Remembering Charlie Kirk

Newt reflects on the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk, a vibrant figure dedicated to fostering dialogue and civility in America.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
It was an enormous shock to learn that Charlie had
been killed. The fact is that he was such an
enormous figure, had so much energy, was so totally committed
to freedom and to helping America find its way back,

(00:35):
and was so courageous in going into campuses and neighborhoods
talking to people who he knew were the other side,
but doing it deliberately to create a common dialogue and
a common sense as Americans wouldn't solve this. I'd known
Charlie Kirk for a long time, and I'd admired him.
We'd done a number of things together. We had a

(00:58):
very emotional podcast together at the Republican Convention just a
few days after President Trump had been shot, and the
since we had then of how dangerous politics had become
and how tragic it was that some Americans wanted to

(01:18):
take violence into their own hands in a way that
we found shockhands. You know, you can imagine now a
little over a year later, to have Charlie himself the
victim of an assassination is just so stunning. When Chlistophers
called and told me about it, they had been in

(01:38):
the meeting, and it was like you couldn't quite believe it,
partly because he's so vibrant and with his family, with
Erica and his three year old daughter and his one
year old son, they were such a classic example of
pursuing happiness, leading a wholesome life, doing the right thing.

(02:00):
And then boom, he's dead. And I thought that when
President Trump announced it and explain from his standpoint what
Charlie had meant to him, it begins to have the
sense of what a remarkable person this was, starting as
a teenager in Chicago deciding that his role in life

(02:21):
was to be a public civic leader, not to run
for office and not to acquire huge amounts of money,
but to go out and organize a network. And with
turning point, he had built a system where there were
literally millions of people who were responsive to him. I
would routinely do his podcasts and talk with him about

(02:42):
various issues. That the scheme of his reach was remarkable.
He truly was becoming for his generation what Rush Limbaugh
had been for many many years for the whole country.
And you could see him growing and you realized that
probably the most important at thirty one years of age,
probably the most important conservative leader in the country, and

(03:03):
his vision and his positiveness, frankly in his happiness kind
of conservatism you'd like, which was oriented towards a better future,
towards what Trump is called a golden age. I think
that we all have to take seriously how deeply violent
the country has become, how much of it is political,

(03:25):
but also how much of it is some psychosis, whether
it's from drugs, from the internet, from the collapse of
the family. There is a kind of evil in the world.
The killing of children in Colorado just hours before Charlie
himself was killed, the killing of the young Ukrainian refugee

(03:45):
in Charlotte, and what is one of the most brutal
four minutes of video I've ever seen, in which nobody
on the entire trank car, nobody comes to help her,
and she's killed for no reason. And himself as admitted
that he's insane, and yet there he was. The two
young children eight and ten years old who were killed

(04:08):
in Minnesota while praying at mass, and another thirty one
were wounded by somebody who the US attorney said, seems
to hate everybody. So we're faced with exactly the intersection
that Charlie wanted to help us avoid. He believed it
was possible to create civility. It was possible to have debates,

(04:33):
It was possible to talk with each other, and you
could do so without violence, and frankly, without much hostility.
If you look at what he did and how he
did it, he say he was cheerful about arguing, but
he argued from the facts much more than from emotion,
and I think he felt that he was truly helping
create a better future. I'd gone to some of his events,

(04:55):
and they're amazing. He would rally thousands and thousands of
people who were cheerful and excited and enthusiastic. It was
sort of the beginning of the next generation of a
governing conservatism, building on what Trump had achieved, but building
on it with a whole new generation of people, a
whole new set of ideas, and with a very positive,

(05:16):
joyful approach. So if somebody of that caliber and that
spirit cut down at thirty one years of age was sober,
the only thing I could compare it to was when
I was a graduate student and a friend of mine
who was the only African American student in our graduate class,
that Tulane called me and said that Martin Luther King

(05:37):
Junior had just been assassinated, and that sense of despair,
that sense of loss, and so that came back to
me once again that we had lost someone worthy of
a long life. We'd lost somebody who had done everything
right and who was trying to be a great citizen,

(05:59):
a great husband, a great father, and a good friend.
And I think that it's really important to recognize that
this is a very sad moment for America, and that
each of us, in our own way, should take up
the cause that Charlie worked for, lived for, and only
died for, and that together we should be committed that

(06:21):
this country will in fact go forward in freedom, that
it will in fact go forward in Lincoln's formula of
government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
and that Charlie's life will not have been in vain,
but in fact he will be one of the martyrs
who creates the framework within which a better America, a

(06:42):
more peaceful America, a more optimistic America, can emerge. And
we owe him that, and we should dedicate ourselves to
that future in his name.