CNN commentator Van Jones revealed this week that conservative activist Charlie Kirk reached out to him privately on September 9, just one day before he was shot and killed at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, to invite him to a civil debate on crime and race.
The disclosure comes ahead of Kirk’s funeral on Sunday, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of mourners, including President Donald Trump. Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated on Sept. 10 by a rooftop sniper during a campus event.
Jones said he first discovered the message after Kirk’s death.
“Hey, Van, I mean it. I’d love to have you on my show to have a respectful conversation about crime and race,” Kirk wrote, according to Jones. “I would be a gentleman, as I know you would be as well. We can disagree about the issues agreeably.”
Jones described his reaction in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“We were beefing. We were going at it online, on air, and then after he died, after he was murdered, my team called and said, ‘Van, he was trying to reach you,’” Jones recalled. “Dialog, let’s be gentlemen together. He says, ‘Let’s disagree agreeably.’ So I’m sitting on this, and I’m watching the whole country talk about civil war, censorship, justifying murder about this guy. This guy is reaching out to his mortal enemy saying we need to be gentlemen, sit down together and disagree agreeably. And the next day, he’s killed.”
Jones said he decided to make the message public to honor Kirk’s final attempt at dialogue.
“We were not friends at all. But you praise the good when it’s time to memorialize somebody,” he said. “He was not for censorship. He was not for civil war. He was not for violence. He was for dialog, open debate and dialog, even with me.”
When asked whether he would have accepted Kirk’s invitation, Jones said he likely would have sought another venue but welcomed the idea of a serious discussion.
In an opinion piece for CNN.com, Jones wrote that Americans now face a choice: “more violence, more outrage, more censorship, or a different way.” He said Kirk’s final message to him offered “a way out” through civil discourse.
The revelation adds a poignant layer to the recent public dispute between Jones and Kirk. Their clash began after the Aug. 22 murder of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death in Charlotte, North Carolina. The suspect, Decarlos Brown, a Black man with a long arrest record, reportedly told police, “I got that white girl.”
Kirk argued the killing was racially motivated, while Jones pushed back.
The disagreement spilled into social media. Jones later claimed those posts triggered waves of online hostility directed at him.
Conservative commentator Natalie Jean Beisner criticized Jones’ account, writing on X: “It’s psychotic to lie about Charlie this way … just like it would’ve been psychotic for him to publicly threaten you and then privately be a good guy who just wanted to have a good faith discussion.”
In the post, Beisner notes a claim by Van Jones that Charlie Kirk’s criticism “sparked an online torrent of racist death threats against me, the likes of which I have rarely seen.”
Despite the heated debate, Kirk’s private message suggested he wanted to turn the feud into dialogue. Jones said the note reflects the direction the country should take in the wake of rising political violence.
“Charlie Kirk’s last message to me was pointing a way out,” he said. “Civil discourse, civil dialog, debate. Let’s disagree agreeably.”