President Trump has tapped former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino to become Kash Patel’s deputy FBI director beginning next month. In December 2023, Bongino signed a multiyear extension of his contract with syndicator Westwood One to continue his weekday radio program which airs in the same timeslot as the late talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh.
Dan Bongino’s show—which was also distributed as a podcast—was a reflection of the man: former NYPD officer, Secret Service agent, onetime candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland and former host of a TV show for the National Rifle Association. In other words, he had “chops” for a daily radio talk show giving conservative spin on breaking news and Washington policy.
Bongino transitioning to becoming deputy director of the FBI soon — don’t start me on why that viper’s nest needs a good shakeup—has started wild speculation within the radio industry. (Full disclosure: I am part of that industry, serving as Vice President of News & Talk Programming for Dallas- based Salem Radio Network.)
Programmers and media publications are now scrambling to answer the wrong question: “Who will Westwood One choose to replace Dan Bongino in his radio daypart?”
That’s the wrong question for two reasons: first, nobody can “replace” Dan Bongino…although someone will be tapped by his former syndicator to sit in Dan’s chair from Noon to 3PM weekdays. Secondly, the answer isn’t just who should fill Dan’s chair, but rather who should have listeners ears during that daypart up and down the radio band? The clear answer is Salem Radio Network’s Charlie Kirk.
There has never been a more hard-charging, dynamic and impactful media personality than Charlie Kirk. His 12 Noon to 3PM talk show on the Salem Radio Network serves a growing number of outlets—currently numbered at 507—including terrestrial stations and HD platforms. Charlie’s podcast is a top performer among conservative podcasting, he’s a TikTok sensation and beyond the microphone he has continued—even expanded—Rush Limbaugh’s legacy as the most powerful voice in conservative media.
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The New York Times—which focused on him in a lengthy profile last month—calls Charlie Kirk “the youth whisperer of the American Right,” noting that “Like so many others in the MAGA ecosystem, Kirk is acutely attuned to wherever the Trump-related action is. The difference is that Kirk always seems to find his way to the center of the action whenever he shows up to it.” This cheapens and diminishes the powerful nationwide youth organization that Kirk founded—Turning Point USA—which not only electrifies young people but engages them to take political action in numbers Limbaugh (whom I revere and honor) could only dream of at the height of his popularity.
At Turning Point USA events such as “AmericaFEST” in Phoenix last December, Charlie Kirk routinely draws between 10,000 and 20,000 young—primarily college age—political activists. In 2025’s version of the old “Rush To Excellence” tours, Charlie honeycombs American university campuses sounding the clarion call of freedom and raising the flag for Donald J. Trump.
(Keen observers spotted Kirk inside the U.S. Capitol on January 20th only a few feet from Trump as he took the oath as our 47th president.)
Nutjobs in the Associated Press and on MSNBC like to distort Charlie Kirk’s appearances on FOX News or college campuses, focusing on the protesters who inevitably show up. But they rarely note how he engages one-on-one with screaming protesters, reasons with them, and how he seeks to find common ground as he addresses them with respect and with facts they cannot refute.
This is not unlike the myopic, negative spin legacy media has always used on everyone from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, and from Rush Limbaugh to the new FBI deputy chief Dan Bongino…whose name they invariably diminish by referring to Dan as just “a Right Wing podcaster.”
Charle Kirk also puts his money where his mouth is: he talks the talk but also walks the walk. In 2024, thousands of listeners—including my wife and one of her former college roommates from Baylor—uprooted themselves for a week of door-knocking in the key state of Arizona, encouraging voters to get to the polls early. Turning Point USA is credited by honest observers as having “turned” the 2024 election for Donald Trump in crucial battleground states.
It all adds up to Charlie Kirk being the one person on American radio who is able to unlock what paid consultants and programming gurus have sought for decades: “How do we make the talk radio audience younger?” By conquering radio, podcasting, social media, TikTok, digital and—no doubt—technologies yet to be invented, Charlie Kirk is a one in a million talent.
So former Bongino affiliates station owners have a simple choice: you can wait like Pavlov’s dog to see who his syndicator will serve up to “replace” Dan or you have the opportunity right now—today—to sign on with the fastest- growing and most electrifying media personality in America, Charlie Kirk.
Choose wisely. Your listeners—and your bottom line—deserve nothing less.
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