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Sept. 22, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:42
REVIVAL: Charlie Kirk’s MASSIVE Memorial Event
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Alrighty, folks, we're gonna go through everything that happened yesterday at the Memorial for Charlie Kirk.
It was an honor to be there.
I got to sit in the vice president's box, which was truly a privilege.
And I got to watch one of the great speeches I've ever seen from Charlie's wife, Erica in person.
So we'll get to all of that first.
Tonight's TPUSA, American Comeback to a Returns, with its first stop since the murder of Charlie Kirk less than two weeks ago.
Michael Knowles will host it live from Minneapolis streaming on Daily Wire Plus.
Well began as a conversation between Michael and Charlie is now special tribute to Charlie and an open forum for QA.
If there are any doubts about Charlie's legacy being carried on by everybody, yesterday's memorial service gave the answer.
Tonight, we are all making it clear.
The enemies of civilization will not succeed at killing Charlie's mission.
They won't even succeed at killing his tour.
The left wants to silence so many of us.
We're not going to give them that satisfaction.
Charlie wouldn't, TPUSA will not.
Watch every minute live from Minneapolis starting at 7.15 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plause.
Well, yesterday I had the privilege and the honor of attending the memorial for Charlie Kirk that was held in Arizona.
It was an overwhelming event.
I mean, truly an unbelievable event.
The stadium at which it was held was packed on 65,000 people.
There was an overflow arena with another 20,000 people.
That was packed.
There were people who are out in the streets.
At least a hundred thousand people showed up to pay tribute to Charlie's memory and what he meant to American conservatives, to Christians.
It was essentially a worship service.
I mean, there's an enormous amount of outreach to non-Christians, telling them that they ought to embrace the faith.
And frankly, as I've been calling for for a long time, there ought to be a religious revival in this country, and that is a very, very good thing.
The fact that there was so much focus on Christianity, which of course is something that Charlie lived for, and something that he wanted to leave as his legacy, that that is a good thing for the country.
We are starting to see an uptick in young people who are going to church.
And that was happening before Charlie's death, partially as a result of the stuff that Charlie was doing out there in the world, but partially because there's an emptiness that is set in at the heart of a West that has forgotten about her relationship with God.
And if Charlie's death can be a turning point back toward faith for a lot of young people, that obviously would be an amazing thing.
Andrew Colvitt, who is Charlie's executive producer, he said that there were over 100 million streams for today's tribute to Charlie.
That's what they know about.
He said over 100 million people just heard the gospel proclaimed again and again by speaker after speaker, truly remarkable.
Again, I don't think that you have to be a Christian.
I'm obviously not, to believe that an America that is more deeply ensconced in faith and deeply rooted in faith is a better America.
An America where more people go to church is going to be a stronger America.
An America where people believe in biblical values will be a better and stronger America.
It was a very moving event, and I had the honor and privilege of sitting in the vice president's box, and so I got to see his reactions, the reactions of the members of the administration up close, and everybody was extraordinarily moved.
Everybody was uplifted.
Obviously, you got to see in real time, as Elon and President Trump made up, which I think was a nice moment for sure.
The thing that blew everybody away, the moment that really, I think shattered everyone, was Erica Kirk's speech.
Now, I I've only had the privilege of knowing Erica for a very short time.
Actually, I only met her after Charlie was murdered.
She's an amazing person and truly a strong, amazing person.
One of the things that I found out is that when she gave the speech that she gave initially after Charlie's death, just a couple of days after his death, she actually did that live, which is unthinkable.
To have to give a 16, 17-minute address direct into camera, two days after watching your spouse be shot to death in front of the entire world with two young children at home.
Erica is a force for sure.
She, of course, has now been appointed as the new head of TP USA.
And the thing about Erica is true of Charlie too, but Erica, even more overtly, is that she is a woman who is deeply in touch with her faith.
I mean, this is a woman of faith at the deepest possible level.
And that's really what she spoke about yesterday.
It was incredibly moving.
Truly one of the great speeches I think I've ever seen.
She went for about half an hour, and she spoke about what it means to be married, what the Bible calls us to do as husbands, as wives, what Charlie was trying to do by reaching out to young men.
I mean, true, truly astonishing stuff.
So she talked about in her speech, first of all, I mean, the audience was it was so moving.
I mean, the audience was basically trying to reach out to her with their love to uplift her in this moment of darkness for her and for her family.
He could feel the love in the arena, just tremendous outpouring of love for Erica Kirk in the arena.
She talked about Charlie's mission, which she said was not just political.
She said that Charlie Kirk's mission was to save the lost boys of the West.
Here's what she had to say.
Charlie's mission above all aimed directly at those who aren't married.
He named his organization well.
He knew things were not right with America, and especially with young people, and they needed a new direction.
Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West.
The young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live.
