Charlie Kirk's killer has been found, mainstream left-wing commentators downplay the assassination, and the Vice President carries Charlie Kirk’s casket onto Air Force Two.
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Ep.1813
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The authorities have announced a press conference.
The press conference should begin momentarily.
We ordinarily do not do this show live on all of the platforms.
We ordinarily only do this show live to the Daily Wire audience.
Obviously, given the circumstances, we will be live.
We are waiting on that press conference immediately.
No matter what we find out from that press conference, the question on everyone's mind is what happens now?
The vice president of the United States has personally escorted Charlie's remains back home.
The FBI may have found the assassin.
There will be uh long prosecution, a lot of interesting information that's come out, even just this morning out of that.
The rest of us are trying to figure out how to uphold Charlie's legacy and pull our country back from what just about everyone feels is the brink.
And I fear that many people are drawing precisely the wrong conclusions.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
Things are moving very, very quickly, as you know.
As of last night, the uh assassin, the suspect was still at large.
The uh FBI had discovered the weapon.
The FBI had discovered some footprints.
The FBI had discovered some grainy pictures, but uh they were calling on the entire country to help out uh with the search.
They appear to have found someone.
Uh President Trump appeared this morning on Fox and Friends to to give just some of the details.
I don't want to go too far.
I'd like to tell you some stories at uh how it happened, but essentially somebody that was very close to him turned them in.
And that happens when you had some of those good shots.
Somebody is gonna say, whether it's a parent or whatever, I'd rather not say right now, they're gonna announce it today, sometime later, probably talk about that.
But somebody close to him turned him, you know, they said, Whoa, it's interesting.
Well we we had very good pictures, but not great, not perfect.
And when you look at it, what happened is somebody, and this happens a lot.
It happened with the crazy Boston bomber, it happened with others.
Somebody that's slowest recognizes even a little tilt of the head, which nobody else would do.
And somebody that was very close to him said, hmm, that's him.
And uh essentially uh went to the father, went to a U.S. Marshal who was fantastic, by the way.
And the person was involved with law enforcement, but was a person of faith, a minister.
And uh brought him to uh a U.S. Marshal who was fantastic, and the father convinced the son, this is it.
And so the president here is saying someone who was close to the shooter uh turned him in.
Or rather, someone who was close to the shooter notified the father, and then he was apprehended.
The reporting that's coming out right now is that the suspect's father uh was able to secure him, and that it was the suspect's father who called law enforcement.
Uh again, we're we're waiting.
We're probably just a few minutes out now from the uh press conference where we're gonna learn a lot more.
But if that was in fact the case, it raises this question: why would the father tune in?
I think we're we're getting law enforcement here addressing the crowd.
Let's get to it.
Let's get to it.
Nope.
That was a fake out.
Okay, we have a five-minute warning on the on the press conference.
So the the question that is raised is well, why would the father turn the suspect in?
And uh one, you could say, well, it's because of justice, it's because of morality, it's because he believes the suspect committed cold-blooded murder.
It might also come from a place of paternal care, because the way that this was more likely to end was with that suspect being dead.
And with this if the suspect were were found dead or retrieved dead, that that would make this national tragedy so much worse.
There would be so many more questions.
You you would there would be there would be so much more doubt in a country that already does not does not trust one another.
Uh, I'm I'll get to the implications of all of this after after we hear from the authorities.
I'll get to the media reaction.
I'll get to what this says about our political culture.
I'll get to what I think is the path forward, because I think a lot of people are drawing the wrong conclusions.
But just for right now, want to focus on who this person could be.
The FBI released video last night of the suspected shooter.
They they had video from around the Utah campus.
The shooter was up on the roof, shot Charlie, and then immediately fled off the roof, jumped down.
Here's the video that we had last night.
Those that are going to follow this, you're going to see a very distinctive t-shirt with an American flag.
It appears to have an eagle on it.
There's also a baseball cap with a triangle on it and a pair of sunglasses.
All distinctive, all things that we would ask the public to look for and try to uh identify if they know someone who is has those items, who has been seen wearing those items, we're looking for all that information.
Please play close attention to the t-shirt, like I said, very distinctive with that American flag and that eagle.
Um, the hat with the triangle and the sunglasses.
You'll go to the next picture.
So this comes out last night, and I I know a lot of people look at it and say, well, how are you supposed to tell who that is?
It's a grainy photograph.
It's a guy's covered up with a hat with sunglasses.
President Trump made the point.
Well, uh, you know, sometimes if it's a loved one, if it's someone you know, even just a little tilt of the head, you say that's the person.
Or as the FBI is saying here, oh, I recognize those shoes, oh, I recognize that shirt.
And so the suspect was able to escape, a lot of people were just uh called upon to give any information they can.
This is why, not that we want to include uh the photograph of the shooter in the show, but if the if the suspect is at large, if anyone has any additional information, uh this was this was a plea by the government to a country that is obviously fractured, that is increasingly fractured, in which a large portion of the country celebrated the cold-blooded murder of a man who just wanted to go talk it out on campuses with his opponents graciously and generously.
