Dave Chappelle on Charlie Kirk’s Murder: ‘I Feel Better.’ Kirk Stood Up for Him in 2022.

Dave Chappelle stood on the stage at Madison Square Garden this weekend, in front of a sold-out New York crowd, and said the quiet part out loud: Charlie Kirk’s murder has put him in a good mood.

“I feel f***ed up saying this. It’s scary being a public speaker,” Chappelle said in a phone video from inside the show. “And I mean look, ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered … and I shouldn’t say this publicly but, I feel better.” The room laughed. Some people clapped. “I know I shouldn’t say that, but it’s just a feeling,” he went on. “I didn’t ask to feel this way. I just be driving around like, ‘Why am I in such a good mood? Oh!’”

Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was shot in the neck on Sept. 10, 2025, while taking questions from students at Utah Valley University. He left behind his wife, Erika, and two small children. Tyler Robinson, 23, is charged with his murder.

The man who had his back

Here’s the part most of the outrage posts skip. Chappelle knows exactly what it’s like to be attacked on stage for what he says, and Charlie Kirk was in his corner when it happened.

On May 3, 2022, at the Hollywood Bowl, a 23-year-old named Isaiah Lee rushed the stage and tackled Chappelle mid-set. Lee was carrying a replica handgun with a knife blade inside. Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón’s office declined to file felony charges and sent the case to the city attorney, who filed four misdemeanors, Reuters reported at the time.

Kirk didn’t shrug. Two days after the attack he wrote this:

Read that again with what happened in Orem 16 months ago. Kirk warned that letting an armed man walk on a stage attack sends the message that “public acts of political violence are justifiable—and even encouraged.” Then he was shot from a rooftop in front of a crowd of college kids. The man he defended now gets laughs off it.

He used to say the opposite

This isn’t even Chappelle’s first Kirk bit. It’s a turn from his last one. In his Netflix special “The Unstoppable…,” released last December, he told the audience the killing rattled him: “If you talk for a living and see Charlie Kirk get murdered that way, I’m gonna be honest … I was shook.” A few minutes later, after joking about the messages on the bullets, he added: “I’m not making light of Charlie Kirk dying.”

Eleven months later, he’s telling a sold-out Garden it lifts his mood.

What the room heard

The Garden shows, back-to-back Friday and Saturday nights, closed Chappelle’s “Karmageddon” tour and opened the New York Comedy Festival. They were billed as phone-free, with phones locked in pouches. The short clip still got out, and it doesn’t show what came right before or after the line.

One man who was in the seats Saturday put it even more bluntly. Writer Rob Henderson posted from the show Saturday night, attributing these words to Chappelle:

Henderson’s wording and the clip’s wording aren’t identical, which is normal for a man writing from memory in an arena. The point is the same in both: Kirk’s death, good mood.

The backlash

By Sunday morning the clip was everywhere, and the reaction from the right was close to unanimous. Elon Musk, the man Chappelle once brought on stage in San Francisco in 2022, kept it to six words:

Musk’s post passed 1.3 million views in under two hours. Benny Johnson put it next to the 2022 attack: “When Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage, Charlie stood up for him. After Charlie was murdered in an act of political violence himself, Chappelle is joking about it.”

Why it matters

Chappelle built his last decade on one idea: a comedian should be able to say anything, and the mob shouldn’t get to shut him up. Conservatives backed him on that, loudly, when Netflix staff walked out over his trans jokes and when a man rushed him with a blade. Kirk was one of them.

Free speech cuts both ways. Chappelle can say it. Millions of people who stood up for him are now saying what they think of it. It’s also the second time this week that a room full of people has laughed at Kirk’s killing, after the “I’ve Had It” podcast hosts cracked up at a post about “digging up Charlie Kirk and doing it again.” That one cost the show four sponsors. Chappelle’s audience is bigger, and so is his paycheck.

What happens next

As of Sunday morning we found no statement from Chappelle, Netflix, Live Nation or Madison Square Garden. In Utah, Fourth District Judge Tony Graf has said he’ll rule on a trial schedule for Kirk’s accused killer on Monday, Nov. 9, according to the Deseret News. Erika Kirk has kept running Turning Point. The man her husband once defended is still on tour.