragic loss.

“Charlie Kirk built an organization and helped build a movement that ultimately propelled him to the very heights of American politics,” Peterson says on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

“And what we saw today was unspeakable evil, really, a political assassination of someone who was a political leader. This was someone who is a bright light, who I first met at the Claremont Institute’s Lincoln Fellowships,” he continues.

But Charlie wasn’t your average leader.



“Famously, Charlie didn’t go to college. Incredibly smart guy. He sought out wisdom. He sought out knowledge. He was a very sharp student, and he constantly adjusted and changed when he learned new things or saw new things as he was building and helping to make America great,” Peterson says.

“He was an incredible, incredible human being who never stopped doing, who never stopped learning, and who never stopped building,” he says, adding, “And ultimately I think that what he wanted to be was a statesman. ... This is what he wanted to become: an American statesman who changed things for the good. And that is what he did.”

Bedford agrees, though he notes that there was “a strange side” of Charlie that he “didn’t expect.”

“Sweetness. Humility, which really surprised me. Soft-spoken, kind. He had taken personal interests in people. You knew him through Claremont. I knew him through some hunting and fishing trips that our late friend Foster Friess put together and then later on through podcasts and events,” he explains.

While Bedford recalls that the events were “big, glitzy, glamorous, shiny, light-filled things with all kinds of celebrities,” he says Charlie “was not like that.”

“Not in person. Someone who’s married, someone with two children,” he says.

And Bedford has noticed that Charlie’s passing has stirred something in Americans, regardless of how political they are.

“One woman I know, who’s not — she just follows politics tangentially, one of my friends’ wives, she texted me and said, ‘I’m feeling really delicate right now. Not delicate like a flower, delicate like a bomb,’” he says.

“They’ve just killed a cultural figure,” he continues. “Not a politician, not a businessman, but a cultural figure who touched a lot of lives and was in a lot of living rooms with people and was on their personal devices and was on their Instagram feeds and TikToks and came into their classrooms and talked to them on campus and touched a lot of people.”

Peterson couldn’t agree more with Bedford’s friend’s wife, commenting, “Delicate like a bomb is right.”

Want more from 'Blaze News | The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Two leaders stand in the stark light of blame after horrific Minneapolis Catholic school shooting



On Wednesday, August 27, Robin (formerly Robert) Westman, a 23-year-old transgender-identifying person, opened fire through the windows of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during a school Mass, killing two children and injuring 17 others. Westman, a former student, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, left behind writings and videos expressing hate toward multiple groups and an obsession with mass shooters.

“Minneapolis didn't just let a massacre happen. It helped make it happen,” says Jill Savage, BlazeTV host of “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

And two people stand under a harsh glare of blame: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D).

Minneapolis’ reputation was already waning thanks to the George Floyd riots and its defund-the-police crusade when Tim Walz made the state a transgender sanctuary in 2023.

But even though this move has proved disastrous, Mayor Frey has doubled down in his support for Minneapolis’ transgender community. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said at a press conference on August 27. The next day, he reiterated the sentiment in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“Should we be talking about the trans community and making sure that they feel our love and support, or should we actually be looking at the Catholics right now — the ones that were actually killed yesterday in that church?” says Jill.

“This is the 42nd or maybe 43rd attack on an American Catholic church this year alone in the United States. It is over 520 attacks on Catholic churches here since 2020,” says Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford.

“They’ve been satanic; they’ve been anti-Catholic; they’ve been pro-abortion; they’ve been pro-trans.”

But they haven’t been that surprising.

“Minneapolis and Minnesota have had an extreme tolerance for evil and promoting evil,” says Bedford, condemning the state's “permissive abortion laws” and policies allowing the state to take children away from parents who oppose "gender-affirming care."

Bedford stresses the need to investigate how things like cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and mutilating surgeries impact a transgender-identifying individual’s behavior. Perhaps Westman was just a case of mental illness; perhaps there were drugs related to his gender transition that influenced his deadly actions. “I think that's something that's absolutely worth investigating,” he says.

As for Walz, Bedford says he “deserves condemnation for his anti-Catholic sentiments.” The woke governor denied Catholic schools' requests for security funding in 2022 and 2023, despite an $18 billion state surplus, leaving nonpublic schools without access to safety grants provided to public schools. He also allegedly denied Catholic school students access to Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, preventing them from earning tuition-free college credits, despite their academic eligibility.