This was a plea to say, hey, if we have any common humanity left, if we have any shared community left, we need your help.
We cannot do it alone.
You have to reach out.
And reportedly, that is exactly what happened.
That someone close to the shooter contacted the father.
The father reportedly called authorities and said, I have secured my son.
This raises questions too.
Does it mean I'm distracting my son until you get here?
Does this mean that I'm physically restraining my son?
Does this mean I'm locking my son in a in a room?
We just don't know.
We're waiting now on all of that.
What we do know is what the Utah governor uh promised yesterday, which is that the death penalty will be pursued.
Uh, this would appear to be appropriate, uh to put it diplomatically.
And there there are many people on the right.
I don't know if I'll say many.
No, I th there are.
There are really.
There's a growing number of people on the right who are opposed to the death penalty.
And I think it's important to ask ourselves why we have the death penalty.
We have the death penalty for three different reasons.
Retributive justice, most importantly, if you do something wrong, that is why you are punished.
It's not merely rehabilitation.
It's not merely deterrent.
It's it's retributive justice.
You do something wrong, justice demands you be punished in some way.
Uh it is deterrence to turn people away from doing these crimes to discourage them.
And it is rehabilitation, as Dr. Johnson points out.
Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he's to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Those are the three reasons.
The modern argument against the death penalty is that uh practically speaking, we don't need it anymore.
We live in this modern society, we can lock people up very well, and so you don't really need it.
That prudential argument is beginning to fray.
As we let criminals off the hook, as we have mainstream calls to abolish prisons, as we have this kind of violence and terrorism spreading, not merely the targeted assassinations as happened to Charlie, but regular old street crime, women being set on fire in New York City subway cars, w women refugees being stabbed in the neck on Charlotte trains.
As this is creeping up, it it begins to weaken the prudential argument against the death penalty.
Because increasingly people cannot trust the criminal justice system to lock away the bad guys to protect society from the evildoers.
And so I think you might be seeing a return to a more classical and traditional conception of justice and morality.
At the very least, that's what you're getting in Utah.
And I think most people are quite all right with that.
Now, the the uh rest of what's occurred concerns Charlie himself.
And I know a lot of people uh were really choked up yesterday because Charlie's remains were flown from uh Utah to Phoenix, Phoenix, which is his home.
And not only were they returned there, they were returned on Air Force II, the vice president's airplane.
Not only were they returned on Air Force II, which is a great and fitting honor, but the vice president himself uh helped to carry the casket onto the airplane.
*Mario*
For those of you who who are only listening, there's JD, front right side of the casket, carrying his friend's body, the vice president and Charlie Kirk were quite close, all the way onto the airplane.
Uh a beautiful gesture from the vice president, and one that is not only fitting at a personal level, uh, but but is fitting from a political and public level, because Charlie was not only a public figure, but he was one of the most important political figures in the entire country, even though he didn't hold office, even though he didn't pass laws.
Maybe because he didn't hold office and pass laws.
But I think it's no exaggeration to say a member of the cabinet could have been assassinated, God forbid, it would have been much less politically significant than Charlie Kirk being assassinated.
And I I'm I'm counting both parties in this, really.
He wasn't a governor, he wasn't a senator, he didn't hold office, and yet he was much more politically influential and significant in the minds of people than any of them.
And on top of all of that, he was a symbol of what many, many people wish for in this country, which is open dialogue, respectful, generous, gracious exchange, trying to talk it out, hear out the other side.
He was a symbol of that.
And both of these things come together when you look at someone like the vice president, because just at a personal level, I know that Charlie's death has seriously affected many, many millions of people, not only in America, but around the world.
And we'll get to some of those tributes that have come in in a little bit.
But also, he was a personal friend to a lot of us.
He was a personal friend to a lot of us.
He had a lot of friends.
And a lot of those people who have public roles are know him, know uh what a good guy he was, know his innocence, and are feeling very personally the injustice of their friend being murdered.
That that adds on to all of it.
And and everyone else could feel that too.
So the vice president helps to carry Charlie's casket onto Air Force Two.
Air Force Two then lands in Phoenix.
This is what Phoenix Air Traffic Control had to say when the plane landed.
Welcome home, Charlie.
You didn't deserve it.
May God bless your family.
Beautiful tribute, even from air traffic control.
Welcome home, Charlie.
You didn't deserve it.
God bless you and your family.
Uh the uh Charlie's widow, Erica was walking, walking down the plane holding hands with the second lady of the United States, who chavans.
Not just even air traffic Control.
You know, I mentioned the the day that Charlie was murdered.
The Yankee Stadium held a moment of silence for him before the game.
And I thought, that was really astounding.
Not just because I'm a Yankee fan, love the Yankees.
But I said, oh wow, it's it's not just the American right that is saying nice things about him.
