The Assassination of Charlie Kirk & What It Means for the Future of America

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yesterday was a terrible day for America, and I want
to talk through I think where we are as a country,
and it's not good, and I think it's going to
continue to be a problem because we have to. I
think we kind of have to take Charlie Kirk's assassination,

(00:24):
which it feels weird to say this, but it I
think it's true. It's the most significant political assassination in
American history since Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Now, obviously there
were assassination attempts between Robert Kennedy and Kirk. Reagan had

(00:50):
an assassination attempt. Trump obviously with his assassination attempt last year.
Two assassination attempts. Really one was you know, the bullet
actually got shot an inch away from his head. The
other they got the guy before he was ever able
to get off a shot. And there was at least
one that I'm thinking of successful political assassination. The horrible

(01:17):
case from earlier this year where some crazy former Democrat
official from or Democrat official from Minnesota killed two from Minnesota,
killed two Minnesota state lawmakers. That actually did happen, and

(01:39):
that's horrible. He killed two state lawmakers and their spouses,
so actually successfully killed four people. So on a certain level,
that's big, But obviously, you know, as tragic and horrible
as that was, it's not at the level as far
as nationwide political impact as Charlie Kirk's death. Charlie Kirk

(02:00):
was one of the most important people on the American right,
one of the most important kind of non politicians. He
was a guy who was a confidante of the president.
Their reports like, he was in the room when Trump
was making cabinet picks. He was being criticized at the

(02:23):
time for that. Trump was being criticized for giving a
lot of get out the vote efforts over to Kirk
and to Turning Point USA, which turned out to work
pretty swimmingly. I mean, Charlie, it's not one hundred percent
Kirk's It's not one hundred percent because of Kirk, but
I think in large part because of the groundwork he did,

(02:44):
we saw this massive right word shift among college aged voters,
particularly college aged men gen z men, shifting to the
right in unbelievable nuns, and I think Kirk's assassination is
going to cement that. So he's clearly one of the

(03:10):
most significant This is the most serious political assassination actually
accomplished something that an assassination that actually happened. Someone actually
died since RFK and the ramifications of it are going
to be felt for a while. And I don't think
this is going I don't think this is Let me

(03:31):
say this, this is not the last such assassination attempt.
That's the scary thing for me is that I don't
think this sort of thing is going away. Let me
explain why. All right, you have to take the Kirk
assassination into the context of about five other assassinations or

(03:55):
assassination attempts. The Kirk assassination, the two Trump assassination attempts,
the assassination of the two Minnesota state legislature legislators and
their wives, the killing of the United Healthcare Executive by

(04:22):
Luigi Manjoni, and the near assassination of Steve Scalise, and
the attempted killing of other Republicans during that Republican Congressional
baseball game that was about how long ago was that?

(04:42):
That was about ten That was not ten years ago,
that was even that was just in twenty seventeen, so
during the Trump era. Okay, so all of those assassination
attempts or successful assassinations were committed did during the Trump
era by activist liberals wanting to vindicate left wing political viewpoints.

(05:17):
The congressional baseball shooting where Steve Scalise got shot in
twenty seventeen was done by a die hard Bernie Sanders supporter.
The shooter, James Hodgkinson, targeted the Republicans because he was
a Bernie guy. He was a super left wing guy,

(05:38):
and he wanted to kill Republicans. The killing of the
United Health executive by Luigi Manngoni was done specifically out
of this left wing belief that healthcare executives are evil.
The killing of the two Minnesota to state legislators earlier

(06:01):
this year and their wives was was committed by a
longtime Democrat activist. It was right on the heels of
those two legislators having voted in favor of policies that
a lot of the hardcore liberals in Minnesota did not like.
I think it had to do with Medicaid benefits for
illegal aliens and limiting Medicaid coverage for them. It was

(06:28):
the same weekend as the no Kings protests that happened
back in June, and then of course, the Trump assassinations,
we can obviously see the political motivation behind those. These
are all left wing targeted acts of political violence. Now,

(07:00):
the problem that I see is not so much with
elected Democrats or Democrats within leadership. Okay, they've all said
and done the right things in reaction to for the
most part, said and done the right things in reaction
to Kirk's assassination, just as they said and did mostly

