Ezra Levant examines Charlie Kirk’s assassination—a 31-year-old conservative leader, known for his campus debates and Human Events podcast, targeted despite his respectful discourse. The attack, linked to ammunition bearing anti-trans and anti-"pho" slogans, mirrors rising political violence, including Trump’s near-assassinations and Steve Scalise’s 2017 shooting, yet lacks bipartisan unity. Media figures like MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd and CBC’s David Cochran exploit Kirk’s death to push victim-blaming narratives, ignoring his global influence and Trump’s flag-lowering tribute. Kirk’s legacy—truth, open debate, and kindness—stands in stark contrast to the FBI’s alleged faith-based persecution under Biden and the demonization of conservatives, which Levant warns may escalate retaliatory violence against public figures like Jack Pesobic or Viva. The episode underscores how unchecked hostility risks turning discourse into a battleground. [Automatically generated summary]
It's the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in the United States, and it still weighs heavily on my mind.
I'm in London in the UK right now, a country that Charlie cared about.
He came over here to warn the UK about losing its freedom.
And he spoke passionately, and as Charlie Kirk is famous for doing, he engages in debate.
He would go into the heart of university campuses and spend all day talking one-on-one in conversations with people who disagreed with him, trying to reason together.
He was the best of America in that way.
He didn't shout.
He didn't lecture.
He engaged.
It was participative.
And I think he treated everyone with respect, even people he deeply disagreed with.
And his assassination is so shocking, in part because of that, because he was such a humanitarian.
And he would have time even for people who deeply disagreed with him.
I've been thinking about what the assassins wanted to accomplish.
And I think some of it's obvious.
The first thing they wanted to stop Charlie Kirk himself.
He's one in a million.
He's hardworking, intelligent, effective.
He's a born leader, recruiter.
So they wanted to stop that man.
And they did.
He will no longer do his campus outreach.
And Charlie Kirk probably would have eventually run for office himself.
And who knows how high he would have gone.
So that wonderful life was stopped short.
He was only 31.
So in that way, the terrorism that was unleashed yesterday was successful.
There were two other things I think the assassin was trying to do.
One was to demoralize us, to make us feel hopeless, to make us realize that we can never get Charlie Kirk back and that maybe the world we live in is not what we thought it was, to make us question ourselves and lose our own motivation.
And the third, of course, is to scare us, to make us think, well, will we be killed for our freedom of speech and for being in the public square also?
And here's what I would say in response to all three of these goals from the assassin.
It's true they killed Charlie Kirk, but if Charlie Kirk's supporters and friends choose rather than to leave the field of the battle of ideas, but rather than to double down and to reinvest, maybe we can in some way compensate for Charlie's untimely death.
And maybe if we all say, well, I'll take a part of the load he was carrying, maybe we can blunt the public effect of it.
Obviously, no one can bring the man back, especially for his two young children.
If instead of being demoralized, if we show resolve and say we cannot let the bad guys win and just make a conscious, intentional decision that we're not going to flee, we're not going to hide, we're not going to do less.
In fact, if anything, this makes our work more urgent.
And the last one is to be afraid.
You can't really control your emotions about being afraid.
It is afraid.
You know, the fact that a clearly professional assassination can happen, it's terrifying.
And I'm in the UK in part because on Saturday, Tommy Robinson is hosting a big freedom rally for freedom of speech.
Tommy was an ally of Charlie Kirk.
And I'm wondering, will there be violence there?
God forbid.
Will someone try and take out Tommy Robinson?
They have before, they've tried.
And I think the answer is to take precautions, to be thoughtful about things, not to be reckless, but again, to show up in large numbers.
And in a way, Charlie Kirk is a martyr.
And the thing to do is to remember how the martyr lived and to try and replicate what made him so special in our own lives.
I guess what I'm saying is we have a choice.
We cannot bring Charlie Kirk back, but we have control over how we react to his murder.
And I want to get over my funk and my sadness about Charlie Kirk's passing and transform that into resolve and if I can, a little bit of courage.
And maybe that's the best way to remember Charlie Kirk is to carry a little piece of his memory with us and to try and be a little more courageous and a little more fearless than they were before.