It's not just the president of the United States and the vice president who are saying nice things about him.
It's all of the other presidents in both parties.
It's multiple heads of government from around the world.
I said, oh my goodness, it's even cultural institutions like the Yankees.
The Yankees, though, a little secret is they've always trended a little bit more conservative.
Even last night, the NFL, which is which is a downright leftist league, you know, the leading the charge on disrespecting the American flag and BLM and all the rest of it.
The National Football League yes, that you please join us in a moment of silent reflection following the murder of Charlie Kirk.
The NFL condemns all violence in our communities.
It will take all of us to stop hate.
Thank you.
That really struck me.
I think you are seeing from the prominent institutions, from the really prominent individuals, a recognition that the United States is on the brink.
We are on the brink of something.
Civil wars have started for less.
No exaggeration.
I am not one for hyperbolic talk or about civil war or any.
I am not, I am not that guy.
But it's not just me who recognizes this here.
I think it's the NFL.
I think it's all the major politicians.
I think it's the parties.
There has been a sense that wow, you know, even people who have who have uh contributed to this nasty environment, this environment that would become increasingly violent with private violence, vigilante violence, trying to attack people for for what their mere opinions, mainstream opinions at that, that yikes, maybe we don't really want to go down this path.
There has been a reasonable amount of responsibility from almost every institution, with one exception, with one exception, and that is the left-wing media.
I mentioned yesterday on the show, I said everyone is going to be inveying and uh with great anger about the horrific reactions from the left-wing media to Charlie's murder.
Said, today is not that day.
And there's an order to these things, and it's natural and it's good.
I said, all of that is for tomorrow.
Okay.
We won't forget it.
We won't let it slip.
Our blood will boil on simmer for 24 hours as we mourn Charlie.
We'll get to that tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow is here.
And it's very, very important to pay attention to what elite liberal media had to say about this.
Not some fringe stuff.
I'm not pulling up all of the degenerate leftists on Twitch or whatever.
I'm not.
I'm not finding the most sensationalist uh small potato that I can find.
I am pointing to the major networks.
Here we have MSNBC's reaction.
Um, in which a shooting like this happens.
Yeah, and again, I emphasize what you just emphasized.
We don't know any full details of this that we don't know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration, or so we have no idea about that was Matthew Dowd, MSNBC contributor.
Charlie Kirk is shot.
Everyone sees it on all the cameras, is shot through the neck.
And I think most people, the moment they saw the video recognized he was almost certainly dead.
And the left-wing official news analysts' immediate reaction on the left-wing news network was well, I mean, who knows?
Maybe it was a supporter shooting off his gun in celebration.
I can't, I can't tell if that displays a level uh an almost criminal, at least culpable level of ignorance, or if that was snark.
Was that sarcasm?
Was that a little jibe about gun control?
I don't know.
Those rube idiots, those rube idiots who follow those right wing speakers like Charlie Kirk.
Maybe they were just shooting their guns off like Mexican banditos in celebration.
I can't tell, and I don't know what's worse.
I don't know if this guy really has nothing between the ears, just wind whistling through.
That would be bad enough.
Or did he actually try to get a little barb in at Charlie or at least Charlie's supporters as the man was bleeding to death, probably at that point already murdered.
I think the charitable view to this guy's intellect is that it was the latter.
But the charitable guy, the charitable view to this guy's soul to this guy's character would be the I it's unthinkable.
Matthew Dowd then goes on.
And I think maybe this clip actually reveals a little bit more of where he's coming from.
But following up what was just said, he's been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.
And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.
Vomit-inducing, vomit-inducing behavior from MSNBC and from this person.
Because he he says, in a way, you have to be grateful to him because he is articulating what a lot of liberals, even mainstream liberals have said and at least thought privately.
And he's just saying it out loud explicitly.
He says, Well, you know, uh, yes, that uh young man, that 31-year-old father of two, married, boy scout who only ever wanted to talk it out with his opponents in a gracious way.
He's very divisive.
That's his that's your first reaction.
Well, you're he's very div How is he divisive?
By the way, give me an example of a divisive thing, Charlie said.
I've been friends with Charlie for a long time.
I know all the things you're gonna point to, you're gonna say, well, he says that men and women are different.
I maybe that is divisive today, wasn't divisive eight years ago.
Well, he says we should protect babies in the womb.
We shouldn't murder them.
Maybe that's divisive today by today's standards.
Didn't used to be.
For statistically, all of American history that wasn't divisive at all.
Any even slightly moral person would have agreed with that.
Even slightly moral, even accidentally moral person would have agreed with that.
Now I guess that's considered divisive.
Even after that became divisive, quote unquote, at the very least, people uh didn't think you should be murdered for expressing that opinion.
But then MSNBC goes further.
MSNBC says, says the quiet part out loud, says, well, you know, look, this kind of rhetoric leads to these kind of feelings, leads to these kind of actions.
He had it coming.