“These are the sorts of things that are going on in the United States and are being allowed by our politicians. … It's soft on evil, and it allows it to fester,” he says.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

CONFIRMED: Biden's DOJ was in PANIC over legality of 'autopen pardons'



Brand-new evidence indicates that Biden’s DOJ knew that the autopen pardons were legally flawed, and internal emails show that even his own lawyers raised alarms.

“So I’m a little biased here, of course, but this is a big one. It is the first written, black-and-white evidence of disagreement in the senior-most levels of the Biden camp as it related to the autopen pardon spree,” Oversight Project President Mike Howell tells BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

An email from a top official at the DOJ went out the day after the 2,500-plus commutations.

“He goes off on Saturday morning, outlining all the reasons why these are not enforceable commutations. They make no sense. They need further direction from the White House — read between the lines there: from the president and not an autopen,” Howell explains.


“And moreover, that the actual interpretation of the very vague thing that Biden allegedly announced would apply to — guess what: a lot of violent criminals. And that it did. And so in Biden’s grand, you know, commutation of 2,500-plus, caught up in there were people who shot cops, who killed witnesses, who were kingpins that are now back on the streets for the most part,” he continues.

“Silver lining: Some of them are still in federal prison because he shortened their sentences, but there’s still some are serving it out. Trump could refuse to release them,” he adds.

Peterson, while not exactly shocked, still can’t believe America really went through a time like this.

“So we really did have probably as bad, or worse, of a case, of any time in American history, a president who was dysfunctional sitting there in that office with these clowns around him.”

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

3 theories behind Bondi and Patel adding a co-deputy to Bongino’s FBI role



On Monday, August 18, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was appointed as co-deputy director of the FBI, a newly created position, to serve alongside Dan Bongino starting September 8.

This unusual move, announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, ignited a firestorm of speculation. Some theorize Bailey’s appointment is a prelude to Bongino's potential departure, or even Kash Patel’s, while others argue it aims to stabilize FBI leadership, advance Trump’s law and order agenda, or reshape the agency with politically aligned loyalists.

On a recent episode of “Blaze News: The Mandate,” Jill Savage, Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, and senior politics editor Christopher Bedford dove into this controversy.

“I think fundamentally they need very talented people in extremely important positions to get the job done. ... [The FBI] is a large agency where a ton of reform is needed. It’s at the heart of the corruption that’s been allowed to fester in this country,” Peterson says. “So it would make sense to bring in someone who’s a very sharp, aggressive AG who’s done great work in Missouri and had a national impact.”

“That’s the positive, right? The negative is that there’s some things maybe that aren’t getting done that people think should get done, and they feel that there needs to be some change in how leadership is operating,” he adds.

Jill agrees there may be underlying factors behind Bailey’s sudden appointment. “Anytime you put ‘co-’ in front of something, it’s like, okay, what is actually happening right now?” she says.

Bedford suggests the new role might be a genuine effort to support Bongino, who, as the deputy director, has the enormous task of “[overseeing] the personnel of the FBI.”

“That’s tens of thousands of people that he’s got to deal with and got to manage. And Bongino, despite being a former officer, Secret Service agent, and despite having a very successful radio show and podcast, doesn’t have that kind of management experience,” he says.

The rumor in D.C., however, is that Bailey is there “to replace someone” — Bongino or perhaps even Kash Patel, Bedford says.

“That’s where it starts to get a little spicier because I think [replacing Patel] would start to really upset more people,” he adds, especially given Patel is the “main reason for why we have so much of this Russiagate information.”

Peterson, despite acknowledging Kash’s invaluable contributions to the Trump agenda, can’t deny that rumors are swirling that Patel’s leadership is lacking at the FBI.

“There is a lot of talk around town and elsewhere that that’s not happening and that some of these reports on the left, while no one wants to agree with them publicly, may have some validity to them in terms of how things are going over there at the FBI,” he says.

“We’ll have to wait and see, but the main thing I think we should take away from this is that Bailey is talented. Bailey is energetic, and they need more than two people at the top of this thing and whatever is going on over there. We need someone who is going to be aggressive and who’s going to actually clean house.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Did a COVID conspiracy turn a Christian preacher into an alleged Minnesota assassin?



Vance Boelter was a Christian preacher, father of five, and a former business adviser to two Democrat governors — and he’s now been accused of one of the most shocking killings in Minnesota history.

One Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were shot dead, while another lawmaker and his wife were seriously injured.

And the alleged gunman’s story isn’t making total sense, so Blaze News investigative journalist Joe Hanneman is doing his best to change that.

“We’re just starting to get into some of the nitty-gritty details,” Hanneman tells BlazeTV host Jill Savage and investigative journalist Steve Baker on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”


The suspect has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“I spent about six weeks digging into his background, because this story, from the beginning, just simply did not make sense. This was not a career criminal. This was not a criminal at all,” Hanneman says.