I know these words are very little, very little comfort in the day after his death.
And I'm actually stunned by how many people all around the world were touched by him.
I see even foreign leaders, even Canada's prime minister made a comment.
Even Kier Starmer here in the UK.
And I think that's a testament to the force for good of Charlie Kirk.
I apologize for this ramble.
I didn't write it out.
I'm just giving you my thoughts as they come to me.
But as the publisher of Rebel News and as an advocate for some of the same things that Charlie Kirk advocated for, let me promise to you that I will redouble my efforts as a response to his assassination.
For Rebel News, I'm Ezra LeVance.
This is Rebel Roundup, and I'm joined by my friend and colleague, Tamera Ugolini.
It's, I think, a dark day for the conservative movement.
I think we're all trying to process what happened yesterday with the execution, political execution of Charlie Kirk.
And it's also the 24th anniversary of the 9-11 attack.
So it's a real somber day for our American friends.
Are you like me, Tamara, where it just sort of seems surreal?
I'm angry.
I am, I don't know if I feel anything other than just anger, visceral anger at what happened.
I know there are other people who are, you know, like, this is a time for healing.
I'm not there yet.
I don't know about you.
Yeah, somber is definitely a great word to describe how today feels.
And I was really hoping, you know, when the news hit yesterday and just the shock of Charlie's untimely death as a young 31-year-old father, 31.
Husband with an entire life supposed to be ahead of him.
I was hoping that by now I would have done a little bit more processing and be able to have collected myself a little bit more than I did yesterday.
And I'll be honest that I haven't.
This is just absolutely devastating news.
And anyone that I speak to is equally as devastated and somber and praying for Charlie's wife, their two children.
As someone who's obviously married and has children of my own, just that dark thought of being in that situation is unfathomable.
And I thought I would have more words.
Years of Escalation00:15:56
And, you know, as a commentator, I just really don't, other than trying to uphold the legacy that was Charlie Kirk and his ability to tap into the political will and political power of young people across America and the ricochet effect that we can glean from that here in Canada,
where he built this, you know, over the course of several years, he built this massive movement through the very same events that took his life yesterday at a university campus in Utah.
It's just so disturbing that at a place that is supposed to ignite discussion and debate and critical thinking, and it could also be the site of such political persecution and prosecution, as you say, and assassination.
He reached millions in his podcast.
And that is such, you know, other than the obvious loss to his wife, his family, his children, that is such a loss to those young conservatives who he was influential in initiating that open discourse and that dialogue.
And I think the only thing that Charlie Kirk is guilty of here is having respectful, open public discussion about controversial topics that, you know, the establishment would rather you just cower away from.
And sadly, I think there will be two sides to this situation where it does serve to stifle that discussion for people who may be terrified now, even more terrified than they were previously, into submission to the narrative, to the establishment.
But I think it will also serve to embolden people to live his legacy through and live on by saying, you know what, no, we need to make sure that we continue to have these conversations.
We need to continue to have this dialogue.
And I really hope to see more of that because there are so many amazing clips.
And I hope we can go through some of them of Charlie Kirk's speeches, his talks, his debates, his discussions that we will not let die.
Yeah, I mean, there are things in recent history that, you know, you can remember exactly what you were doing when you heard the news.
Like, I remember what I was doing when Princess Diana died.
I remember what I was doing when the towers fell.
I remember exactly what I was doing when I found out that Andrew Breitbart had died because you just knew that these were things that in an instant changed everything.
And I know exactly what I was doing yesterday, and I don't think I'll ever forget because, and I was giving some thought to this because it is 9-11 today.
And I remember the coming together of everybody post 9-11.
Like everybody was an American that day.
And this is the opposite.
That even people, like the people whose rhetoric led to the weaponization of the person or persons who did this still won't shut up.
You know, when you go around telling everybody that you go around telling the punch a Nazi crowd that not only is Charlie Kirk a Nazi, everybody who agrees with Charlie or even just agrees with his viewpoint that we should engage in civil debate, they're also Nazis too.
Oh, and by the way, they're also genociding you by not affirming you.