The men wasting their lives on distractions, and the men consumed with resentment, anger, and hate.
Charlie wanted to help them.
He wanted them to have a home with turning point USA.
And when he went on to campus, he was looking to show them a better path and a better life that was right there for the taking.
He wanted to show them that culminated in one of the most moving things I've ever seen ever, at any time.
Erica on stage in front of a hundred million people, forgiving the assassin of her husband.
Now, we'll talk about the differences between personal forgiveness, which is what Erica Kirk is doing here, and public policy, and how you're how you ought to treat evil with regard to public policy.
But what she does here is, I mean, truly an act of spiritual courage.
My husband, Charlie.
He wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.
That young man.
That young man on the cross, our Savior said, Father, forgive them for they not know what they do.
That man, that young man, I forgive him.
Very difficult to say that Charlie and Erica and his movement is one of hatred as she stands up there and says that she, in a spiritual sense, forgives his killer.
Now, there are a lot of people who are contrasting that with President Trump's speech because later President Trump did a pretty funny riff about how he is.
He's not the kind of person who forgives his enemies.
But the truth is that what she is doing there is obviously a value system deeply rooted in her biblical faith.
It's hard to think of anything more powerful than what Erica did right there, than what she did right there.
Again, she doesn't mean that as a society we ought to ignore sin or that his murderers shouldn't be punished to the fullest extent of the law and receive the death penalty.
That's not what Erica is saying right there.
She's saying something very different.
She's saying that as all human beings are sinners, that all human beings require forgiveness for their sins, which is an amazing, amazing statement.
Again, she's a young woman, mother of two young children.
Really, one of the most...
I would say jaw-dropping moments in American political history, what Erica did right there.
Pretty incredible.
She made the point also, a point that's been made pretty frequently by a lot of people on the right, that after Charlie's murder, it wasn't as though the right broke into spasms of violence, precisely the opposite.
That on the left, when Somebody dies or is killed in disputed circumstances.
I think George Floyd here, you get riots, sometimes for months.
Charlie, who's one of the most high-profile conservatives in America, one of the most high-profile exponents of Christianity in America.
She says that Charlie, his death did not drive mass violence in the streets, far from it.
It drove prayer, it drove reflection, it drove a great coming together.
After Charlie's assassination, we didn't see violence.
We didn't see rioting.
We didn't see revolution.
Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country.
We saw revival.
This past week we saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade.
We saw people pray for the first time since they were children.
We saw people go to a church service for the first time in their entire lives.
And that is obviously true.
And then talking with all of my Christian friends, the attendance last week at church was significantly higher than it had been previously.
Google searches, I believe, for church went up.
And that is because of the tremendous outpouring.
And I think that you know, for folks who are under the age of 30, Charlie was a monster presence in their lives.
I mean, truly, like a very large presence in their lives.
For people above the age of 50, uh, maybe they didn't know Charlie as well.
Charlie was a dominant force on some of the social media that particularly young people use.
If you go and talk to a 17-year-old in America, the chances they didn't know who Charlie was are almost zero.
Charlie was, I believe, the most viewed political account on TikTok during the entire 2024 election cycle.
He had something like 15 billion of views on TikTok.
And so the fact that he was spreading those values and then was shot while spreading his values on camera for everybody to see.
That that simple fact meant that I think a lot of people wanted to see what made Charlie Tech and then go and experience what made Charlie Tech, which was obviously his faith.
Erica talks quite beautifully.
I thought about marriage.
Her statements on marriage were quite wonderful.
And she talked about how a man and a wife are supposed to relate to one another, that men are protectors and providers, that is their job in the world.
When she was talking about young men who have abandoned purpose, she said it was your purpose to get married, have children, defend those children, be bold.
That was a thing that you are designed to do.
And for young women, that young women should get married, that they are to be helpers in the sense that you are one unit.
And then she talked about her personal relationship with Charlie.
Again, this stuff is, it's heartbreaking and moving.
And yes, uplifting.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Someone once asked me how Charlie and I how we kept our marriage so strong when he was busy traveling.
And our little secret, it was love notes.
Every Saturday, Charlie wrote one for me and he never missed a Saturday.
And in every single one of them, he'd tell me what his highlight was for the week, how grateful he was for me and our babies.
And always at the end, he would always end it with asking the most beautiful question.
He'd always end it by asking, please let me know how I can better serve you as a husband.
And as I commented to some of my friends in a sort of, you know, wistful moment, I said, well, he must have had an amazing relationship with his wife.
I know that, you know, for most spouses, if you write a note that would end, what can I do differently?
What you get back is a five inch binder of suggestions.
So, yeah, they must have had an incredible, incredible relationship.
Erica said that Charlie died doing what he loved, which obviously was true.
I mean, one of one of the small mercies, she said this as well, is that Charlie's death was essentially instantaneous, that he went from one moment doing the thing that he loved to the next moment being with God.