(07:23):
the right things in response to the Trump assassination. They've
all expressed statements deploring political violence. This is a terrible thing.
Blah blah blah blah blah. Some people on the left
even have expressed I think, really genuine and positive things.
Ezra Kline, as a columnist for the New York Times,

(07:46):
wrote a piece about how, you know, he thought Charlie.
He said, Charlie Kirk was doing American politics in precisely
the right way, sitting down and engaging with people who
disagreed with him on a college campus. And Klein even
talked about how he kind of envied Kirk. That you know,
he he said that he envies Kirk, that Kirk was

(08:08):
able to build such an incredible thing. He disagreed with
Kirk on most things. But like I said, you know, hey,
I envied the guy. He was doing politics the right
way and he built up this amazing thing. It's not
the leadership that I'm concerned about. It's not even probably
the majority of Democrats in this country that I'm concerned about.

(08:31):
But what I see in poll after poll after poll,
and you can see some of this going back into
the COVID era, a large minority of Democrats, especially younger

(08:53):
Democrats millennial and younger, are really quite okay with using violence.
There are a lot of polls out to indicate that
college students think it's okay to use violence, it can
be okay to use violence to stop hateful speech. There

(09:20):
are lots of polls out to indicate that young people,
again not maybe not the majority, but a significant minority,
we're okay with Luigi Mangoni or thought Manjoni was justified.
You see this sort of attitude on this very hardcore

(09:42):
sort of and it's probably more prominent among kind of
the AOC types folks on the left. Okay with someone
like Luigi Mangoni blowing the brains out of some healthcare executive,
telling jokes, you know, the day after the Trump assassination,

(10:05):
about if only they had been you know, one inch
to the right or whatever. Already. If you go on
the social media app blue Sky, which I don't know
how many of you know about blue Sky, after Elon
Musk started to become very Trump supportive, a lot of people, yeah,

(10:28):
and after he bought Twitter, a bunch of people like.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh, Elon Musk is going to destroy Twitter. It's gonna
go under. We need a we need a safe space
alternative to the right wing monster that is Twitter. Well,
what happened. Twitter continues to be the most important, the
more important of these kinds.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Of social media apps. Its balance is now actually far
more reflective of American general It seems to actually be
fairly balanced between right wing and left wing users. It
seems to be doing just fine business wise. That it's
about everyone predicting that Elon Musk was going to ruin Twitter,
and it seems to be working pretty much just fine
as far as the end user experience. And liberals started

(11:09):
this thing called blue Sky, which is basically just Twitter,
but the population who uses it is almost exclusively hardcore
left wingers. It's basically truth social but for the left,
like you know, the only people who use truth social
are the super hardcore mega people, and everything on Blue
Sky is at best liberals giving these throat clearing reasons

(11:33):
for why Charlie Kirk, You know, what did he expect
with all the hateful things he was saying, that's the
best case scenario, and it's going to you know, tons
and tons of people being like, it's good, I'm glad
he's dead, like to that level. Now, some of that
is just people, you know, beating their chest, acting like,

(11:56):
you know, acting tough. But if you have enough of
a critical mass of people who think that, who think, yes,
Charlie Kirk saying that transgenderism is wrong and that abortion
should be illegal is so bad and so hateful as

(12:19):
to justify the violence he engenders against transgender people allegedly
by expressing an opinion about them that is negative. That
violence that his words allegedly causes is sufficient to justify

(12:41):
actual physical violence. Now, a lot of people are going
to talk tough, say that, but they'll never do anything
about it. If you have enough of a critical mass
of people, though, who do say that, who say that,
and who then a smaller percentage of them actually believe it.
A smaller yet percentage of them, and maybe that's point

(13:04):
one percent of the population are just crazy enough that
they might actually do something about it. And I think
that we have. You know, there's always that possibility of
that level of crazy existing on the right. There's always

(13:26):
going to be people just crazy enough to I don't know,
shoot an abortion you know, throw a molotov cocktail at
an abortion clinic. Okay, three people did that in the nineties,
and now the pro life movement has to live with
that stain for the rest of time. It's horrible, and

