Kirk’s friends compared his assassination to that of President John F. Kennedy and said such jokes about him are inevitable because he “is an icon” now.

Charlie Kirk Show team slams Pete Davidson’s ‘distasteful’ joke about assassination: ‘Hollywood is a pretty dark place’

Kirk's friends compared his assassination to that of President John F. Kennedy and said such jokes about him are inevitable because he "is an icon" now.

Joey Nolfi

Joey Nolfi is a senior writer at *. *Since 2016, his work at EW includes RuPaul’s Drag Race video interviews, Oscars predictions, and more.

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May 12, 2026 9:46 a.m. ET

Pete Davidson; Charlie Kirk. Credit:

Kevin Mazur/Getty; Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty

- Charlie Kirk's podcast team has slammed comedian Pete Davidson's "distasteful" joke about the conservative star's assassination.

- Daisy Phelps compared the joke to past jokes about the death of Davidson's father, who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

- Davidson made a joke about Kirk's death on stage at a Netflix roast of Kevin Hart.

Charlie Kirk's friends have reacted to actor Pete Davidson's joke about the controversial conservative influencer's assassination, which the *Saturday Night Live *alum made on stage over the weekend at Netflix's roast special starring Kevin Hart.

During the special, Davidson referenced Kirk's 2025 death in a joke about another polarizing figure, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, quipping that "Tony reminds me of Charlie Kirk, in that he definitely has been on camera letting a guy unload in his throat."

On the latest episode of the *Charlie Kirk Show *podcast, Kirk's friends and team members Andrew Kolvet, Blake Neff, and Daisy Phelps slammed Davidson's material as "distasteful" at the event.

"It's not that we don't love humor and we can't laugh along with actually funny jokes," Kolvet admitted. "This is about somebody who was murdered in really the most grotesque, public way imaginable, and he happens to be our close friend."

Pete Davidson at the Netflix Is a Joke roast of Kevin Hart.

Kevin Mazur/Getty

He added, "I don't think it was funny, and when I saw the clip this morning, my instinct was, I just cringed," before stressing that he didn't want to "tell comedians that you can't" make jokes, and that he feels "comedy can be a powerful outlet" for some.

"For this particular moment," however, "it just felt distasteful," Kolvet said.

Phelps called the debate a "question of morality" and defended Davidson's right to tell the joke, but asked if he wondered if he "should" tell the joke or not, and that he needed "to be called to a higher standard" on stage.

"Comedy has more allowance to be crass, you can lean that way. The issue I have with this more so than anything, we're talking about Pete Davidson's roast that they did of him, Pete Davidson's dad died in 9/11, he was a firefighter in New York. He died going up in one of the towers and the tower collapsed," Phelps recalled of jokes other comedians have made about Davidson, both at the Netflix event and in a prior roast special, 2015's *Comedy Central Roast* of Justin Bieber.

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"His roast was filled with jokes about that, which I equally think is disgusting," Phelps said, later elaborating, "I would have loved for him to have thought about, hey, I grew up without my dad, there are two kids out there growing up without their dad right now, the less difficult I can make this on them throughout their lives, the better."

Neff said he found people "dunking on Erika" Kirk in the aftermath of her husband's assassination to be "more appalling" than Davidson's roast joke, and admitted that he found a positive amid the controversy.

"Charlie is an iconic figure, a very famous figure. Even people who didn't follow Charlie's stuff while he was alive, his death was basically the biggest news story in the country for arguably the entire year," Neff said, and even compared Davidson's material to ongoing jokes about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"In a dark way, I am happy that Charlie is an iconic figure because he deserves to be," Neff observed. "The downside is he's going to be a subject of humor because anything great is subject to humor."

Kolvet finished the 10-minute segment by stressing that, "Of course I found it distasteful" because, in his opinion, "Hollywood is a pretty dark place and they make pretty raunchy, bad, inappropriate jokes."

Still, Kirk, to him, "is an icon" and "a figure of history" that will, inevitably, become the butt of jokes.

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"That has upsides, that has downsides," Kolvert finished. "So, it is what it is."

** has reached out to a representative for Davidson for comment.

In 2025, Kirk was shot and killed during an outdoor speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. The polarizing figure previously founded the far-right nonprofit organization Turning Point USA.

Watch Kirk's friends react to Davidson's joke about his assassination in the *Charlie Kirk Show* podcast clip above.

- Stand-Up Comedy

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