That's what they're saying.
In not quite so many words, but that is directly what they're saying.
Well, he had it coming.
That was MSNBC's first reaction.
And it's such a gut punch.
Very little surprises me in politics.
And I knew that these guys kind of thought that.
I suspected they kind of thought that, but that is such a gut punch, man.
A 31-year-old father of two, married, sweet guy, moderate, nice, as mainstream as they get, as gracious as they get, gets murdered in cold blood on television in front of his wife, and his kids are gonna have to watch that.
And your first reaction is, yeah, well, what do you yeah, he had it coming?
He had it coming.
He did it.
He deserved it.
That's what he said.
That's what MSNBC said.
Sickening.
And it's a gut punch, not merely because of this lunatic television network that is somehow still on the airwaves.
But it's because it wasn't just them.
It's because it was the media media more broadly.
I have it's you want to go past MSNBC?
I have the New York Times right here.
Now here's how the New York Times covered it.
A correction was made on September 11th, 2025.
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an anti Semitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast.
Hold on, wait, what?
Man.
You can call Charlie Kirk a lot of things.
Calling him an anti Semite.
Are you insane?
Anyone, you don't have to be his friend.
Anyone who has ever followed him for one second knows.
He's uh been quite a quite a supporter of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel.
An anti What could they be talking about?
New York Times, paper of record, The Gray Lady.
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly, an anti-Semitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast.
He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it.
It was not his own statement.
Thank you.
Young man, totally innocent, murdered in cold blood by, it would appear, a political opponent, maybe a political opponent who reads the New York Times.
Gunned down for expressing his views and mainstream views at that.
And you say, yeah, well, you know, he's probably a Jew hater.
Yeah, he's a Jew hater, Charlie Kirk.
He's an anti Semite.
Oh, he's like the head of the Ku Klux Klan, isn't he?
Like a Nazi.
Oh, sorry, correction.
And even the correction is so nauseating.
Listen to the first statement.
An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an anti-Semitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made.
He didn't make the statement.
He didn't make your correction needs a correction.
You could say an anti-Semitic statement that Charlie Kirk read.
You can say an anti-Semitic statement that Charlie Kirk reported on.
It's not a statement that he made.
A statement that you make is one of your own making.
Even the correction is calumny.
From the New York Times.
Don't just say it's, well, that's some left-wing streamer on Blue Sky or on Twitch or on what.
Oh, oh, well, okay, maybe it's not that.
Maybe it's, but that's just that left-wing cable network, MSNBC.
It's the New York Times.
It's their most prestigious news outlet.
It's their correction.
Is to slander, to libel, to calumniate him.
These are the mainstream elite places.
By the way, before we let MSNBC off the hook, it's not even just Matthew Down.
We're getting the press conference.
We've been given just a minute or two warning here.
It's not even just the analysts who come on MSNBC.
There's an MSNBC anchor who came out and decided to criticize Charlie Kirk the moment this happened.
Yeah, we're showing, by the way, our affiliate in Utah and the aftermath of this shooting.
You could see people running away pretty quickly, as as you would imagine they would do at gunshots.
The FBI director, Cash Patel, has weighed in on this.
He just tweeted the following.
We're closely monitoring reports of the tragic shooting involving Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.
Our thoughts are with Charlie, his loved ones, and everyone affected.
Agents will be on the scene quickly.
And the FBI stands in full support of the ongoing response and the investigation.
Charlie Kirk is a divisive figure.
Polarizing, lightning rod, whatever term you want to use.
Why?
Well, he's one of MAGA's most prominent voices online.
Your first reaction, again, not just an analyst here.
You're talking about an anchor for the network.
Your first reaction is, okay, he's been shot, people are fleeing, might be dead.
Looks like he's dead.
Charlie Kirk's a divisive figure.
He's real polarizing.
That's the story.
Got it.
I'm not even going to mention.
Well, I suppose I'll mention.
I'm not going to look at or discuss at length.
The ubiquity of the negative comments about Charlie Kirk from the political left throughout social media.
The many celebrations.
The other news networks, where cheers could be heard, followed by official denials.
I'm not going to mention, or at least speak at length, about the additional threats that have come against conservative communicators, political figures, and the like.
All over the place.
These are the mainstream elite places.
Up to and including elected officials.
Ilhan Omar, sitting member of Congress, very prominent Democrat member of Congress.
Here's what she had to say.
Charlie was someone who was willing to debate and downplay the death of George Floyd in the hands of Minneapolis police.
I think he called him a scumbag.
Right, have no regard.
Downplay slavery and what black people have gone through in in this country by saying Juneteen should never exist.
And I and I think, you know, the the there are a lot of people who are out there talking about him just wanting to have a civil debate.
A complete rewriting of history.
Yeah, there is nothing more effed up, you know, like uh than to than to completely pretend that you know his words and actions um have not been recorded and and and in existence um for for the last decade or so murdered Charlie Kirk because he didn't like what he had to say, as Charlie was respectfully engaging with people on a college campus with his opponents.