(13:50):
that's just the way that American politics has worked. Okay,
people constantly now assume that pro lifers are violent, Like
I can't even get extremely difficult for us at Right
to Life of Central California to get various kinds of
insurance coverage like normal liability like officers and directors liabilities,

(14:12):
stuff like that that it costs way more for us
to pay our premiums for insurance policies than for any
other similar kind of nonprofit organization, because it's like these
insurance companies are all you know, they all watch some
nineteen nineties episode of Law and Order where some pro
lifer assassinates an abortion clinic operator, and they think that
that's just all that pro life organizations do, which is

(14:34):
nuts anyway. So there's always the possibility that one side
or the other is going to have some wacko What
I'm saying to you is that I think the left
has developed enough of a critical mass of people that

(14:55):
is willing to engage in flat out political assass nation.
They've developed enough of a mass of people who are
willing to say out loud that they're glad that someone
was assassinated, or that they think political violence is an
appropriate answer to political rhetoric, that they may have enough

(15:16):
of a critical mass of people that the number of
people willing to actually try to attempt a genuine political
assassination like what we saw yesterday, it's a scarily higher
number than what we have on the right. I would say,
I don't think there's anyone on the right that there

(15:37):
are very few people on the right, I would say,
who are willing to say out loud violence is an
appropriate response. Political targeted violence is an appropriate response to
the political disagreements we have with the left, even among
the pro life movement, which genuinely thinks that the pro

(16:00):
abortion side is engaging in a genocide. Pro lifers don't
even think that. I don't think there's even a sizable,
not at the level of what we saw with Luigi Mangoni.
I think there are a lot more sort of socialist
leaning liberals who think that Luigi Manngoni is a hero
than there are pro lifers who think that, you know,

(16:24):
the anti abortion folks who assassinated or tried to assassinate
abortion clinic doctors, whatever. I think there's a much higher
critical mass there. I really do. You know, maybe I
have blinders on, but I really think there's a much
larger critical mass of people who think that Manjoni was

(16:45):
justified than on the right think that, you know, abortion
doctor assassins are good. And that's why I'm really afraid
this isn't going to be the last assassination. When we return,
I'm going to talk about whether this will actually turn

(17:09):
down the volume, as they say on political rhetoric. I'm
not sure that it will. That's next on the John
Druardy Show. Some of you may have remembered after the
Trump assassination attempt in Butler that there was about a
five minute stretch after the assassination attempt where Democrats were saying, hey, guys,

(17:36):
maybe we need to lower the temperature in the room here,
Maybe we need to tone down the political rhetoric. You know,
maybe there's something, you know, we gotta change our tone here.
It was about a five minute stretch. Within about a month,
Democrats were completely back to all the same kinds of

(17:58):
rhetoric they had been using before. There's even this clip
going around of Senator Chris Murphy from Kentucky or from Kentucky, sorry, Connecticut,
talking about how, you know, we're in a war with
Trump and we need to do we need to be
willing to do whatever it takes to win this war

(18:19):
that we're fighting against Trump and the Republicans. We need
to be willing to do whatever it takes. I mean,
that was his words. Now, that's just him being a blowhard.
I you know, I'm sure Senator Murphy was not actually like,
yes please. Senator Murphy is a pretty boring milk toast,

(18:40):
you know, Democrat politician. I do not think he was like, yes,
please go assassinate Charlie mur Charlie Kirk. I'll give him
the benefit of the doubt of being a moron rather
than just you know, genuinely evil and willing to do
political assassinations. And that's my fear is that people are

(19:01):
gonna there's gonna be some push right now for we
need to lower the temperature. Okay, we need to be
willing to talk to each other, We need to be
willing to have disagreements without wanting to hate each other
or shoot each other or kill each other. And we
need to stop talking about each other as enemies of America,

(19:25):
as combatants that we're in a war agans deliberately, we're
in a war against conservatives, and I will say, like
conservatives use that kind of language against left all the
time too. I do think, like, you know, all of
a sudden, now like they're Republicans who are their conservative
leaning accounts, are gonna be like this. Democrats said, we

(19:47):
need to target Republicans, Oh, they want to shoot people,
which is the same kind of blowney thing that was
said about Sarah Palin when Gabby Gifford's the the Demo
crack congress woman from Arizona when she got shot, and
that was a ridiculous BS criticism of Sarah Palin back then.