Well, then what would you do if someone was genociding you?
You would meet them with deadly force and now we've got it.
And you would think, you would think they would have changed after Trump was very nearly killed twice on the campaign trail.
But, you know, you still, I also remember where I was when I heard that Steve Scalise was shot in 2017 while playing baseball.
That was an attempted political assassination.
And you think things would have changed then, but no.
You keep saying, you know, like you as like us as a society, we keep saying this, we got to bring the temperature down because somebody's going to get killed.
And then somebody gets killed and the temperature is just as hot as ever.
And I don't know what to do with my anger today.
But there are plenty of people on our side who have been thrown around the word Nazi, trying to get liked by the punch and Nazi crowd, maligning their critics.
And I don't think we should let those people recede into the bushes, embarrassed Homer Simpson meme style either.
I think those people need to be called out tougher than ever.
Let's get, we could, I could just rant about this forever, but you, and we do have some guests on the show today, hopefully that will join us.
We've got Libby Emmons.
She's the editor-in-chief over at Postmillennial and Human Events.
And we should have Viva Fry joining us later in the show, David Freiheit.
He's a Canadian in America, so I think he has a unique viewpoint on this.
But you wrote this up today: tone-deaf mainstream media host fired following Charlie Kirk murder commentary.
I hope there are many, many, many firings coming up in academia and otherwise.
And we'll get to those, but tell us what happened here, Tamara.
Yeah.
And before we do, it's not to say that anyone should be, you know, the government should come after people for wrong thing, but to be so out of touch and so tone deaf to the tragic loss of life of a father, a husband, and someone who had amassed such a massive following bred from positivity.
I view Charlie Kirk's commentary as positive, open dialogue and discussion that is obviously so desperately needed in this world.
And so here we have the first of, as you mentioned, Sheila, perhaps a string of firings that will take place.
But this comes from an MSNBC political analyst, Matthew Dowd, who was fired after suggesting on air, right?
Like just as this was breaking news, that Charlie Kirk was somehow responsible for or contributed to his own assassination.
And I'm going to read through this article while also throwing to some of these highlights because I think that it is so important for everyone to see the kind of response that the mainstream media and the collectivists are having to this tragedy.
And I think it was Charlie Kirk who actually said himself, you can judge someone by how they react when someone dies.
Yeah.
And that's what I've done in this.
Well, I haven't judged them.
I mean, I'm sure you can glean, but I've just broken down who has kind of said what.
And so let's read through this.
MSNBC has canned political analyst Matthew Dowd after his jaw dropping the insensitive remarks following the tragic assassination of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk during a live broadcast.
Dowd essentially implied that Kirk's bold, unapologetic takes on everything from gun rights to civil liberties somehow invited the bullet that ended his life at the young age of 31.
You can't stop with these sorts of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.
Right.
He shouldn't have been wearing that short skirt if he didn't want all that unwanted male attention.
Oh, we'll get to the victim blaming.
He said, you know, he says this as though debating liberal views or questioning them or having open dialogue about them is some sort of capital offense.
MSNBC is now appearing to scramble to save face following the backlash of this commentary, calling Dowd's words inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable.
Sadly, what's equal parts shocking and utterly predictable is that this is not an isolated incident in the United States here in Canada.
Our taxpayer-funded propaganda machine, the state broadcaster CBC, has pulled a similar stunt.
And before I continue on, maybe we can just play this little clip from the CBC, what they were saying.
It's exactly who you think it is.
It's one of two people.
Make your guess right now.
I mean, look, Charlie Kirk, and I don't say any of this to disparage him, but was a controversial, polarizing figure, right?
The provocations that these university tours, he's going to these campuses, you know, to sort of provocation and confrontation and debate and argument was a big part of what he did with this turning point USA.
But he was very close to Donald Trump, who has ordered all U.S. flags to be lowered in honor of Charlie Kirk for his murder today.
You can see right there.
Is that the White House?
I think that's the White House.
So this speaks to his importance and central role to Donald Trump, Katie.
I mean, look, Charlie Kirk.
Wow.
And we'll get to more.