Here's what Erica had to say.
One moment Charlie was doing what he loved, arguing and debating on campus, fighting for the gospel.
In front of a big crowd.
And then he blinked.
He blinked.
And saw his savior in paradise.
That is.
I mean, it was it was so much.
I mean, in the arena, it was so much.
Watching it again, it's so much.
Obviously, everyone is standing with Erica Kirk and with her family.
And as she said, TPUSA is only going to grow from here, become stronger, and become more powerful because of what was done to Charlie.
Alrighty, coming up more from the Charlie Kirk Memorial, including Marco Rubio, Donald Trump Jr., and Ilhan Omar React.
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The entire Trump administration obviously showed up, as I mentioned.
I was invited to the vice president's box, so it was a great honor.
I got to watch it from a sort of unique vantage point.
And the president of the United States was the last person to speak.
And it was sort of classic Trump.
He got up there after Erica Kirk.
And um and he proceeded to be himself, that is for sure.
After Erica had for forgiven Charlie's killer, which again, that does not mean on a public policy level that there ought not be consequences for murder, or that Erica Kirk believes that the murderer should be released or anything idiotic like that.
She was doing that in a spiritual sense.
He didn't believe the same thing.
Here's President Trump yesterday.
He did not hate his opponents.
He wanted the best for them.
That's where I disagreed with Charlie.
I hate my opponent.
And I don't want the best for them.
I'm sorry.
I am sorry, Erica.
But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Sorry.
I think that the truth is that it was it was such a heavy day and such a meaningful day that President Trump was basically like a stand-up comic at that point in time.
And so people who are angry at President Trump for saying that, or they're saying that that's terrible that President Trump would say something like that.
President Trump is President Trump.
We should not pretend that Charlie was not a political figure.
He was a political figure.
He was not just a faith figure.
He's a person who loved President Trump, who campaigned for President Trump, who spent enormous amounts of time and effort getting President Trump elected, and that was for a reason.
He knew President Trump as well as anybody.
President Trump also went after the left.
Again, this was not a call for unity from President Trump.
And I think that to a certain extent, that is that is quite fitting.
It's very difficult to unify with people who wish to kill you, as the vice president has said before.
Here is the president yesterday talking about the left.
The left, the left.
I call it the radical left.
I call it sometimes the radical left lunatics.
But Charlie didn't say that.
He was probably right, but I can't help it.
Well, I mean, yes.
And um, and then President Trump got serious.
He said that Charlie's murder was an attack on the country, which which it was.
Which it was.
Every single American should take a long hard look at the twisted soul and dark spirit of anyone who would want to kill a young man as good as Charlie to kill anybody, but to kill a man like this, he didn't deserve this.
He didn't deserve this.
Our country didn't deserve this.
And anyone who would make excuses for it are just out of their mind.
Charlie's murder was not just an attack on one man or one movement.
It was an attack on our entire nation.
That was a horrible attack on the United States of America.
It was an assault on our most sacred liberties and God given rights.
The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us.
That bullet was aimed at every one of us.
Indeed, Charlie was killed for expressing the very ideas that virtually everyone in this arena and most other places throughout our country deeply believed in.
But the assassin failed at his quest because Charlie's message has not been silenced.
now is bigger and better and stronger than ever before.
And it's not even close.
And President Trump's speech culminated with, obviously, the singing of America Beautiful and Erica came back on stage and President Trump hugged Erica.
It was quite the moment.
For those who can't see, he welcomed her out there, and there were a choir singing.
It was a heavy day, a moving day, an uplifting day for sure.
The vice president gave a real barn burner of a speech.
I mean, truthfully, a pretty fantastic speech yesterday.
One of the vice president's better moments.
And he talked specifically about Charlie, what he died for, what he lived for, Here he was talking about the sort of values that are worth risking it all for.
Charlie suffered a terrible fate, my friends.
We all know it.
We all saw it.
But think, it is not the worst fate.
It is better to face a gunman than to live your life afraid to speak the truth.
It is better to be persecuted for your faith than to deny the kingship of Christ.
It is better to die a young man in this world than to sell your soul for an easy life with no purpose, no risk, no love, and no truth.
J.D. talked about speaking more publicly about his faith.
He said that he really had not talked a lot about his faith, but because Charlie was so open and honest about his faith, he decided to do the same.
You know, I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public as much as I love the Lord and as much as it was an important part of my life.
I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life.
J.D. went on to talk about the fact that there would have to be a movement to pick up where Charlie left off.
He said that the goal was to continue to carry on Charlie's legacy.
I've seen so many of you say so many on social media talk about for Charlie.
We must do this for Charlie.
For Charlie, we will speak the truth every single day.
For Charlie, we will rebuild this United States of America.
America to greatness.