(20:08):
I think it's a little silly to make that criticism
of Democrats today. But there is this problem of I
do think there is a genuine unwillingness on the part
of the left to even talk to interact with conservatives.
There was an MSNBC anchor yesterday who I tweeted, let

(20:32):
me see if I can pull this up. This MSNBC
anchor the other day who was suggesting it was like,
right after the shooting, we knew the shooting had happened,
we didn't know if Kirk was dead or not or
and this anchor for MSNBC suggested that, well, we don't
know if someone assassinated it. It could have been a

(20:55):
supporter shooting off their gun in celebration. This was what
MSNBC thought, that Kirk might have just been accidentally shot
by a Republican celebrating, which indicates to me this probably
New York or DC based MSNBC anchor, I'm sure a liberal.

(21:16):
Does she genuinely think she has so little experience with
interacting with actual conservatives, actual Republicans, actual people who live
in a red state that she thinks we all walk
around with guns in holsters on our hips, like we're
in the Old West, like we're a bunch of rootin

(21:40):
tootin cowboys ready to shoot off our guns because we
saw a good body show at the saloon. Yeha, bang
bang bang bang bang, Like does she actually they actually
think that of us? That is who they think we are.
They think that we are such lunatics for being so
sportive of the Second Amendment and a supportive of gun ownership,

(22:04):
that we are walking around with our guns firing them
off in the air because we're happy about something like
like we're you know, some saudy shake with an AK
forty seven shooting it off in the air because you know,
during a dinner party or something. That's who they think

(22:24):
we are. They have so thoroughly othered us that we
might as well live in a foreign country. We might
as well live on the other side of the planet
from them. That's how little like familiarity, understanding, willingness to
comprehend us they have. It's kind of astonished. So I

(22:49):
don't think the political heat, the political rhetoric is going
to tone down at all. I think if President Trump
had actually been assassinated, maybe that would have happened. He's
a more significant figure than Charlie Kirk gets maybe that
would have done it. I don't think Charlie Kirk getting

(23:10):
killed is going to do it. Even this, I don't
know that it's going to happen. All right. When we return,
I want to talk about the whole concept of violence
in politics and why I think that ratchet only goes
one way. That's next on the John Drardy Show. I
want to talk about violence in politics, and the way

(23:32):
I want to do it is I want to talk
about it a little bit historically. I think when violence
enters the system of politics, when violence becomes deemed a
possible way of dealing with your problems, it's very rare

(23:53):
for that ratchet to go the other way. It's very
hard to eliminate it. Now, we've had times of greater
and lesser political violence in America. It's kind of astonishing
to think in the sixties, how you had boom boom boom,
John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy assassinated all three

(24:18):
of them, I mean, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy
assassinated within months of each other. The three of them
assassinated within five years of each other. It's kind of
astonishing to think. And we haven't had well, I mean
We've had other assassinations since then, assassination attempts. Reagan had

(24:39):
an assassination attempt, basically nothing between Reagan and then Trump.
Now Trump had two thwarted assassination attempts. And now we
see this, But as I say, we have to look
at the Kirk assassination in a broader context of about
five different events seventeen the congressional baseball shooting, the two

(25:04):
Trump assassination attempts, Luigi Mangoni murdering the healthcare executive, the
killing of those two Minnesota state legislators, all of them
performed by left wing activists, vindicating some kind of left
wing cause. And now at a point where young left

(25:28):
wingers are consistently reporting in surveys support for what Manjoni did,
support for violence as a way of responding to hate
speech or hateful conduct, et cetera genuine characterization, although maybe
it's not genuine. Maybe it is genuine. I mean calling

(25:49):
Trump Hitler all the time. This is not a new thing.
Every Republican politician since god knows who has has been
labeled a Nazi for forever. You know, Seth Seth uh
not Seth Myers. Oh, I can't remember his name, the

