Sen. Ted Cruz mourned Charlie Kirk on his “Verdict” podcast and an extremely talented, impressive individual, and talked about his personal experience being exposed to the graphic video of Kirk’s death repeatedly online this week.

SEN. TED CRUZ: I’m heartbroken. Charlie was a good friend, as you noted. I’ve known Charlie for over a decade. I met him when he was 18 years old. He was a young kid. He was coming out of Chicago. He was just starting Turning Point. He had this vision. He had this vision for energizing young people, and he was, as an 18-year-old, Charlie was impressive. You could see how smart he was, you could see how driven he was. You could see the clarity of the vision that he had. He knew exactly what he wanted to do to energize young people. And it was something that when he first started talking about it, a lot of people disbelieved him. I got to say this week, this week was a really hard week. It was number one, it was the anniversary of 9/11 and that that is a national tragedy that you and I both lived through and lost friends in 9/11. But then this week, out of nowhere, watching, first seeing the tweet of shots fired and then Charlie Kirk shot and then the fog of misinformation. I’ll tell you, as soon as I saw just the tweet that he may have been shot, I pulled up my phone and texted him, and I just said, Hey, man, are you okay? I’m praying for you right now. And I didn’t know then if he was, it’s hard to tell when the first tweet goes out, what the truth is and what was not. I was obviously hoping maybe there’d been a shot fired, but it had missed him. It wasn’t clear he’d been hit at the time, so I was really hoping I’d get a text back: Yeah, I’m fine. I’m here. Obviously, I did not get a response to that. You know, I talked to Charlie just a few weeks ago, and it’s, I gotta say, what happened it is evil. It. It is wrong. Just about everyone I know is really shaken up by it. I will say one of the worst parts when it happened pretty quickly, the video got out there on X of his being shot in the throat and it was, I’m sure you’ve seen the video. It’s a graphic video, and on X, for me, it was on autoplay. So, like, I kept seeing the same thing over and over and over again, like you couldn’t look at X without seeing it auto-play. I don’t think in my life I’ve ever seen a friend of mine get shot, be killed, and the afternoon it happened, I watched him shot and killed over and over and over again, and it’s just screwed up. I mean, he was extraordinary, and he leaves a big legacy, and on Verdict today, we’re going to talk about that legacy. We’re going to talk about who Charlie Kirk was. We’re going to talk about what he meant to me, to you, what he meant to millions across the country, and what I got to say, Ben, what the hell is wrong with this country that you have lunatics who say I don’t like what you’re saying. I don’t like your politics, and so I’m going to murder you. I mean this played out almost exactly like the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler with a gunman with a rifle on a roof and had President Trump has had his head been two inches to the side, he would have been killed that day. And Charlie was — it’s beyond horrific. … A lot of folks in the media, a lot of Democrats, are trying to portray him as somehow extreme. Look, probably the thing that most characterized Charlie was his willingness and eagerness to engage in conversation with those who disagreed with them, and to engage using compassion, listening to them, understanding them, treating them with dignity, treating them with respect. That’s something we need a whole lot more of it. … I want to say this also, when you look at all of Charlie’s characteristics, one that was most extraordinary was he was a deeply believing Christian. His faith was real. It mattered to him. And he was a voice for the gospel. And Charlie is with Jesus in heaven right now. And his role of presenting the Good News of the Gospel with intelligence and joy. That was a powerful legacy. And I got to say, there are very, very few people in particular who are doing that and spreading the gospel to young people. You have pastors and churches, but Charlie’s mission was reaching a whole lot of people who might never go to a church. And that’s a legacy. That’s a legacy.

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