But that's the core of the story.
Someone murdered Charlie Kirk because he didn't like what Charlie Kirk had to say.
A sitting member of Congress, a very prominent member of the Democrat Party, sits down next to whatever that guy's name is.
I forget his name, but I've seen him before.
He's he's been around the liberal media for a long time.
And they both say, yeah, we don't like what Charlie Kirk had to say.
Full stop.
Notice Ilhan Omar didn't say, well, I might not like what Charlie Kirk had to say, but it was so terribly wrong to murder him.
And this is uh what Charlie Kirk was saying was within the mainstream of and really, even if he were on the fringe, we shouldn't murder him for his points of view.
No, no.
No, no, no.
Her reaction was, yeah, yeah, but he said really disgusting stuff.
As if, as if to say the obvious implication of what she's saying is.
Yeah, he had it coming.
See, Ilhan, don't you think it's wrong to murder a young man who doesn't hold any political office, who's just having conversations.
Don't you think it's wrong to murder a young man for his opinions?
And her response is, yeah, he had really bad opinions, though.
You know?
I mean, hey, let's not rewrite history.
I really didn't like his opinions.
And then whatever that guy's name is, the liberal anchor, he says, oh no, it's complete.
He has terrible opinions, had terrible opinions.
Yeah.
And people are saying they're trying to diminish now how bad his opinions were.
I hated his opinions.
I hated them, they were really bad.
That's not the point.
Pardon me.
It's not the point.
The whole argument that the even slightly reasonable and moral people in this country are making right now, is that you should not be murdered in cold blood for expressing your opinion.
And Ilhan Omar is saying, well, actually, maybe yes, you should.
That's her implication.
Her not so subtle insinuation.
If she agreed with the reasonable and moral people, she would say, well, yes, of course, no matter what he says, no matter how awful I find his opinions, of course he shouldn't be murdered for them.
For her reaction to be, well, no, no, no, is he had really bad opinions, is to accept the premise that under certain circumstances at least, one ought to be murdered for expressing his simple opinions.
Sitting member of Congress, one of the faces of the Democrat Party.
That guy's name, whose name I forget, but whoever that guy is, he's been on a lot of networks before.
I've seen his face.
I think we are now getting the press conference.
We'll get to what happens now, because I think people are drawing a totally wrong conclusion.
We'll get to the press conference.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We got him.
On the evening of September 11th, a family member reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office with information.
I know there has been speculation as well as to uh the writing on those casings.
Those those uh those bullet casings.
And uh I believe we have that as well.
And I will I'll share that with you now.
Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle.
Inscriptions on a fired casing read notices, bulges, capital O W O. What's this question mark?
Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read, hey fascist exclamation point, catch exclamation point, up arrow symbol, right arrow and uh symbol, and three down arrow symbols.
A second unfired casing read, oh Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Chow Chow, and a third unfired casing read, if you read this, you are gay, L M A O. I will leave that up to you to interpret what those engravings mean.
Um I I think the uh the clearest one that says catch fascist.
I there's not and by the way, that's like catch like a ball, catch this.
Um that's uh I think that that speaks for itself.
Governor indicated that he had been communicating with a friend on Discord about the gun.
Do you anticipate any more arrests?
Uh we do not at this time have any information that would lead to any additional arrests.
Yes.
But the investigation is ongoing.
We are not wired as human beings.
Biologically, uh historically, we have not evolved uh in a way that um we are capable of processing those types of violent imagery.
And by the way, we've seen another one with a gruesome stabbing very recently that went viral.
Um, this is not good for us.
It is not good to consume.
Um, social media is a cancer on our society right now.
And I would encourage, again, I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.
Really uh unbelievable press conference from the governor there and from Cash Patel, the FBI director.
We got a lot of information.
We got a lot of information about the shooter.
We now know they got him.
That was the opening of the press conference.
We got him.
We then got an interpretation of what the events mean because the governor was leading it.
We got a uh vision of the path forward.
There was a an incredibly thorough, robust press conference here.
So they have the suspect.
The guy was living with his parents.
He was uh I don't know, I think pretty clearly a member of the political left.
In fact, when the governor was asked uh what the what the casings meant, what the in uh engravings meant, he said, look, it says catch this fascist, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
It seems pretty clear to me.
So this was by all evidence, left-wing political violence.
He also said that social media is a cancer, and that our brains are just not wired to see this kind of uh political assassination up close in HD from someone that many people grew up watching, especially young people have been watching Charlie Kirk since they're 10 years old, and they see this guy uh murdered in a very gruesome way on their phones.
He said, This is not good.
This is this is not how we're how we're built to live.
Social media is a cancer.
That's an amazing and largely accurate, I think, view of the situation.
Uh I was listening to a uh lecture the other day that pointed out that each social media uh website is tied to one of the deadly sins.
I think this is an Tomistic Institute.