For Charlie, we will never shrink.
We will never cower, and we will never falter, even when staring down the barrel of a gun.
The Vice President of the United States also pointed out that the administration probably wouldn't exist without Charlie, that everybody in the arena owed a debt of gratitude to Charlie, because otherwise Kamala Harris would be president.
Now, our whole administration is here, but not just because we love Charlie as a friend, even though we did, but because we know we wouldn't be here without him.
Charlie built.
An organization that reshaped the balance of our politics.
Turning point brought millions of young people into conversation with one another, brought millions of people into advocacy.
He asked of us, not just that we talk about saving our country, but that we actually go and do it, and we do it together.
Again, really great speech by the vice president.
He, of course, is not the only member of the administration, nearly in the entire administration was there.
I believe that the designated survivor in case of some sort of mass terrorist attack was the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who stayed behind in Washington, D.C. But the Speaker of the House was there, the vice president was there, the president was there, the secretaries of state and defense were there.
Pete Hagsath, the new war secretary.
I'm not sure it's official yet.
I know there's been an executive order, I believe it takes an act of Congress to actually change the name of the Department of Defense.
But uh Pete Hagsath talked about Charlie's faith.
Charlie Kirk.
A patriot, a conservative, a leader, a builder, an advocate, an author, a lover of freedom.
A husband, a father, a Christian, and a warrior.
You see, Charlie Kirk was a true believer.
For the cause of freedom, for the power of young people, belief in our republic and our founding principles, in America first, and make America great again.
But more importantly, he was a true believer.
Only Christ is King, our Lord and Savior.
Secretary Rubio also did a pretty terrific speech.
He talked about having met Charlie when Charlie was attempting to start a campus organization.
And he said, Well, why are you going onto college campuses?
That seems like a waste of time.
Here is the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Maybe 10 or 12 years ago, a person I knew very well had been very helpful to me in my campaigns when I was in the Senate.
Came to me and said she had met this very impressive young man.
And he was going to start this group to go on college campuses and try to convince young Americans that ours is the greatest country in the history of the world.
And that Marxism was bad.
And I remember thinking back then, I was I'm gonna admit to you guys, I was a little skeptical.
I said, College campuses, you're gonna do that?
Why don't you start somewhere easier, like for example, Communist Cuba, you know.
But my skepticism was proven wrong.
He uh he talked about the Secretary of State going all over the world, talking with everybody and being shocked at the amount of reach that Charlie had, which is certainly true.
I mean, the internet has broken down national barriers in an incredible way, specifically with regard to sort of the informational ecosystem.
Charlie was world famous, no question.
I just came from overseas, and every country I stopped.
They gave us their condolences for his passing.
Impactful in just 31 years of life.
He made a difference.
He mattered, and he will matter now more than he ever has before.
Already coming up, more members of the Trump administration from the memorial for our friend Charlie Kirk Plus Democrats respond, and the rest of the news.
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Rubio then went on to talk about his faith and the New Testament again.
The amount of faith in the arena was incredible.
And again, as a Jew, I'm somebody who believes that America is stronger when there are more people who believe in Jesus as Christians and who go to church regularly and who engage with the scriptures.
Here is Marco Rubio.
One of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following.
His deep belief that we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with him in eternity.
But then sin entered the world and separated us from our Creator.
And so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us.
And he suffered like men.
And he died like a man.
But on the third day he rose unlike any mortal man.
And then to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds.
He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but his flesh.
And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return.
And he will.
And when he returns, because he took on that death, because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him.
And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love.
Again, open preaching by members of the administration, like all the members of the administration, pretty astonishing, astonishing stuff.
Now, the event was not without its politics.
There are certain figures who are significantly more political on the stage than they were religious.
And frankly, that was merited.
I knew Charlie a very long time.
I knew Charlie mainly in the context of his politics, not in the context of his religion or his religious beliefs.
And I think actually, the vast majority of people who ever engage with Charlie Kirk content engaged with him on the political level because Charlie saw politics as a vehicle for his values, which were biblical in orientation.
But to pretend that Charlie was an apolitical figure would of course be silly.
Charlie was quite a political figure.
He's very strong in his politics, one of the most open and powerful supporters of President Trump.
He activated the entire machinery of his organization against the Democratic Party, against the priorities of the Democratic Party.
And so some of the speakers on the stage were quite political, as is fitting for the fact that Charlie, again, was two things all at once.
He was very much involved in matters of the spiritual, but He was deeply involved in matters of the materials, deeply involved in politics, obviously.
And he was killed while debating politics.
Stephen Miller, who, of course, is a chief advisor to the president of the United States.
He gave an incredibly fiery speech in which he talked about Charlie's legacy.
You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk?
You have made him a mortal.
You have immortalized Charlie Kirk.
And now millions will carry on his legacy.