(26:11):
guy who does Family Guy. He was making jokes about
McCain and Palin being Nazis on his cartoon Family Guy.
There have been you know, people were constantly comparing Bush
to Hitler. I don't know. It feels like there's a
different tenor to this now with the characterization of Trump

(26:31):
as a Nazi. I don't know. And January sixth may
have had a lot to do with that anyway. Let
me I want to just talk a little bit historical
example about how once enough of a critical mass of
people seems to be okay with violence to solve your

(26:53):
political problems, it's really hard to get it out. So
I always like talking about Roman politics, and I want
to talk about the Grocky brothers. So Roman historians talk
about this period of time from about one thirty three
BC to thirty three BC. They call this period the

(27:14):
Roman Revolution. It was a you know, we have our
American Revolution, which is a much more concentrated time frame
from the seventeen eighties, seventeen seventies seventeen eighties, the period
of the American Revolutionary War, the declaration of independence, our
founding as a country is a much smaller scope event.

(27:35):
The French Revolution again a much smaller scope event time wise,
the Roman Revolution was really more of a century long
process by which the mechanisms, the structures of the Roman
Republic broke down and came to be replaced in thirty
three BC with what's called the principit or the Emperor. Okay,

(28:00):
becomes the Octavian, becomes the emperor in thirty three BC
becomes the Princeps as he was called at the time,
the first man, and the Roman Empire really gets established.
At that point, the Roman Republic is dead. So it
was about a one hundred year process, and it really
started with these two guys called the Groki brothers, Tiberius

(28:22):
Gracus and his brother Gaius Graccus. Now these two guys
were from a very prominent Roman senatorial family, and Tiberius
Gracus was the older one. He was a very ambitious guy.
He ran for this position within the Roman constitution called

(28:43):
Tribune of the Plebs. There was about ten of these guys.
They had really big power. Mostly they could veto all
kinds of legislation. They could veto all kinds of legislation
in the various different bodies within the Roman constitution that
were set up that could enact legislation, but he sort

(29:06):
of took it a step further by trying to introduce
legislation and critically bypass the Senate to do it. The
actual reforms and legislation he wanted to do, I thought
were sensible. He wanted to do all these land reform things.
Basically you had property owners that were seizing control of
dilapidated properties, properties that were dilapidated because the owners had

(29:27):
to go as soldiers and fight on behalf of the
Roman state. They come back their homes or in ruins,
and the properties get bought up. And it was a
lot of unfair stuff in the Roman Italian countryside that
was happening because of all of the wars that Rome
was fighting. So Tiberius Gracchus wanted to do some land

(29:47):
reform to help out, you know, dispossessed farmers and things
like that. Well, Gracchus's main thing he did that was
really controversial was bypassing the Senate. Usually, the Senate is
the place where you introduce, workout, debate legislation. The Senate
gives its advice and then it goes customarily to one

(30:09):
of the voting assemblies of the people who votes on it. Well.
Tiberius Gracchus was tired of the intransigence of the Senate,
and he took it straight to the tribal Council of
the Pleebs, which is one of the voting bodies in Rome.
He had another, a fellow tribune of the plebs, vetoed

(30:32):
what he was doing. He introduced a bill to eliminate
to remove that tribune from office. That passed. So he
seemed in the Romans eyes to be attacking a lot
of long standing traditions bypassing the Senate, attacking one of
his peers in office, removing them, and then running for

(30:53):
re election too close together running for a second term.
The Romans had this deep suspicion of anyone who wanted
to be king, and an angry mob, pushed by the
senatorial elites in Rome, assassinated Tiberius Gracus. Ten years later,

(31:13):
tiberius younger brother, Guius Gracus, does a similar thing. Guius
Gracus is even more embittered against the Roman Senate given
what they did to his brother. He introduces similar, even
more aggressive land reform legislation. There are some people who
try to characterize Tiberius and Gaius Gracus as like the

(31:35):
first communists, which I think is a ridiculous comparison. Guius
Gracus ends has the same fate as his brother. Senate
is so angry at him. Mob comes about, they kill
Gius Gracus, now Tiberius Gracus. They certainly stepped over lines,
they broke precedence, they acted in stabilizing ways, but it