“His entire life up until about the middle of May stands at great odds to what happened on June 14. And so I figured there just has to be a story behind that, something that would give us some clues,” he continues.

Hanneman then made contact with Boelter in the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minnesota, through the jail’s messaging system.

“He and I spent the weekend texting back and forth, probably, I mean hundreds of texts. And he’s starting to unroll what he says is his story and the reason that he was at those houses that night, which, again, has another kind of bizarre twist to it — that he did not mean to shoot anyone. He didn’t plan to shoot anyone,” Hanneman explains.

“He was, he claims, going to make citizen arrests, and this was related to the clot shot. He was doing investigations, he said, for two years on the COVID-19 so-called vaccine and the deaths that it has caused,” he continues.

This is why Boelter claims he began working in the funeral industry.

“He says now that the reason for that is he was investigating these, what they call ‘sudden and unexpected.’ And that obviously, that’s been a big issue since the COVID-19 scamdemic came up,” Hanneman explains.

“So,” he adds, “I’m trying to peel this back with him. Slowly but surely, in 200 characters at a time on a text. So as long as he keeps talking, I hope to keep learning from him.”

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

No politics, just truth: What fuels Tulsi Gabbard’s MAGA stardom despite her leftist voting record



Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has become something of a superstar in the Trump administration. She’s bringing the accountability the American people have been begging for.

Blaze Media investigative journalist Steve Baker recently met with some of Gabbard’s personal staff, and they confirmed what the country is beginning to realize on its own: She’s the real deal.

“They're gushing about how resolute she is. The amazement in their faces when they talk about her — you never see that from anybody else … whether you're talking to the staff members of a congressman or you're talking about somebody that works at the FBI or works for one of the other agencies,” he tells Jill Savage and Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, hosts of “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

After the “document dump of all the Russiagate information,” which was spearheaded by Gabbard and the DNI, “there are whistleblowers that are saying, ‘I want to go directly to Gabbard because I actually believe and trust her,”’ says Jill.

The work Gabbard is doing — diving into scandals like Russiagate, election fraud, and politically motivated leaks within the intelligence community — is critical, says Peterson, because “we need to know exactly how many people in Washington, D.C., are assets, either formally or effectively, of some part of our government or other governments.”

“The problem isn't just that the Trump administration doesn't select the right people. There aren't right people in that apparatus. You put a few right people in there, and they're in the middle of the darkness; they're in the middle of thousands of people who are actually just working for that apparatus,” he explains. “So someone like Tulsi comes in with courage, and then all of a sudden you are going to have whistleblowers coming to her because she just doesn't care. She's actually trying to do the job.”

That desire to courageously seek the truth — not MAGA politics — is what makes Gabbard so excellent at her job, says Baker, reminding the panel that Gabbard was “left of Hillary … left of Joe Biden in her voting record.”

“The way that her team explains that to me is that the politics don't exist in her job. She — and this is their words — doesn't care which way the truth goes. She's just intent on getting the information out to the American people, and whatever it reveals, it reveals,” he says.

“I don't know philosophically if I'm on the same team with Tulsi, but I want to be the same type of person in my job and in my investigative journalism. … I don't care where the truth takes me at the end of the day.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

SCANDAL: Major university caught in new DEI cover-up



While President Donald Trump has been cracking down on the implementation of DEI at publicly funded universities since he got into office, not all schools are listening — and the Oversight Project is sniffing them out.

“We sent a FOIA request to UNC Chapel Hill, which is a public university, and we did the unthinkable. We asked for the syllabus of a number of professors, focusing basically on whether or not they were still teaching DEI and other garbage like that in defiance of President Trump’s executive order,” Kyle Brosnan tells BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

After one professor responded by throwing “what can only be described as a hissy fit” on LinkedIn, the Oversight Project was able to get its hands on the syllabi.

“And guess what? It’s full of DEI garbage. You know, it contains classes and lectures on why diversity programs fail and about white guilt and things like that,” Brosnan explains.


“I’ve taught at universities,” Peterson chimes in. “The syllabus is not a top-secret document, you know? This is something that, in fact, you want to share to the world. ... So, how do they even make this argument? Like, what’s the argument here?”

The professor and “his buddies on the left” claim it’s “intellectual property.”

“If you even think about it for a second, that’s crazy. I mean, particularly at these public universities, they’re funded by taxpayers,” Brosnan says.