And we will devote the rest of our lives to finishing the causes for which Charlie gave his last measure of devotion.
So again, he got a lot of flack for that.
But the reality, of course, is that Charlie was in fact a right-wing warrior, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
He was somebody who engaged in the political combat that is a blood sport that characterizes our politics.
And you know, again, I think that pretending that Charlie was some sort of apolitical figure would be to ignore part of his legacy, which is that he was a very partisan fighter in a very partisan time.
Honestly, I thought one of the best speeches came from Donald Trump Jr.
Donald Trump Jr., I thought gave truly a terrific speech yesterday.
It was lighthearted.
I think it sounded the right note, which was an attempt to reach out to people beyond the arena, not just in matters of the spiritual, but also in matters of the political.
A lot of speakers spoke about people coming to Jesus.
And that's wonderful.
Don Jr. spoke of people coming essentially to the Republican Party.
And he said, listen, if you are with the people who shot Charlie Kirk, you're not with us.
But if you're against the kinds of people who shoot Charlie Kirk, well, then you belong with us.
He was pretty funny, the president's son.
There's one point where he did an imitation of his father, who's up in the box, he was President Trump appreciated it.
Anyone who's seen me on social media knows I'm far more likely to crack a joke or get myself in trouble for posting some grossly inappropriate memes than I am to shed a tear.
I know this because I've even gotten the call from that guy a couple times.
You know, Don.
Don.
You're getting a little aggressive on social media, Don.
Relax.
He then went on, of course, to say that we won't be intimidated, we won't back down.
He sort of pulled the audience in a voice vote.
At one of the last events of the 2024 campaign at Arizona State, some lunatic called it a threat to try to keep us from going on the stage.
Again, we went out there anyway, without fear.
Charlie led the way.
His message was clear then, and his message is clear now.
We won't back down.
We won't be intimidated.
The Bible says over a hundred times in the pages of scripture.
And the hundred thousand people here today are a signal to the world.
Our message of faith, family, and country will not be silenced.
Again, it is a political moment.
To pretend it's not political would be to ignore the realities, and Zon Jr.
I think noted that quite well.
So the two sort of big takeaway moments from the crowd.
There are two sort of big takeaways.
One was political, one was spiritual.
The political was a moment where Elon Musk showed up to Charlie's memorial and sat down right next to President Trump, and they made nice.
I was located about 20 feet away, maybe down to the left over here, so I got to see this in real time, which was fun.
And Dana White is sitting on the other side of President Trump here.
Got a chance to say hello to Elon afterward, and he was quite happy, obviously, that he and the president have made up.
And then meanwhile, again, the big takeaway is just how overwhelming the event was.
It was overwhelming.
I mean, State Farm Stadium, hold on, 70,000 people, 65,000 people.
It was packed to the rafters.
Every seat filled, the entire floor filled.
The overflow arenas, I say 20,000 people full.
The whole stadium, the whole stadium singing hymns together, singing songs about God together.
Pretty unbelievable stuff.
And I know it's not.
Thank you.
Yeah, it is a privilege to be there.
It was an amazing experience.
I think it was an amazing experience for everybody who attended, everybody who watched.
And our hearts, our prayers, and our support are with Erica Kirk and the folks over at TPUSA.
Alrighty, coming up, Ilhan Omar has some thoughts about Charlie Kirk showing what a terrible person she is, plus the rest of the daily news.
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Meanwhile, Democrats are having a very difficult time behaving themselves in proper and decent fashion after the murder of Charlie Cook.
Chief among those people is, of course, Ilhan Omar, one of the most despicable people in American politics.
A supporter, by her rhetoric of a wide variety of terrorist groups, a person who truly despises what makes America great, a a barbarian in the sense that I that I use in my book Lions and Scavengers a person who comes from outside of our civilization and who believes our civilization is responsible for legitimately all the failings of all other civilizations, and therefore America has to be uprooted at at its most deep and basis level.
Here she was over the weekend.
She'd been criticized over going after Charlie, and she says that Charlie Kirk must be left in the dustbin of history, which is an amazing way to describe somebody whose body is not yet cold.
What I find jarring is that there are so many people willing to excuse the most reprehensible things that he said, that they agree with that, that they're willing to have monuments for him, that they want to create a day to honor him, and that they want to produce resolutions in the House of Congress, um, honoring his life and legacy.
Uh, it is one thing to care about his life, because obviously so many people uh loved him, including his children and wife.
But I am not going to sit here and um be uh judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind that should be in the dust pen of history, and we should hopefully move on and forget the hate that he spewed every single day.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
They just can't help themselves.
They just can't help themselves.
It's truly an unbelievable thing.
Like an amazing thing.
