Today on The BradCast: Charlie Kirk was a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobe. He also did not deserve to be killed for any of it. Prove me wrong, as Kirk liked to say, on either of those points. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
I’d have otherwise been happy to move on from the topic at this point, but for the inappropriate lionization of Kirk by, not just the Right, but the mainstream media in the days since his horrific murder in Utah last week, allegedly by a 22-year old man from a religious, Republican family from the state. Kirk no more deserves to be lionized than he deserved to be shot and killed by a longtime firearm aficionado.
It’s also difficult to move on given the way the President of the United States and his Administration and his supporters are using Kirk’s death — lying about it — as a weapon to declare war on their perceived political enemies, on civic democracy and on the Constitution itself.
Donald Trump has now repeatedly blamed “radical left” “scum” for Kirk’s murder, despite any evidence yet to support such a claim. Despite being the worst demonizer to ever lead the American government, Trump claims the attack on Kirk is the “tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”
He has now promised to use the federal government to go after those people and organizations that he believes to be organizers and “funders” of the “radical left”, which he has repeatedly referred to (again, without evidence) as “fascists”, “Marxists”, “communists” and “worse”. Despite the countless, recent, deadly attacks by Trump supporters against elected Democratic officials — and despite his own Vice President (Vance) and HHS Secretary (Kennedy), comparing him to Hitler — Trump insisted on Sunday that “the problem is on the left. It’s not on the right.”
Kirk’s killing took place, however, on the very same day that a 16-year old boy in Colorado — who authorities claim to have been “radicalized” by an “extremist network” and obsessed with antisemitism, Nazis and Holocaust denial — went on a gun rampage through his Evergreen, CO high school (near Columbine) before taking his own life.
Oddly enough, Trump has yet to mention one word about that incident, to my knowledge, even though it sent teenage students to the hospital in critical condition. Nor has he called for those who encouraged and funded and radicalized that shooter to be brought to justice, for some reason.
And, while Kirk is being lauded for championing free speech (he did, hateful as it may have been, at least at his personal appearances), he also organized a nationwide effort to tape and target school teachers and college professors for firing for not using the right kind of speech. With Kirk’s death, that effort has now kicked into overdrive, as teachers, random Americans and even members of the media are being fired for merely quoting Kirk’s actual, often wildly offensive words on social media.
All of this, I would argue — the attack on the First Amendment by the Right — a convenient way for them to avoid their very serious problem with political violence against their perceived enemies on the non-Right and a way to not have to deal with the nation’s worsening gun violence epidemic which they, like Kirk before he died, continue to countenance through their words of support and lack of actions.
As Kirk would say, prove me wrong. We opened the phones up in the second part of today’s show to allow listeners to do exactly that. How do you think it went?…
(Comments are now closed.)