There's a couple more clips of David Cochran there as well, who's host of Power Politics on the state broadcaster.
And so.
Hey, I'm going to ask Olivia to dig up a clip because I want to show what normal people's reactions are.
The people who knew Charlie Kirk, can you bring up the reaction from Megan Kelly and Glenn Beck?
Glenn Beck's kids were in the crowd that day, by the way.
Bring that up.
That's what normal people react to these things.
That's how they, how a human being, but to say that Charlie Kirk, his mere existence was provocation.
No, people can defend themselves.
Thank you for bringing this up.
These are the two of them who knew Charlie very well, finding out live on air together that Charlie died.
They're reporting that Charlie has died, that he's dead at the age of 31.
It would have to be if that video was real.
There's no way he survived that.
The only good thing is it had to have happened quickly.
Right.
Right.
They're trying to comfort themselves with the knowledge that it was fast.
And then you have people like David Cochran saying, you know, maybe he brought it on himself.
And gross.
It doesn't stop there.
This is just near after, near hours after it was confirmed that Charlie had succumbed to his injuries.
The CBC dropped the headline: some of Charlie Kirk's most controversial takes.
My God.
I mean, talk about, oh, I say it in the article: kicking a man when he's down.
Instead of mourning, like we just saw from humans and people that knew Kirk personally, mourning that father, that husband, a friend, a defender of free speech, someone who engaged in respectful discourse, they dredged up these criticisms of liberal views as if to capitalize on his death as some sort of like gotcha moment.
Look at what will happen to you if these are your views.
That's what the CBC brought you.
You know, a normal publication would say maybe they could have dug up the times where Charlie was threatened by somebody in the audience.
Like these are the times over the years where he was threatened by maniacs in the audience, was screamed at by them and still reacted calmly and civilly to show, you know, instead, they're trying to make Charlie the bad guy here, but he was the victim of a bad guy.
And it was escalating over years and years and years.
I was listening to Steven Crowder this morning.
And, you know, he was sort of going through all the times because he is the, you know, the guy who sits down at the table and says, prove me wrong, which is a discussion.
And they would have stuff thrown at them.
And if you could throw something at somebody, you could shoot them, right?
It's the same, you could be that, if you can get that close and wing something at somebody, well, it's easy to shoot them.
And he was going through all the times where he's just having to trying to have a civil discussion.
People walk up, scream at him, and then assault him or his crew.
And so it's a pernicious and systemic problem.
And it's not going to get any better when the mainstream media keeps saying, well, you kind of brought it on yourself.
It truly adds fuel to the fire and just goes to show how compromised the state broadcaster here is in Canada.
I mean, in our political, supposed leaders haven't been much better.
I want to point to a post from Anthony House's father, liberal MP, who really is subtly blaming, well, not even subtly.
He's blaming targeted, hateful rhetoric.
Yeah.
And it really reeks.
Yeah.
It really reeks of the same tone-deaf insinuations we heard from the CBC and MSNBC veiled in some sort of like sympathy.
Yeah, he says he makes himself the victim here, obviously.
And he was the only liberal to say something for hours and hours and hours and hours.
But I wish he had actually kept his mouth shut.
The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy, and I pray for his family.
I hope that those on this and other platforms that repeatedly personally attack people and incite hate against them look at this and see the potential real life consequences of targeted hateful rhetoric.
That phone call is coming from inside the house.
You're not the victim on Twitter.
Conservatives are the victims of violence in real life.
Because somebody sent a hate tweet to you, like grow up.
You're not the victim.
It's your side that's doing this.
When you label everything hate and everything violence, people will react in kind.
And that's what we're seeing over and over and over again.
I just, these people are ghouls.
They're just ghouls.
Yeah.
And Mark Carney simultaneously posts some clip from his nonsense interview about shifting mindsets.
Yeah, a low-level local podcaster.
I checked yesterday and it had like under 3,000 views for hours and hours and hours because nobody cares.
Everybody was waiting for him to say something about a political assassination.
Even if you don't like Charlie Kirk, as a leader of a free country, next door to the Americans, our alleged best friends in the world, somebody very close to Donald Trump was just politically assassinated.
