A clip of conservative radio legend Rush Limbaugh praising Charlie Kirk in 2018 made its way around social media on Wednesday. The clip surfaced after conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck placed Limbaugh’s famous golden microphone next to Kirk’s empty seat while hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

During a radio broadcast on January 11, 2018, Limbaugh said that he’d met Kirk for the first time a month prior, when Kirk was in South Florida for a conference.

“They brought Charlie Kirk to the golf course to meet me about a month ago. He was in town to set up this Turning Point thing, and they brought him to the golf course to meet me,” Limbaugh said on his nationally broadcast radio show. “He told me how he grew up in a home where my program was on all the time. He was just effusively complimentary to me, which I, of course, understood and told him he’s very wise. His family’s very wise. He chuckled; he laughed.”

“This is the kind of guy that you can see really becoming big in politics as he gets older,” Limbaugh added. “He just has the carriage, the personality, the charisma.”

Limbaugh then said that he remembered that when Bill Clinton was in college, people around Clinton were saying that he would become president one day.

“I’m telling you, people are saying the same things about Charlie Kirk,” Limbaugh added.

FLASHBACK: Watch Rush Limbaugh describe meeting Charlie Kirk for the first time.

“I dont want to jinx it… but this is the kind of guy you can see really becoming big in politics as he gets older”

As a huge Rush fan, this made me smile.

Aired January 11th 2018 pic.twitter.com/hdZhmkBrYH

— Charles Weber (@CWBOCA) September 17, 2025

Limbaugh died in February 2021 at 70 years old after a battle with lung cancer. Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump at the 2020 State of the Union. After Kirk was assassinated last week, Trump said he would also award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

While hosting Kirk’s show on Wednesday, a teary-eyed Beck told a story of how Kirk told him when they first met that he wanted to become like The Blaze founder. “Let me translate: ‘I want to be Rush Limbaugh.’ He didn’t want to be me,” Beck said. “He wanted to be Rush Limbaugh. … And I remember thinking, kid, maybe some day because I think you have it.”

Beck added that Kirk “surpassed Rush Limbaugh by miles.”

“I’m a broadcaster, Rush was a broadcaster, but Charlie was a broadcaster and a narrowcaster. Charlie was a pastor and a priest, and listening to the way he could argue and think differently, he was a rabbi as well, and one of the best. He was a political organizer. He was a political think tank himself. He was a compassionate friend. He surpassed Rush Limbaugh by miles.”

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles similarly said that Kirk a “generational voice in politics,” adding that he “would have been president.”

“His friends knew it, his many, many admirers knew it, and his enemies, to whom he was always so gracious, they knew it too,” Knowles added. “Everybody knew it.”

FBI Director Kash Patel went toe to toe with several Democrats during a Tuesday hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, clashing with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) over the release of files related to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Raskin, who led the second impeachment hearings during President Donald Trump’s first term, heavily suggested that Patel was stonewalling Democrats in their persistent efforts to make the Epstein files public — efforts in which they showed no interest while former President Joe Biden was in office — and that he was likely doing so at Trump’s request. Patel repeatedly reminded Raskin that numerous court orders prevented him from simply releasing the files.

WATCH:

🚨 ‘I’M NOT GONNA BREAK THE LAW TO SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITY!’: Kash Patel beats down the insufferable Rep. Jamie Raskin, holds nothing back. pic.twitter.com/LLzsGfrEWx

“YOU didn’t join us when we filed in the courts to release the court orders. You could’ve. You have lawyers. You…

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 17, 2025

“You were sworn in as director more than 200 days ago. Now the Black Book is under your direct control. So why haven’t you released the names of Epstein’s co-conspirators in the rape and sex trafficking of young women and girls?” Raskin demanded.

Patel pointed to the multiple court orders and a previous agreement Epstein had reached with federal prosecutors, noting that the disgraced financier had been free for 12 years and previous administrations — including former President Barack Obama’s — had done nothing to move his case forward.

“Has anyone released more information on Epstein than I have? Did Comey? Did Wray?” Patel asked, and Raskin insisted that it wasn’t enough.

“Why don’t you just release the entire file as you promised to do?” Raskin asked.

“I literally just told you, there are multiple federal court orders, I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel shot back. “You didn’t join us when we filed in the courts to release the court orders. You could’ve. You have lawyers. You could’ve shown up. You didn’t do that!”

“That’s a tiny fraction of the material we’re talking about,” Raskin insisted.

Patel pointed out that if the information had not been released, Raskin could not possibly know how much information there was. “How do you know that? Have you seen everything?”

“It’s all misdirection,” Raskin claimed as his time expired.