There have been a lot of people on the left who've been trying to comp the murder of Charlie Kirk with the murders of Melissa and Mark Hortman and the shootings of John Yvette Hoffman and the attempted shooting of Hope Hoffman by a shooter who thought apparently that Tim Walls was giving him a covert order to murder these people.
They claim that he was a right winger who was trying to murder the Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emmerita, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark Cortman who are murdered.
And there's been an attempt to liken those two things.
Now, putting aside the nature of the shooters.
And again, there's a pretty big difference between the shooter of Charlie Kirk, who is clearly motivated by a left-wing ideology.
Yes, that is true from all available evidence he considered Charlie Kirk to be hateful, specifically because of Charlie's views on LGBT issues, particularly trans issues, and the shooter of the Minnesota State legislators, who, you know, again, the the evidence tends to show was mentally ill in a pretty severe way.
Who had a bunch of no kings, a bunch of no kings flyers in his car and such, putting aside all of that.
One of the giant differences is that was there anybody on the right who felt the necessity to go after the Minnesota legislators with regard to their politics after the murder.
Was that a big thing that we saw?
People saying, well, you know, sure it was terrible that they were murdered, but you know, we do have to remember the kinds of things they were pushing politically.
Was that was that really a thing that happened?
Because if so, I sort of missed it.
And yet huge number of Democrats feel the necessity to say that about Charlie Kirk.
The legacy that Charlie Kirk leaves behind.
Well, yes, he was partisan, yes, he was political.
But in death, there is a thing that happens.
It's just a reality.
People get flattened down into two-dimensional figures.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a lot of views on a lot of different issues, many of which were pretty far to the left.
He had a very checkered personal life.
But the thing that people remember Martin Luther King for was the basic stance that he took against the racial separatism of Malcolm X on the one hand and against the segregationism of the Jim Crow South on the other, saying that people should be treated based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
In death, people get sort of reduced to their barest essentials in terms of their legacy.
Charlie has been reduced to his barest essentials, or maybe elevated to his barest essentials, if that's the way we want to look at it.
And his barest essentials were a person who believed in free debate and a person who believed in his faith.
And all that entailed.
Those are the things that people are going to remember 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 100 years from now about Charlie Kirk.
All the politics are going to be put by the wayside.
And what people are going to remember about Charlie is that Charlie was a person who went out there and engaged in open dialogue with people who disagreed with him and was murdered while doing it, because the manner of his death is not separate from the reasons that he will be remembered.
He wasn't shot coming out of a grocery store.
He was shot engaging in public debate with college students good naturedly, and then he was dead.
And you can't separate that from the legacy that he leaves behind.
And the same thing is true with regard to his faith.
Obviously, the entire memorial yesterday was about Charlie's individual faith and his willingness to spread it.
To somehow do the bad old tweets routine that you're seeing from some Democrats here.
Not only is it a bad faith misrepresentation of who Charlie was, it is ugly and stupid and does not connect with the reality that most people are feeling about Charlie Kirk.
It also doesn't connect with the reality that there has been a radical uptick in violence coming from the left.
Over the course of the last three days alone, we have two violent incidents involving people who are clearly apparently motivated by left-wing ideology.
One in Sacramento.
Apparently, according to the New York Times, a Sacramento man was arrested and charged on Saturday morning after officials said he shot at a local television news station in the city the previous day.
Although the building was occupied at the time, nobody was hit by the gunfire, the San Sacramento Police Department said, describing the attack as a drive-by shooting.
Apparently, the suspect, who's 64, fired at least three rounds through a window of a local ABC affiliate.
Apparently, the attack came one day after demonstrators rallied in front of the station after their decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel's late night talk show off the air.
And the evidence seems to suggest that the gunman was acting ideologically.
So there's that case.
And then, over the weekend, another shooting took place.
This one took place in New Hampshire at a country club called Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua.
A 59-year-old man named Robert De Chessare was killed by a 23-year-old who used to work at the facility.
Several others were shot.
More than a hundred people were at the club at the time, many for a wedding.
Apparently, the shooter yelled the great call of the left these days, free Palestine while shooting innocent people.
The omni cause of the left.
Now, of course, the free Palestine cry has become the sort of apex line of the far left because it combines in all aspects the scavenger mentality, siding with a group of people who have either elected,
selected, or been governed by terrorists literally the entirety of their existence as a as an apparent separate people, engaged in a war with terrorists at their head, holding contemporaneously hostages.
And that's the fault of the West in Israel, according to the Free Palestine crew.
That was a violent incident.
It will be buried because the person was shouting Free Palestine, which of course is exactly what the shooter shouted as he shot to death two Israeli embassy workers just a few months back on the streets of Washington, D.C. That's also what the Molotov cocktail thrower who murdered an elderly woman in Colorado was shouting when he threw Molotov cocktails at a bunch of people who are out there doing a protest in favor of the release of the hostages.