Hello, Canada.
You might want to say something.
No, hours and hours and hours.
Political Assassination Silence00:07:46
Hours and hours.
Yeah, here's the clip.
And then I think it was two hours prior to this, Pierre Polyev had already posted: we must all strongly denounce the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Political violence is never justified.
He called for the attacker to be brought to justice and free speech upheld.
Yeah, I mean, it was constant yesterday, like right after it happened.
It was Daniel Smith said something.
Doug Ford, by the way, sent out a fundraising email.
That's cool.
Daniel Smith almost instantly sent out a message of condolences.
I think just what everybody in the conservative caucus, from Michael Barrett to Michelle Rempel to Edgar Scheer, condolences to the family and denouncing political violence.
This is my premiere.
Yours send out a fundraising email.
I'm saddened and horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Our hearts are with Charlie and his family.
Political violence has no place in a free and democratic society and must be condemned without reservation.
And let us remember it is the same ideology, attacking Daniel Smith for banning graphic pornography from schools and attacking her for banning men from women's sports that led to the death of Charlie.
Yeah, this is a sacred cow.
The DEI, the trans sanity, you can't criticize this without facing actual hate and violence out in public, never mind what happens online.
But I just wanted to maybe throw to another clip of David Cochran.
It's the last post that I embedded in that written piece where he shamelessly victim blames Kirk once again, and proving that the CBC isn't really about journalism.
It's incitement cloaked as sanctimony and sympathy.
This, and he's joined on air with some NDP individual.
I can't remember who this person is, but this is who they want within a round of a conservative.
Right.
Like, listen to this.
It's crazy talk.
Jordan, just you touched on this, and I talked a little about that.
So Katie Simpson, I just wanted to cycle back on it where you flagged it.
Just the inflection point, this could be right.
The triggering moment.
Sorry, back in the morning.
But we talk about Charlie Kirk because he's well-known politically connected.
There was a shooting in a Denver high school today in Colorado, or in a suburban Denver, you know, where three kids were shot.
I mean, the gun problem in America persists, but the issue with someone like Charlie Kirk is that constituency head and what they may do and how this event could be a flashpoint there.
That's right.
And of course, I think it's also going to matter a great deal what the president does.
And we don't know yet what is going to happen, but it's clear that this attack was not just an attack on Charlie Kirk as an individual, but also probably, we don't know motive yet, but we can assume it was related to his role in the MAGA movement more generally.
And so President Trump, who may well feel that this is a provocation or an excuse to double down on some of his other efforts to quell dissent within the United States.
Yeah, look, there's a lot of things we don't know.
There was some early reports about someone being in custody.
There were pictures on social media of a man being detained.
That person is not the same person.
Oh, yeah, this part listen to this.
So if you've seen those things, cleanse that from your memory.
There was a lot of bad information in this.
Memory hole yourself.
And so we're not going to speculate in the absence of more information.
We're going to take a quick break.
And when the power panel comes back, we're going to try to get back to Canadian politics.
Mark Hearne, his caucus, they're meeting in Edmonton.
Just when I think that the state broadcaster in Canada can't get any worse, here we are.
The gaslighting and the psychological manipulation that you would have to be under to say that this is somehow going to be like, depending on how Trump takes this, instead of calling out political violence, is absolutely insane to me.
Like, this is so disturbing and disgusting that these are the mental gymnastics that are being broadcasted on air, and I have to pay through that through unwitting taxation.
Yeah, this is disgusting.
If David Cochran's worried about what the conservative movement is going to do next in light of this shooting, David, I promise you, I will do everything I can to make sure that you are unemployed.
That's what I'm going to do.
I will do everything in my power to push forward the idea that the CBC should be completely defunded of tax dollars.
And if that means that you don't have a job, I don't care.
In fact, that's the cherry on the top of the cake.
Okay.
You know what?
If he's worried about what conservatives are going to do, conservatives didn't do anything last night except pray and wonder about their own safety.
No shops were boarded up.
No riots happened.
No mobs took to the streets burning their communities because that is sure as hell what happens on the other side when this sort of stuff happens.
