Ep. 1812 - Charlie Kirk Would Have Been President

Kirk would have been president.

His friends knew it.

His admirers knew it.

And his enemies knew it.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

We have a lot to get to today, and it's not going to be anything that any of the other TV news shows are talking about.

It's going to be personal, and it's going to be political.

We're not going to focus on all the negative.

There will be a time for that.

There will be a time for the reaction to the reactions.

We're not going to forget about that.

That time will come, but today is not that day.

We're going to focus on

grief.

We're going to focus on mourning.

We're going to focus on what Charlie means.

We're going to focus on the honors that have come to him from the president, from other presidents, from Yankee Stadium, for goodness sakes.

We're going to get to

all of that.

I wrote a little obituary for Charlie on social media, which you can find.

It's on the daily website too.

And

when I think about the guy, not just as my friend, but as a political figure, that's the point I keep coming back to.

Everyone believed in this guy.

Everyone believed this guy would be president.

I first met Charlie many years ago.

The first time we met, I was in a green room at Fox News in Los Angeles, tiny little green room, you know, a little bureau there.

And it's three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning.

I lived in LA, so I should have been used to waking up.

I was doing that TV show a lot, and I'm half asleep in the chair.

And Charlie walks in.

This is the first time I've ever met him in person.

And Charlie comes in, probably off some flight on a different time zone.

He's just bouncing off the walls, just full of energy.

Hey, Michael, this, that, bow, just wants to talk about everything.

He just understood.

He was, we were talking about politics, talking about practical politics at that time, you know, in the early days of Trump.

We were talking, we were talking about policy, just everything.

Four o'clock in the morning.

I say, hey, buddy, it's nice to meet you, but, you know, come on, I'm trying to sleep here.

Just absolute boundless energy.

He looked the part.

Very tall, good-looking guy.

He had all of the skills.

You know, Charlie founded Turning Point at age 18.

He gets out of high school.

I think he had, I think he was an Eagle Scout.

He gets out of high school.

He was going to go to college, realized that was not going to be a useful way to spend his time and money.

Founds Turning Point USA at 18, raises a ton of money.

People believe in him.

He inspires confidence from major donors and inspires confidence from the young voters that he was reaching.

And he turned this into the biggest organization on the right.

I don't even mean the biggest young voters organization.

I mean the organization.

Charlie was the nexus for all of us on the right.

He became extraordinarily important to the Trump campaign.

It is no exaggeration to say that President Trump in 2024 might very well not have been elected without Charlie Kirk.

He just kept getting more and more responsibility.

He founded Turning Point Action,

which then went on to lead, helped to lead the get-out-the-vote efforts and therefore to win the popular vote for a Republican for the first time in 20 years.

started the faith division.

So even of TPUSA, you had the nonprofit, you had the political action, you had the faith division, you had women's leadership, you had all of these different divisions.

In the meantime, while he's doing all of this stuff, 18 founds the organization, 22, he's addressing the RNC,

this rocket ship of influence in American politics, reshapes the government, as the vice president pointed out last night, helped staff the government.

And as he's doing all of this, he published five books.

books.

He married his beautiful wife.

He had two wonderful children doing all of these things.

A little bit that has not been discussed in his biography is how he grew his mind.

Because he was so busy doing practical politics and practical politicians usually aren't that smart.

They don't really read books and they just learn slogans and that's it.

And Charlie could have done that.

You know, I mean, they would have had a great career doing that, but he wasn't content with that.

He wanted to make up for the education that he did not have, one, because he didn't go to college and two, because most people who do go to college these days don't get an education either.

And he wanted that education.

And I remember I was sitting with another friend of Charlie's, mutual friend of ours, and we were talking about how he should do one of these fellowship programs, you know, to read great philosophy and, you know, the great books and all of this.

And some other people were saying, well, I don't know.

Is he really suited for that?

And I said, yeah, of course he is.

Because he's got this unbelievable political talent.

He's got this unbelievable skill.

He's a thing.

And he recognizes that he doesn't have the most formal education.

And he wants that too.

And he just wanted an absolute sponge of knowledge and skills.

And so he did it.

He did extraordinarily well.

He took it very, very seriously.

And in some ways, it was annoying because he became harder to debate.

He got incredibly skilled at debating

and organizing and fundraising and staffing and communicating.