Free Palestine has become the great cry of the radical left, and yes, it is enmeshed with violence.
Yes, it is.
We discussed last week, the permission structures for violence very much exist on the left.
There's just no question that is the case.
And they need to be extirpated.
I fear they will be only exacerbated by a left that is deeply ensconced in these scavenger viewpoints.
Now, if we are to have a conciliatory dialogue about the country, it's going to take more than just saying political violence is bad.
It's going to be about saying that any movement that is rooted effectively in grievance culture and conspiracy theory needs to be rooted out.
It should not be humored by anyone.
should not already meanwhile in other news things are happening around the world this is Speaking of the scavenger mentality, in big foreign policy news, the UK, Australia, and Canada all decided yesterday that they were going to formally recognize a Palestinian state, which is kind of an amazing thing considering that there is no Palestinian state, nor will there be one.
It's like recognizing a state of Narnia, except if Narnia were governed by radical Islamic terrorists who are currently holding a bunch of Jewish hostages.
The moral blindness and suicidal empathy that it takes for Western countries to look at a terror-governed hellhole and say maybe we should call that a state and try to give it extra powers.
That's crazy.
By the way, it's always, you want to talk about fancy land?
All three leaders said in recognizing a state of Palestine, there will have to be a government that is not run by Hamas.
Oh, you don't say.
So you're going to do that while Hamas is still in charge of Gaza.
And you're going to pretend the Palestinian Authority, which is a joke of an organization, it also is a terrorist organization, by the way.
They literally still pay terrorists who kill Jews.
They give them like lifelong stipends to the families of terrorists who kill Jews.
The Palestinian Authority, wildly unpopular in the Palestinian areas of the so-called West Bank.
What, that's going to be the government?
So they they've recognized a state that has no borders, no government, and no responsibility for its own citizens.
Congrats.
They did this in the middle of an attempt by Israel to end the war.
Every time Israel attempts to put enough pressure on Hamas to get the hostages out and end the war.
Leftists in the West immediately step in to prevent it.
Emmanuel McCron did this a few months back.
There was a deal that was on the table for Hamas to go into exile, apparently, and to release the hostages.
And that's when Emmanuel McCron decided it would be an amazing time to give Hamas the prize of announcing a Palestinian state.
British Prime Minister Kiris Darmer, a fool if ever there was one, said today to revive the hope of peace for the Palestinians and Israelis and a two-state solution, the United Kingdom formally recognizes a state of Palestine.
How is that a two-state solution?
A two-state solution has to be negotiated between the two sides.
You simply recognizing a concept does not make the concept effectuated in any material or useful way.
And it doesn't revive the hope of peace for anybody.
Hamas immediately celebrated, by the way.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement we will have to fight both at the UN and in all other arenas against the false propaganda against us and the calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state that will endanger our existence and constitute an absurd reward for terrorism.
The international community will hear from us on this matter in the coming days.
And he said that this is a prize, which of course it is.
The Israeli foreign affairs ministry said this declaration does not promote peace.
On the contrary, it further destabilizes the region and undermines the chances of achieving a peaceful solution in the future.
Hamas, of course, applauded it.
I have a general rule of thumb.
If Hamas is applauding you, you're doing it wrong.
That is a general rule of thumb.
It applies to pretty much everything.
If Hamas likes it, you're doing it wrong.
Everything from statements of recognition of a state of Palestine to public speeches.
If Hamas is approving of you, you're doing something morally egregious.
Meanwhile, in other news, closer to home.
Apparently, there is a deal to keep TikTok operational, but divest it of its Chinese ownership.
We can only hope that that amounts to also a rejiggering of its perverse algorithm, which pushes some of the worst material available on the American public.
According to the Wall Street Journal, under the new agreement, a new entity would be created to run TikTok in the United States.
A consortium of new investors, including private equity firms, Silver Lake and Oracle, would own roughly half.
Existing investors, like the trading firm Susquehanna International, would hold about 30%.
ByteDance, which is the Chinese owned company, would dip below 20%.
Apparently, a new version of TikTok's content recommendation algorithm would be retrained.
And crucially, users would be able to access the service via the same app they have been using.
Now, if that's true, if there is a new version of the content recommendation algorithm that doesn't elevate Chinese propaganda, that would be a win for the world.
That would certainly be a good thing.
The U.S. government is expected to receive a multi-billion dollar fee for facilitating the agreement.
The deal apparently is not quite done yet.
President Trump's extending the deadline for TikTok to reach a deal by an additional 120 days.
I'm not sure why it needs to take 120 days.
I mean, this is a violation right now of congressional law.
TikTok should have just been banned a while ago.
I'm not sure why we are now in September.
Another 120 days takes us well past the end of the year.
This all should be accelerated radically, like fast, because TikTok is in fact a weapon for people who hate the United States and the informational wars, without a doubt.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, the president is now suggesting a new 100,000 fee for H1B visas.