And when I say this sort of stuff, I mean a death that is suddenly becoming a flashpoint.
I'm not, I would never compare what happened to Charlie with George Floyd.
But if you want to compare things, look right there.
Look right there.
Conservatives didn't do anything, but there are a lot of people after this week who have moved from moderate conservative to hardline.
And they want people like David Cochrane to lose their jobs.
I'm one of them.
I don't want what he said there to be illegal, but I want everybody to hear it because these are the people who are our self-appointed moral and intellectual superiors and they hate us.
They think of us as animals that can't control ourselves, that can't think our way out of a problem, that will react poorly, that we will burn our cities.
We didn't, David.
But I will do everything I can to make sure that not another tax dollar drips into that bloated, decaying sinking ship of the CBC.
Yeah, the dehumanization and the dehumanizing response of all of those people speaks volumes to where they're at ideologically.
It is deeply concerning.
And yeah, I don't, you know what?
If David Cochran wants to have a job on his own record and say whatever he wants to say and have whatever opinions and views he wants to say on his own time, go right ahead.
Are funding this nonsense and it is deeply maddening that this continues on unabated.
We're now joined by Libby Emmons.
She's the editor-in-chief over at Postmillennial and Human Events.
And then, of course, our friend, our friend, Viva Frye, a Canadian living in the United States.
I think a really interesting viewpoint on what we're learning and what has happened over the last, I guess, 24 hours.
It seems fresh, but also seems old also at the same time.
Libby, I'll go to you first.
FBI Press Conference Update00:02:43
We're learning more over the last few hours as they have found the shooter's gun.
And if you get all your news from CNN, they have described it as cultural slogans on the firearm.
But maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what we know about this 30-odd six Mauser bolt action.
Yeah, so we saw that there are slogans, sayings apparently scrawled on the ammunition that were described as anti-pho and involved in trans ideology.
Of course, that's something that Charlie Kirk has spoken out against many times, you know, with more of a dedication to truth than the lies that are told by trans activists.
And so that's pretty much much what we know.
They haven't released too many details about that.
I know that investigative journalists are certainly eager to find out more information about a potential suspect's name so that they can go digging through social media, which undoubtedly this person has.
The FBI had a press conference this morning.
They said that the person was apparently college-aged and really blended in.
There were also photos released of a person of interest who looked to be a tall, thin young man in sunglasses and a baseball cap.
So we don't know if that's necessarily a suspect or just someone that they're looking to speak with.
And the FBI also has offered a $100,000 reward.
Viva, the hideous reactions are just pouring in.
Maybe we can, Olivia, you can bring it up.
But first of all, I'm not surprised by finding out that on the AMO there was trans-related slogans.
I think that is becoming the rule and not the exception these days with these shootings.
But I don't know why I thought this time that it might be different, that the reactions would not be so hideous.
You know, like post 9-11, there was like this bipartisan coming together.
Everybody was an American for a very, very short time, but there's this renewed sense of a shared sense of ideas.
But we're seeing the exact opposite happening right now in real time, and it's gross.
I mean, I've not been amplifying any of those people or alleged people.
I mean, there's a number of ways to look at it.
Sick, Demented People Reveling in Misery00:05:21
On the one hand, people are sick.
Like there are sick, demented people out there who revel in misery.
There's the other issue that you don't know how much of this is bought accounts or troll accounts, people out there stirring shit just to stir it, and that they're either like legit, not real people, or they're just awful anonymous people who revel in negative attention.
But there are just legit bad people out there, miserable people who revel in the misery of others.
And, you know, I was the way I think about it, the guy, Daniel Senecal, who sexually assaulted.
And people are saying, lock him up so he can get assaulted himself on a daily basis.
And like, that is probably the type of suffering that would be a distraction from his own daily suffering.
And it's not like you can torture that guy.
It might be the pleasure that he seeks in life, which is just to cause harm, be part of harm, even if it's at his own expense.
These people, i'm convinced, are engaging in the same type of of of evil.
It's it's that they revel in causing harm to others because they are themselves miserable, and it's a distraction from their own misery.
