Andrew Kolvet was Charlie Kirk's close friend and the producer (and sometimes guest host) of his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. In an interview with Ross Douthat published today, he described in detail how he came from Hollywood and wound up working for Kirk.
Kolvet: I was actually living and working in Hollywood. I had a job working with Mark Burnett of “The Voice,” “Celebrity Apprentice,” “Survivor” and “Shark Tank.” He was doing those projects, and then at some point he got into faith-based content. I was thrown into the deep end: One day we would be at “Jimmy Kimmel” or we’d be at one of the nightly shows, and then we would go to CNN and then we’d go to Fox, and then we’d be at a church.
Mark’s chief of staff at the time, a guy named Johnnie Moore, started a P.R. company, and he asked me to start it with him. I wanted to write screenplays, actually. Doing the L.A. thing, my head was still very much in that space. I wanted to make content. So I kind of refused and refused. And then he said: Why don’t you just work a couple of days a week? Help me get this thing off the ground, and then you can do your own thing.
Along the way, we started bringing on conservative clients. PragerU was one of those clients. We ended up bringing on The Blaze as a client. And at one point, Charlie came across the path of Johnnie in Southern Florida at some event. And he said: Hey, you should look into this guy. He’s young, but I think he’s got a lot of energy. You should contact him; here’s his email.
So I reached out to him, said: Hey, we’d love to talk about maybe working with you — and he basically ghosted for a while. And eventually he had some news story that he tried to handle on his own that didn’t go so well and kind of blew up, and then he called me.
I got to work with him via the agency for about a year. And then he basically said: Hey, I like you. I’ll hire you. I’ll be your first client. And I also want to start a podcast, and I want you to help me do that.
The show started in 2019 as a weekly podcast and eventually became a three-hour daily radio show with Salem Media. During that time, Kolvet wasn't just working on the show, he was doing booking for Kirk, traveling with him and helping get him ready for live events. On the day Kirk was killed, he wasn't there but hew was texting Kirk in the hour before he was shot.
Kolvet: So I guest-hosted the show that morning. It was uneventful. And we had a prerecord for hour two, actually — it’s probably too in the weeds. But he’s texting me on his way, and he’s going over talking points about polygamy because he is going to Utah, and why is monogamy important?
And we’re just rapid-fire — these are our thoughts on why monogamy is advanced societal tech and ——
Douthat: The killer app of Western civilization.
Kolvet: Exactly. It directs male energies in the right direction, societal building — all these things. That was about, I think, 33 minutes before he was killed.
Eventually the conversation focused on what has happened since Kirk's death and, in particular, the daily stream of attacks coming from Candace Owens. But it takes Douthat a couple of tries to get Kolvet to say much about Candace's current preoccupation.
Douthat: For people who don’t know all the conspiracy theories, you’re referencing the fact that some of the theories are basically: Obviously, someone on Charlie’s team must have set him up —
Kolvet: Sure. Or he was betrayed. And I do my best, and this is why I’m so grateful that I have faith, because I’m able to pray for people that are taking that energy and directing it at people Charlie loved, his closest friends. That gives me, I think, an anchor in a pretty tumultuous storm otherwise...
Douthat: Again, for people who are watching or listening who don’t know exactly, there is constant programming on her very, very popular podcast that is a kind of conspiratorial drama about the betrayal and murder of Charlie Kirk in which Israel features prominently, and people close to Charlie ——...
Kolvet: I don’t know what people are really buying. I do think that there is — and you see this with Netflix — you see the true crime genre of things. It’s a successful genre. Women seem to especially be drawn to it. So I think there’s a big group that tune in just to see what’s coming next in this unfolding narrative.
And I will say, I will never look at a conspiracy theory the same way again. Because when you’re close to something, and you know what’s true and what’s not — you know, one of the allegations is that Bibi Netanyahu is offering Charlie all this money. That’s not true. There was never an offer. If there was, nobody on the team knows about it...
Just having been on this side of a conspiracy theory, and you just realize there’s a pattern to this, where they will allege connections that might have a grain of truth, an ounce of truth, and then they will leap to a conclusion that is so wild and you’re like: How did you put one and one together and then allege this from these two things? Or throw in a third element that wasn’t even true, and then that spun it in a whole different direction, and then all these people believe it and distrust you, and now you have this pall of doubt cast upon your person?
That’s the part that I didn’t fully appreciate, being on that side of a conspiracy theory, as opposed to being on this side of it. And you’re just like: OK, the facts have to matter somewhere in this equation.
It's a nice idea, that the facts have to matter somewhere but clearly that's not the case with Candace Owens. She's not offering facts, she's offering a stream of consciousness conspiracy theory which ropes in anything that catches her eye. One day it's Egyptian planes and the next it's a specific address in Wilmington, Delaware. Then it's people in maroon shirts, French business owners, French assassins. Part of the appeal is that you literally have no idea what she'll say from day to day because she's making it up as she goes.
Christopher Rufo issued a warning yesterday that there was a real danger to allowing right-wing media to be swallowed up by this type of "thinking."
The Right’s media apparatus is how the Right teaches its followers how to think, and it’s currently getting consumed by conspiracy, psychodrama, and tabloid conflicts. If left unchecked, it will turn the audience into the equivalent of a Third World click farm.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) December 10, 2025
A few hours later he tweeted this:
This is an epistemic fork: you can stick to the path of observable reality, or you can spin out to podcast-induced psychosis. Choose wisely. https://t.co/MSRVrtTp56
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) December 11, 2025
Posobiec's tweet reads:
The case against Tyler Robinson is straightforward. They pulled his DNA off the actual Mauser 98 itself (trigger, bolt handle, everywhere you’d touch if you were working the action), plus the towel he used as a cheek rest, the screwdriver he left behind, and even inside the spent casing that popped out after he pulled the trigger. We’re talking a one-in-billions-of-trillions match, the kind of number that makes “wrong guy” mathematically impossible. On top of that, the state crime lab will need to confirm in court the bullet that killed Charlie has the exact same rifling marks as test rounds fired through that specific Mauser. So unless someone wants to claim the Utah prosecutors are dumb enough to fake world-class DNA and ballistics evidence in the most watched case of the decade (knowing any decent defense team can send it all to an independent lab and blow the whole thing up in five minutes flat, getting them disbarred and the case tossed), yeah, Tyler Robinson is the guy who climbed on that roof and shot Charlie Kirk
It really would help if the trial of Tyler Robinson were coming up soon so that all the evidence would be released. But his trial is still months away, which means Candace Owens can just keep going like this for months to come.
Finally, TPUSA is doing a livestream next Monday to respond to Owens, but as I've said before i have no real hope it will matter to her. The nature of conspiracy theories is that they are immune to being disproven. Owens will either deny the facts or incorporate parts of them into her theory. It's exactly how she responded to Erika Kirk asking her to stop this week. If you turn on Candace, you become her enemy.
Watch Candace Owens' FLIP from praising Erika Kirk to SUDDENLY ATTACKING her.
— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) December 11, 2025
For months, Candace Owens has told her fans to “put themselves in Erika Kirk’s shoes,” insisting that Erika knew Charlie Kirk better than anyone and is a genuinely good person in a deeply loving… pic.twitter.com/VhBRcTuiAM