Now, H1B visas are way of importing people who tend to be pretty well qualified for jobs, H1B visas are applied for by the employers.
They bring in useful labor into the United States.
It's the main pathway to the United States for highly skilled foreign workers.
There's a lot of controversy on the right over H1B visas that broke out earlier this year, with some parts of the administration, like Elon Musk arguing in favor of H1B visas, others, like Peter Navarro arguing very much against H1B visas.
Now, speaking of H1B visas, I was wondering how many H1B visas are actually granted every year, because it's treated as such a major issue in the United States.
So I my sponsors over at Comet, a new web browser by Perplexity, that was the place to search.
I asked, how many H1B visas are issued each year, and in what industries?
Each year, the United States issues a maximum of 85,000 new H 1B visas, 65,000 through the regular cap, an additional 20,000 for applicants with U.S. advanced degrees, with hundreds of thousands of applications subject to a lottery due to high demand.
So, which industries, according to Comet, professional, scientific and technical services.
That's the top industry.
It accounts for about half of all new annual approvals.
Educational services, so that'd be like universities, colleges, related organizations, and manufacturing represents about 10%.
The H1B visas, again, that program, sometimes it's treated in sort of the public debate as though it's like millions of people.
It is not, in fact, millions of people.
It's a pretty small select group.
You theoretically could make it somewhat smaller, but at some point you do risk not being able to bring into the country actual assets to the American economy.
Now, H1 visas can certainly be used improperly as a way of simply lowering labor costs.
But it's also true that H1B visas can be a way of bringing in people who are innovative to become American citizens.
And one of the great things about America, historically speaking, when we are not doing idiotic waves of unassimilated mass immigration, one of the great things about America is that it is a magnet for people who are innovative and creative.
There's a reason the American economy soars, and one of those reasons is that magnet-like ability to draw the best available from the global pool of labor and intellect.
Ending that seems to me to be bad policy.
Maybe there are changes that can be made to the H1B program to prevent as much fraud as occurs.
But if the idea is a 100,000 fee for every visa, that is a that is a giant fee.
That basically ends H1B programs, I would imagine, or at least virtually all of them.
A large number of the H1B visas, according to the Wall Street Journal issued to workers at for-profit companies are in STEM.
Many go into computer-related jobs at some of the largest U.S. tech companies.
Universities and nonprofits also use that H1B program to hire foreign-born professors and other workers.
And again, we should screen all of these people for ideology.
They should only come in if they're going to be a benefit to the United States.
Right now, applicants for the H1B visa have to pay a small fee to enter a lottery system.
The winners of that lottery pay a larger fee alongside their applications for vetting.
Under the new system, the administration says that only the best high-skilled workers will be worth the price, leaving more opportunities for U.S. based labor.
Obviously.
But the real question is whether that fee is so high that it essentially cuts off a pathway to success for exactly the kind of immigrants we actually do want coming into the country.
We'll have to see how the law is actually applied.
Meanwhile, the president of the United States had a very odd moment over the weekend, to say the least.
He put a statement out on Truth Social openly telling Pam Bondy to figure out a way to prosecute James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James.
He apparently thought it was an email, maybe, because he put it out on Truth Social and then he quickly deleted it.
He put out the statement, quote, Pam, I've reviewed over 30 statements in post saying that essentially the same old story as last time, all talk, no action, nothing is being done.
What about Comey?
Adam Shifty Schiff, Letitia.
They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.
He said, we almost put in a Democrat-supported U.S. attorney in Virginia with a really bad Republican past, awoke rhino, who is never going to do his job.
That's why two of the worst Dem senators pushed him so hard.
He even lied to the media and said he quit, and then we had no case.
No, I fired him, and there is a great case, and many lawyers and legal pundits say so.
And then President Trump said that Bondi could not delay prosecutorial action.
Noting, quote, it's killing our reputation and credibility.
They impeached me twice, indicted me five times over nothing.
Justice must be served now.
Shortly thereafter, he posted something else praising Pam Bondi.
Suffice it to say that it should be the job of prosecutors to determine whether somebody has committed a crime, not the president of the United States.
And yes, of course, I totally understand that President Trump was targeted by the Department of Justice under Joe Biden.
That is absolutely true.
It's absolutely true.
But one of the things that I think we should avoid for the future of our politics, one of the things we really should avoid is the endless spiral where we say, because they did that, now I'm going to do more of that thing.
Because then the other side gets in and they say, because they did that, I'm going to do more of that thing.
The DOJ, if you want to restore the credibility of the DOJ as a functional institution, you are going to, at some point, need to actually allow the DOJ to simply prosecute people who commit crimes rather than finding the people and then finding the crime.
All righty, folks, as the show continues, we're going to jump into the mailbag.
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