Uh, I wish they were anonymous losers, but we've got this video from uh the house floor.
Yesterday, Democrats in the house shout no when it was asked for a moment of audible prayer instead of silence for Charlie Kirk.
Let's show that because this is the Democrats on display.
I think this is these are the people who weaponize the mentally ill to shoot our best and brightest.
Let's hear it from the Democrats in their own words.
What purpose does a gentlelady from Colorado rise?
Let's, let's, let's, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
The house will be in order. The house will be in order.
The house will be in order. The house will be in order.
So not even a moment of reprieve from any of this.
I don't know who wants to feel it.
I'll throw my thoughts in.
Yeah, please.
OC literally and those demonic people literally took a knee for George Floyd.
They literally built a mural to and it's not to say I don't want to even like reduce Charlie Kirk to exactly.
But they will take a knee to career criminals and then not take a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk.
And why?
They think they're gods.
I've been saying this for a while, like the government in general, but Democrats who don't believe in an actual God, the consequence is they view themselves as God.
And why would they take a moment to recognize anything higher than themselves and their own authority?
It's absolutely disgusting, period.
Yeah, and I think there's more to it than that.
Also, I think you're right exactly what you say, Viva, about George Floyd and that these people think that they are gods.
They do not recognize a power higher than themselves.
We saw that recently with Senator Tim Kaine, who decided to tell us that our rights come from the government and not from God.
And we know, you know, even from our founding documents that these are natural rights bestowed upon us by God, that the government cannot infringe upon their job is to protect and defend our rights, not to grant them.
And that's actually the very first conversation I had with Charlie Kirk in, I think it was 2021.
I went on his show and that's what we talked about when Joe Biden was all on about, he was all on about no right is absolute.
And we were like, no, it's not, that is not the case.
But in Congress, yes, we saw the moment of silence and Congress did keep quiet for about a minute for that moment of silence, but they did refuse to have prayer when Representative Lauren Bobert called for that.
Mike Johnson said that they would have it afterwards, but she wanted it there.
And what we have is a Congress that not only thinks that they are God, but is offended by God, is offended by concepts of Christianity and thinks that it is that Christianity is akin to Nazism, you know, that Christianity is hateful and evil and all of this kind of stuff.
And that's the kind of rhetoric that they have been peddling.
And that's what we saw under the Biden administration, right?
when you saw his FBI say that white supremacist domestic extremism was the biggest threat to this country.
And when you had his FBI literally targeting Catholics who went to traditional Latin Mass and targeting Christians because essentially of their faith, they thought that the Christian faith, which is pretty much a faith of peace, they thought that this faith was akin to white supremacy.
It's absolutely insane.
Faith vs. Extremism00:07:15
Libby, I really appreciate that you drew on a previous conversation that you had with Charlie and just to really uphold who he was as a person and his legacy.
Is there anything else that you can think of that really stood out to you about Charlie or a talk that you had or one of his key moments in any of his speeches?
Anything that you can share with us to really keep his memory alive?
Well, I was on Charlie's show a handful of times.
I was on stage with him, maybe once or twice on a panel.
It was extremely honored every time that I got to share space with Charlie Kirk.
I found him very inspiring, his willingness to always speak up, to always tell the truth without fail, to never give in to lies, to never back down when he knew that he was speaking honestly and directly, and to always do so with a smile on his face, to always do so with complete love and welcoming to the people that he was talking to.
This is a man who believed fully in open discourse, in hearing ideas he didn't agree with and combating those ideas.
But combating those ideas, if you look at all of his college talks, all of it, combating those ideas with a big giant smile, right?
I mean, that is what we saw.
He was a senior contributor at Human Events.
He was very close with our senior editor, Jack Pesobic.
And so, you know, I know the two of them together and I've seen them in action a lot of times.
And yeah, I mean, I just, I had the utmost respect for Charlie Kirk.
And every time I was near him, he was welcoming.
He was generous.
He shared his ideas.
He shared his intellect freely.
And this is a kind of guy who the world will not soon forget a loss like this.
From the U.S. perspective, do you see this tragedy as something that's going to quell that discussion or intensify it?