And so LinkedIn is is avarice and Instagram is pride and X, Twitter is wrath.
You know, and it's just there's so much wrath and uh it's so gruesome.
I was speaking last night to someone who said, Michael, it's so scary when I watched the video.
The scariest thing about watching the video of Charlie's assassination is that I felt nothing.
This person didn't know Charlie.
He agreed with them on some things, didn't agree with him on other things, what isn't particularly political.
But I was taken aback.
I said, What do you mean you felt nothing?
He said, I felt nothing because I'm so desensitized to seeing this violence.
It was 10 years ago.
If you wanted to see a really gruesome video, you had to go to the darkest corners of the internet.
Now, he said, I've seen multiple murders just in the past three days, in high definition on my phone.
He said, it was it scared me, that fact about myself.
No question about it.
And then the governor said he didn't want to be preachy, but he gave a kind of a political sermon about opinions and about how horrified we all are that people are now being murdered for expressing their opinions.
And this gets to the almost universal reaction to Charlie's murder on the right, on the left.
And this is where I think people are actually misinterpreting things.
You saw this quite clearly even just yesterday on the view from Alyssa Farah, articulating much the same view that everyone else is mentioning.
I hope it doesn't have a chilling effect, whether you're left or right, on your ability to speak your mind.
I know the one thing we all agree about on this table, we all share our viewpoints.
I don't agree with that.
I don't agree with that.
And I agree with the broader sentiment that I want to get back to a civil society where we can speak and where we can uh articulate views like reasonable people and have our traditional self-government and all the rest of it.
I I certainly agree with the governor on that.
I agree with with everyone who's saying it.
But I don't agree that the immediate reaction to this has to be to just speak a lot more.
To not not tamp down any kind of speech.
That we what we need to do, we just need to engage a lot more in the open marketplace of ideas.
I think that is a totally wrong interpretation of what's just happened.
Charlie Kirk did the best job it is possible to do in the most generous, gracious way of engaging with the left in the free marketplace of ideas.
He he did it literally in a wide open field many, many times.
Anyone could come up to him and ask him any question about anything.
He gave it the best shot.
And the left killed him for it.
The left murdered him for it.
He did the most noble thing you could possibly do in the free marketplace of ideas, and they murdered him for it.
And as I mentioned on the show yesterday, in a battle, a physical battle or a rhetorical battle, your opponent gets a say too.
You don't get to just make up all the rules.
And what the political left has said, and it's not just the murder of Charlie.
This has been going on for years and years and years.
Threats and attempts at violence against many people on the right, and it's almost uniformly from the left against the right, reaching its horrific and tragic peak in the political assassination of Charlie Kirk.
They said the left said no.
You you want to come into the free marketplace of ideas, we're gonna shoot you.
Well, you can't have a marketplace if people don't feel safe to go into the marketplace.
No one's gonna go to buy the goods.
You can't.
You can't have a free and open and flourishing marketplace if people can reasonably expect a bomb to go off in the marketplace in any given moment, if they feel that they'll be sitting ducks in the marketplace.
Marketplaces don't work that way because marketplaces need rules, marketplaces need security.
Marketplaces need order and peace in order to function.
You can't have a marketplace if people keep shooting up the marketplace and the left keeps shooting up the marketplace.
And so it seems to me what is called for now, if we want To return to a country that has a healthy exchange of ideas and in in which we can all flourish and live together in a peaceable way without some kind of uh heavy-handed government around us.
What we need to do in order to get to that is to be a little bit more forceful.
I think we we do need to tamp down some things.
I think we do need to restore order.
I think we need more arrests of criminals.
I think we need more early interventions.
I think we need more insane asylums.
It's totally unclear what the this shooter's psychiatric condition was, but broadly speaking, I think we've seen that with the Charlotte attack with many of the leftist attacks, the transgender attacks in recent years.
We need institutions that can take care of these people who cannot take care of themselves and who are constantly imperiling our lives, and who have made it impossible to have a free marketplace of ideas.
I think we need to be a little more forceful about delusions.
We've entertained a lot of delusions.
We've given license to a lot of delusions that have led directly to violence, and that is especially including transgender violence.
But it's not just transgender violence.
It's left-wing anarchism generally, Antifa.
All the many, many delusions about our society.
I think we need to be a little more clear about what the truth is.
And we need to have the confidence and the dignity to stand up for the truth in the public square.
Ostracism.
I think we need a little bit more ostracism for the people who are celebrating the cold-blooded murder of a man who only ever wanted to talk it out.
I think those people need to lose their jobs.
I think those people need to be expelled from polite society.
And they can go, they can have a little book club themselves where they can uh dance gleefully at the murder of innocent people, but they should not be permitted into polite society.
I think we need we need clarity and force on that front.
In the government, in the educational institutions, in corporate America, in society.
William F. Buckley Jr., no less urbane and uh clubbable, a conservative than William F. Buckley Jr. made this point 60 years ago.