“You’re right, though, Matt,” he continues. “You as a professor are trusted to endow your knowledge upon your students and show off your research that you do. You should be shouting that from the rooftops. You should be wanting students to see your syllabus.”

“But the fact that they’re putting barriers up and actually pretending to be the victim of a transparency organization is just crazy,” he adds.

Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

JD Vance GOES OFF on lib media frauds for their ‘Epstein scandal’ hypocrisy



Epstein’s egregious crimes were ongoing for decades, but not one political administration went after him. And after unwavering media criticism of President Trump’s handling of the Epstein files, JD Vance decided to remind the country of what inaction truly looks like.

“There’s an interesting thing about this case that the American media seems to totally ignore. For four years under Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, the media didn’t give a damn about the Epstein files or about the Epstein case,” Vance said.

“For 20 years, you had Obama and George W. Bush’s Department of Justice go easy on this guy. They didn’t fully investigate the case. They didn’t show any curiosity about the case. And now, Donald J. Trump is asking his Department of Justice to show full transparency. And somehow that’s a criticism of Donald J. Trump, and not Barack Obama and George W. Bush,” he added.

BlazeTV host Jill Savage is impressed with Vance’s handling of such a delicate situation.


“He’s actually going through and turning this back on the establishment, because this isn’t something that has just come up in the last six months. You guys, this is something that has been going on for years and years and years,” she tells BlazeTV host Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News: The Mandate.”

“The way that he went through and actually, rightfully so, put some blame on even W. Bush and Obama, it’s not just a Trump issue,” she adds.

“Well, what happened here,” Peterson replies, “is that the right, or the Bondi, you know, DOJ sort of came out and then balked a little bit, and there was a pause, right? And so they threw a punch, but it was sort of a half-hearted punch, and that got the left excited.”

“So the Democrats all of a sudden thought, ‘Oh, we finally have something.’ It took them a while,” he says.

“And then this was like the uppercut, you know, just right to the chin, saying, ‘Wait a minute, you guys want to talk about Epstein? You didn’t want to talk about Epstein for years. We actually are. You can screw off,’” he continues. “So, a very powerful turn of the frame.”

Want more from 'Blaze News | The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

MAGA’s biggest threat isn’t Democrats — it’s internal sabotage



Ask a MAGA supporter what the biggest threat to the Make America Great Again movement is, and there’s a good chance he’ll say Democrats or progressivism.

But according to Andy Roth, president of the State Freedom Caucus Network, that’s incorrect. It’s the fake Republicans running red states whom we should be concerned about.

On a recent episode of “Blaze News: The Mandate,” Roth joined Jill Savage and Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson to expose how RINOs are sabotaging MAGA internally.

“Red states, almost all of them literally, are governed by Democrats that have an R after their name because they live in districts that are very red. They want to get into office, and they know they can’t have a D after their name, so they put an R after their name, get elected, and then vote like Democrats,” Roth says.

He points to states like South Carolina, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota as examples of red states with RINO leadership.

“It’s one of the most under-reported stories, I think, in the country,” he says.

Thankfully, the State Freedom Caucus Network is working overtime to address this issue. The conservative organization supports the creation of freedom caucuses in state legislatures across the U.S. These caucuses, modeled after the House Freedom Caucus in Congress, are groups of Republican state lawmakers who push for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and conservative policies such as opposing federal overreach, promoting election integrity, and resisting certain social policies.

“When we have … a state freedom caucus, we come in there, and we contrast ourselves with these fake Republicans so much to the point where the voters are like, ‘Wait, I guess I have a squishy Republican for a state rep or a state senator because this freedom caucus is speaking the truth,’” Roth tells Jill and Matthew.

And it’s working. Roth points to Wyoming as an example. “In Wyoming, we had only eight members in our freedom caucus, but they quickly doubled to 16, and now they’re in charge of the Wyoming House,” he says. “The speaker is a Freedom Caucus member; the pro tem [pro tempore] is a Freedom Caucus member.”

As a result, “For the first time ever, [Wyoming] passed the property tax cuts, universal school choice,” and “banned noncitizens from voting.”

“We have the model. We know how it works. We just need to do it in all 50 states,” Roth says.

“Is Wyoming indicative of a trend you see across the country?” asks Peterson, who’s hopeful a freedom caucus might find its way to Texas, the state he and Jill call home.

“We need another election cycle in Texas before we can do anything here, but Texas needs a freedom caucus, and the country needs a Texas Freedom Caucus,” Roth says.

“It feels like you can mess with Texas right now, and I don’t want that to happen,” Jill says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from 'Blaze News | The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.