Well, I think this is a key question, right?
I mean, this is what we're looking at.
This is a man who stuck his head up above the crowd and said, you know, I'm game.
Let's go for it.
Let's talk.
Let's be open.
And he was killed for that, right?
This is a guy who says, let's talk.
All ideas are welcome.
And they killed him for that because they did not want to address his ideas, which were grounded in faith, logic, and reason.
But that's the huge question.
We have a number of conservative influencers, young men specifically, who speak out.
You know, there's Jack Pisobic, who I mentioned, Tim Poole.
There's a lot of guys who are out there talking all the time, you know, on air and in live events.
And the question is, is this going to shut them up or not?
What are they going to do about it?
I know that some events have been canceled, and I think that it makes sense for people to step back and take a look around and assess their security and see what they can do to make sure that they have enough security to keep themselves protected and to keep their families safe.
Because when you look at Charlie Kirk's family, he's now left a widow, two young children, and that's certainly not something that any man wants to do.
You know, I want to ask Viva about that because We've got this blue sky seems to be a place of radicalization.
I think we should treat blue sky the same way we treat WeChat.
You know, that it is a pernicious influence in our culture.
And, you know, you've got the lunatics over there saying, I hope they do Joe Rogan next.
Let's do Ben Shapiro next.
That was fun.
Do Shapiro next.
They want Matt Walsh, Joe Rogan, J.K. Rowling.
I wanted to ask you about this, Viva, because you're a high-profile male conservative, although J.K. Rowling, I wouldn't even describe her as conservative.
She's definitely not male.
But you're out and about, highly recognizable.
Does this make you reconsider how you conduct your day-to-day life?
Day-to-day, no.
These events, on the other hand, yes.
The funny thing is, nobody, you never, you don't think it's going to happen to you.
These events invite this type of violence.
And this is not victim blaming.
This is, you know, we're in the wake of July 13.
You have these open air events with minimal to no security, or at least no meaningful security, at leftist-type institutions like universities.
And maybe there's a certain degree of complacency where at some point nothing happens.
So you think nothing is going to happen and everybody loves you, like everybody with half a brain and half a heart loved Charlie.
But it should cause legitimate concern for the safety of these venues, especially since when I say demons, and I mean, I believe I mean demons.
Yes.
When they celebrated Luigi Mangioni's extrajudicial execution of the United Health CEO, and you have the likes of Bill Burr egging it on, because nobody ever thinks it's going to happen to them.
And, you know, I'll control the beast and it'll be my beast to direct at other people who I don't like.
Well, that beast will at some point in time turn around and bite you, you know, your hand if you're lucky.
But when you have the glamorizing of Louis Giamangioni, and I also say algorithmic indoctrination, because I don't believe it's entirely organic, this is to be expected and the response is to be expected.
But I'm saying this not even half jokingly.
This was an act of domestic terrorism.
Completely.
And anybody who's egging it on or urging more of it should be regarded and treated as a domestic terrorist, period.
Now, the question is always: you know, when it goes to aiding and abetting terrorism, is it mere speech or does it need to be financial or something more logistical?
But the FBI is going to have its hands full because blue sky is a breeding ground for domestic terrorists.
It's as radical as any jihadi website, any, I can't think of another terrorist organization offhand.
That's how radical it is.
And it's an asylum, an insane asylum where everybody's bouncing off the same crazy ideas of each other and everyone doesn't appreciate how wildly insane and wildly evil it is.
I don't know what needs to happen for the great awakening of even these people, but it's coming to the point where even like Chenk Uyghur is saying, we're all targets now.
Yeah, because when you spend a decade demonizing people and violence is carried out on them, well, it's not, it doesn't take much to turn that violence against the people who have been egging it on for the last decade.
If they don't think you're radical enough anymore, if you start talking too reasonably, you become the enemy.
And I think maybe some of the prominent voices are starting to realize this.
But at the end of the day, situational awareness, don't put yourself out there like a sitting duck with no meaningful protection.
These venues were always a disastrous concept from the beginning.
And it's not a question of blaming Charlie Kirk or the entourage.