Some liberal on his show said we need a really open society.
We all agree with how open the society should be, right?
The open marketplace values, the open, open, open.
He said, no, no, no.
I think society should be considerably more closed.
We want freedom, but you can't have freedom without order.
There's no such thing as freedom without order.
There's no such thing as liberty without knowledge.
You can't be ignorant and free.
You can't be undisciplined and free.
You can't have anarchy and chaos and shooters lurking around every corner and half the country gleefully celebrating cold-blooded murder.
And be free.
You can't have that.
The prerequisite for freedom is order and discipline and knowledge.
That's what we have to restore right now.
And that involves circumscribing some of the insanity that we have allowed to fester over the last several decades.
Insanity that is totally out of step with the American tradition, with the principles of ordered liberty, with the ideals that every reasonable person holds.
We need to, we need to have a little more courage and we need to have a little more clarity, and we need to exercise a little bit more just authority in our society.
How many people have you talked to?
I've heard this from so many people.
They say, Michael, I'm something that scandalizes me most about Charlie's assassination is that I logged onto Facebook and people I grew up with, people I used to work with are happy about it.
Multiple people have said this to me.
I bet it's true of you too.
I never, I never thought I because Charlie, being so mainstream, being relatively moderate, being so genteel, being so polite, being so nice.
If they would celebrate his murder, they'd celebrate my murder.
If they would justify his murder, they'd justify my murder.
I thought these people were my friends.
I thought they were my family.
I thought I grew up with them.
You cannot have a society like that.
And we need some standards back in our society.
And we need some rules around the marketplace.
All marketplaces need rules.
All in order for a marketplace to flourish, you have to feel that your life is not imperiled by walking into one.
That's what is called for right now.
That is the necessary step that most people, I think, are missing to arrive at the ideal that they like of a society in which people can have a healthy exchange of ideas.
Before we go, I know that what the argument is going to be now, the left is already making it, is that left-wing violence is rare.
And really most political violence comes from the right.
In fact, uh Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton made this point on CNN just yesterday.
By and large, saying we all need to turn down the rhetoric.
So let's be serious about where this violence is coming from, of extremist violent attacks in America, extremely violence, violent murders.
76% are from right wing extremists.
4% are from left-wing extremists.
I condemn that 4%.
But we also need to be honest about as a nation about where this violence is coming from.
And oh, by the way, it's probably an appropriate time to talk about guns, too.
You hear a lot of conservatives saying, hey, the only thing we need to do here is get more guns on the street.
No back.
That's not going to solve this problem.
That's going to make it worse.
So disgusting, just like virtually all of the left-wing media reaction and increasingly congressional reaction to this.
Listen to the snark.
He says, you know, the vast majority of political violence in the United States is right wing.
4% of it is left wing.
And I condemn that 4%.
And I condemn that 4%.
And we need to talk about guns.
We need to talk about guns.
The murder weapon was a bolt-action antique rifle.
What do you mean talk about guns?
So we need to ban AR-15s.
We need to ban.
It was a bolt-action vintage hunting rifle.
That would be the last gun in the country that you would ban.
Unless you say we need to repeal the Second Amendment.
That's the only thing you could do.
The only thing you could do, which still would not work, is overturn the Second Amendment.
Because the absolute most basic protected gun in any country that permits any guns at all would be the sort of antique bolt-action rifle that was used in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
So is that what you're saying, Seth Moulton?
We need to completely get rid of the Second Amendment, completely overturn it, and then go door to door around the country in a country that has more guns than people and confiscate every single gun, including antique family heirlooms.
Is that what you're saying?
Maybe that is what he's saying.
He doesn't have the guts to say it.
He might not have the intelligence to realize that that is the implication of his random verbal ejaculations.
But is he gonna say let him say it then?
Let him say it.
And then let's just say that he could convince people that it was a good idea to repeal the 22nd Amendment.
Sorry, the second amendment.
And let's just say that he he convinced people it was a good idea to go door to door and confiscate every single gun in America, hundreds and hundreds of millions of guns.
How are you gonna do it, Seth?
How are you gonna do it?
Oh, you don't have any answer.
You don't have any answer to any of my questions.
But you're going to go and take the opportunity of the murder of an innocent man, apparently by one of your own, and you're gonna use that to pontificate about your completely utopian political agenda, revolting, revolting behavior, stupid behavior, powerfully stupid behavior, but also nauseating in its vice.
And then we get to his chief claim that he makes.
His chief claim that virtually all the political violence is from the right.
I looked it up.
What did I know?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't read crime statistics all the time.
Maybe that was true.
So I looked it up.
And if you if you Google it, if you chat GBT it, it'll say, oh yes, according to this study, according to that study, right wingers are more likely to commit political violence than left-wingers.
The the if you look at the incidence of political violence, more of them are from the right than the left.
I said, you know, that just doesn't sound accurate to me.
Just doesn't sound accurate.
I myself uh have been uh targeted with political violence over the years.
