Dave Chappelle told a sold-out Madison Square Garden he’s felt ‘better’ ever since Charlie Kirk was murdered — and got cackles from the New York City crowd.
The comedian made the remark during back-to-back weekend shows that closed his “Karmageddon” tour and opened the New York Comedy Festival.
“I feel f–ked up saying this. It’s scary being a public speaker,” Chappelle said in a clip that circulated X on Saturday night. “And I mean look, ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered … and I shouldn’t say this publicly but, I feel better.”
Laughter and scattered applause followed.
“I know I shouldn’t say that, but it’s just a feeling,” he continued.
“I didn’t ask to feel this way. I just be driving around like, ‘Why am I in such a good mood? Oh!’”
The clip is less than a minute long and offers no further explanation; what came before and after it is not clear.
The show was advertised as phone-free, with attendees’ devices sealed in Yondr pouches.
Rob Henderson, a writer who said he attended the show Saturday, posted his own account of the line hours before the video surfaced.
“I’m so happy Charlie Kirk was killed. I can’t help it, it’s involuntary,” Henderson wrote, attributing the words to Chappelle.
Henderson, who said he was Kirk’s final long-form interview guest, later wrote that the second sentence “struck me as particularly odd.
Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was shot dead Sept. 10, 2025, while speaking at Utah Valley University. Tyler Robinson has been charged with his murder.
Eleven months ago, Chappelle reacted to the subject differently.
In his December Netflix special “The Unstoppable…,” he said the shooting had rattled him.
“If you talk for a living and see Charlie Kirk get murdered that way, I’m gonna be honest, I was shook,” Chappelle said at the time
Early reports that the bullets bore pro-transgender messages, he told that audience, left him thinking, “Oh no! I’m dead as fried chicken!”
He also rejected comparisons between Kirk and Martin Luther King Jr. as “a reach.”