(32:03):
was really one of the first noted times, at least
what we have in the records of Roman history. This
is how Roman historians have sort of described it, and
we're kind of going off what they say. This was
really when violence started to enter the Roman republican system,
and it immediately it begins. I wo shouldn't say immediately,

(32:28):
because the republic would last for another one hundred years,
but it begins this process, this devolving process that started
within the Roman Republic, and it really started there where
aggressive politicians trying to break precedents, trying to aggressively take

(32:53):
the Roman constitution and push it to its max, to
the to the breaking point, trying and then ultimately realizing
that they could stop things with violence, or they could
push things with threats of violence. It got to the

(33:15):
point where during the sixties and fifties BC, where you
had gangs of armed thugs walking around the streets of Rome,
fighting against each other to get people elected, get legislation

(33:37):
passed stop people from getting elected, like you had open
violence on the streets of Rome, people bringing weapons into
meetings of the various voting assemblies, et cetera. This just
heightened the stakes of Roman politics so much it led
to the kind of violence that we saw from folks

(34:01):
like Sula, who basically became the dictator of Rome in
I believe that was kind of the eighties BC. The
sort of subsequent generation Julius Caesar had a road map
for his ultimate you know, domination of the Roman state,
laid out for him by Sula, But once violence sort

(34:23):
of entered the system, it was hard to get it out.
And that's my fear here. As I said it near
the start of the show, there's enough of a critical
mass among liberals who are thinking right now and saying
even right now on blue Sky in the bowels of

(34:45):
the Internet, it's a decently sized minority of people who
think that it's fine in Dandy that Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
this other gual I follow. Her name's Kristen Hawkins's president
of Students for Life of America. Much like Charlie Kirk.
She travels to different colleges and sits there and will

(35:06):
debate with students, arguing with her specifically about abortion. She
was at a college yesterday. At the event, she told
the college students that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated, and
the college students all started whooping and hollering like happy, celebrating,
And she's like crying about it because I think she
knew Charlie Kirk and she does basically the same thing

(35:28):
Charlie Kirk does. I can't imagine what she's going through, like,
you know, is she going to keep you know when
we return. I think it really heightens the stakes for
those of us who are in conservative commentary and how

(35:50):
we start thinking about what we do that's next. On
the John Rardy Show, after Charlie Kirk's assassination yesterday, I
was talking with my buddy John Nathan Keller, and we're
going to talk about this together on Saturday. For Right
to Life Radio. I was talking with my buddy Jonathan

(36:10):
and I was like, man, I'm I feel you know,
I feel a little nervous after this, and Jonathan said,
uh yeah, so why well, Jonathan, my buddy Jonathan Keller,
who runs California Family Council. The Southern Poverty Law Center
labeled Jonathan's organization as a hate group. And by the way,

(36:35):
it wouldn't be the first time that a quote hate
group got targeted for violence. Family Research Council, which Jonathan's
California Family Council is kind of like affiliated with them.
It's like a state affiliate of Family Research Council. They
had a gunman come to their office building and start

(36:56):
shooting people up. So Southern Poverty loss and it's because
Southern Poverty Law Center labeled them as a hate group.
By the way, when I was listing all the other
assassination attempts, I forgot to mention Brett Kavanaugh. Some guy

(37:20):
almost assassinated Brett Kavanaugh. Like, when I'm talking about the
other kinds of assassination attempts that we have to view
the Kirk killing and the context of the Trump assassination attempts.
The Minnesota state legislators who were killed earlier this year,
Luigi man Joni, the Congressional baseball shooting in twenty seventeen.
We also need to remember a guy got arrested for
attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. He was at Kavanaugh's house

(37:43):
with stuff to kill him. And it makes me afraid
a little of You know, I'm on the radio talking
about conservative stuff. My name's on the nine to ninety
for Right to Life of Central California. I'm not gonna
stop what I'm doing, but it's it makes me a

(38:05):
little more nervous than I was two days ago. I'll
tell you that for nothing, that'll do it. John Girardi Show,
See you next time on Power Talk