And then I said, wait a second.
Let me look that up.
Let me look that up.
My own, my town here, Nashville, there's been political violence.
What was the most recent example?
Was when a trans-identifying shooter gunned down little children in a Catholic school.
A trans shooter, trans identifying, goes into the symbol of traditional conservative culture of an objective moral order, of the right.
Don't forget the right, even the right and the left, the terms come from the left side of the National Assembly and the French Revolution, which was the atheists and the secularists, the right side coming from the Christians and the defenders of the regime.
Goes in, fires multiple shots through a picture of Adam and Eve, stained glass, before gunning down these innocent kids in a church.
Because of, if you read the manifesto or any part of the manifesto, largely because of this gender ideology, which is a left-wing ideology.
And I looked it up.
Do you know that's not political violence?
Come again?
I looked it up.
No, no, no.
The police concluded this was not ideologically motivated.
So the trans shooter gunning down little Catholic kids, sorry, little uh Protestant kids, it was a Presbyterian school, I think.
Because of that, they say, no, no, no, it was the person was seeking attention, it wasn't ideological.
There's a manifesto!
What do you mean it's not ideological?
No, it doesn't count.
Then I thought, I said, what about in my own experience?
I was at uh University of Pittsburgh two years ago, and I uh was doing a talk, it was a debate over transgenderism, and uh, two Antifa agents showed up, and they burned me an effigy on the street when I got there, and then uh uh two Antifa agents showed up threw an explosive at the building right as I was walking on stage.
Uh, happily I was not injured.
A police officer was very seriously injured, a female cop was very seriously injured.
This couple were hardcore anarchists, antifa operatives who would go to Antifa meetings, who were caught going through TSA with explosive material on them multiple times.
I looked that up.
Do you know that's not left-wing political violence?
No, no.
No, they pled down, they got an obstruction of justice charge, one of them.
So it's just it's obstruction of justice.
Do you know how people like Seth Moulton arrive at the conclusion that there's more right-wing political violence than left-wing political violence?
They don't count the left-wing political violence.
That's how.
That's how they do it.
They lie.
They hide the left-wing political violence.
The first two cases I looked up of clear left-wing political violence, trans-motivated political violence, another one regarding the transgender issue from Antifa, the left-wing, the left-wing organization, left-wing terror organization in America, not political violence.
So that's how you get to it.
We all know, because we have eyes and ears and memories, that left-wing political violence in America is much, much, much more prominent.
And there's a double scandal here, because not only will the authorities not do anything about it, they won't even admit that it exists.
They'll hide it.
President Trump, of course, addressed the role of violence here.
He said this at the White House yesterday about the importance of nonviolence.
How do you want to see your uh supporters respond to that Carly Kart McFeck advocate of nonviolence and free speech on camp?
How do you want your supporters to respond to?
I think that way.
He was.
He was an advocate of nonviolence.
That's the way I'd like to see people respond.
Yes, absolutely, totally agree.
Totally agree.
But if one side is violent, and you don't want the other side to become violent, then the state needs to enforce the law and to maintain order with the credible threat of just violence.
This is the part that I think people are missing.
We want to get back to the society where we can exchange ideas freely.
We want to get back to the society where we can uh have the faith that we're we're not going to be murdered just for articulating our views.
We want to get back to a society where we don't resort to political violence, of course.
You don't get there by just wishing upon a star.
Certainly we pray, we pray to the true God.
Prayer is the first resort, not the last resort.
Certainly we do that.
We also have a civil authority that has to do something.
And what they have to do is not ban 80-year-old hunting rifles that it are impossible to ban in the first place.
The way that we do that is not by uh cheering on or excusing the murder of an innocent man for stating his opinion.
The way that we do that, the way that you go from a society in which one side, most prominently, is murdering the other side, the other side, which wants to be nonviolent.
The way that you get back to that is you need to have a just kind of violence, not vigilante violence, not private violence.
Nobody wants that on the right.
On the left, I guess they do.
But in order to do that, you must have the state come in for the common good to defend the traditional and normal standards, to keep the guardrails of the society in place, to rigorously prosecute certain kinds of speech like threats, like fraud, like libel, like all of the kind of speeches speech, quote unquote, that's never been protected in America, like fighting words, all these sorts of things.
That's the only way you get to it, because you don't have liberty without order.
It's not possible.
And Governor Cox in that press conference said we're it feels like the late 1960s, when society spiraled out of control.
That's right.
We need order.
There will be some kind of order.
Will it be the good, just order that that distinguishes between right and wrong and chooses the right that distinguishes between true and false and chooses the true?
Will it be that kind of order?
Or will it be whatever we've got now?
That's the choice for us.
And that's that's the obligation, I think, for people in authority to do what we know is right, to have to have the prudence and the justice and the clarity to appropriately and forcefully insist upon what is right.
No member block today.
Uh, Ben is going to be going live momentarily on Michael Knowles.