Oh, he hosted that national three-hour radio show in there in between all of the just

so it for.

So

that's another reason people believed in Charlie.

That's another reason why anyone you talk to, his friends, his admirers who didn't know him personally, and his enemies alike, all said, man, you know, that guy,

that guy's probably going to be president.

But

for all those people too, and especially for his friends,

what impresses me about the guy, what I think is more important than his political skills and accomplishments, even more important than his appearance, it's helpful to be tall.

I mean, Charlie would joke with me.

I'd say, I'd look at

six foot five, slouching.

And he would say, I'd say, Charlie, good gracious, you know, you're just a giant.

He said, well, yes, I'm descended from the Nephilim.

I'm descended from the fallen ones in the, you know, the Old Testament.

And

we're all born fallen ones, you with a fallen nature.

And this really ties in with what's most impressive about the guy, because

there are people in politics

who,

on the left and the right for that matter, who

present one way and live another way.

There are.

And some of them are fine politically, and you can hit the campaign trail with them.

And sometimes they say something interesting on TV, but...

The image they're presenting is not the same as the person they really are.

With Charlie, he really was that guy.

And I just think about the virtues, the four cardinal virtues, and then the three theological virtues.

Four cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude.

Prudence is the paramount political virtue.

And he had it in spades.

He wasn't just some egghead ideologue.

He was thinking.

He was constantly growing, constantly thinking, constantly applying his deeply felt principles to changing political circumstances, taking in new information.

A lot of people can't do that in politics or anywhere else.

So he had prudence, which is how he was able to help build and help maintain this general coalition.

This mass coalition with discordant parts that were actually able to get things done.

The only other person who can really claim that is Trump, Trump himself.

So he had that in spades.

Temperance.

I never saw the guy have a drink.

He refused to have my cigars.

He really was a teetotaler.

He was very, very temperate.

And,

you know,

he was a young conservative.

Young conservatives love whiskey and cigars and hanging out and staying up late.

And Charlie did not do that stuff.

And I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with doing that stuff, but

it shows you that he was determined not to squander one second or one ounce of energy that he had

that could go toward achieving his purpose, his political purpose, for which we now know in retrospect he had so little time.

31 years.

That's it.

He did all of that in 31 years.

I'm skipping over countless aspects of his resume, of the things that he achieved.

And he didn't,

part of the reason he was able to achieve all that is he didn't go hang out.

He didn't go have the third drink or the first drink for that matter.

He didn't go stay out all night for this guy.

He was just doing stuff all the time.

Justice, I think, is clear.

He was so fair to everyone.

He is not underhanded in any way.

Plenty of people in politics are.

Even people on our side.

He was not in any way.

He was always fair.

He was more than fair.

Because an aspect of justice, at least an aspect of God's justice, is also mercy, which go hand in hand.

And he was so gracious to his opponents.

And this I'll get back to when we talk about the political import of Charlie's assassination.

He gave

his interlocutors, he gave his sparring partners on the left and the right.

He also loved debating his friends and his allies, and

he loved it.

He loved the exchange of ideas.

He even loved being proven wrong.

He might not admit it in the moment, but he even loved that because then he would

deepen his ideas and he would get stronger and he he would he would he would become even more of a horse you know he wasn't afraid of the truth he wasn't afraid to be contradicted if what contradicted him led him even closer to the truth

a lot of people are a lot of people a lot of people don't want to grow that's how that's how he was able to grow that's one of the reasons

Even beyond the cardinal virtues, the three virtues that are, I think, most clear from Charlie are the theological virtues,

which are the more important ones, faith, hope, and charity.

That guy believed what he said.

I promise you.

I don't think anyone doubts it, but if anyone who only had a passing acquaintance with Charlie on Instagram Reels or something, if anyone doubts it,

that guy

believed his religion, and it was more important to him than any politics, any sharing stages with the president, anything else in the world.

He had a firm hope in the resurrection,

and he had immense charity for everyone around him, including and especially his opponents.

And so

we entrust Charlie to, as he confidently entrusted himself, to God's care.

And that's all that we can really do about it.

We pray for Charlie and we do all of the things that are attendant to religion, religion, which was the most important thing to him.

There's one caveat to this.

People are grieving.

They're going to grieve in their own way.

I don't tell people how to grieve, really.

I know there is going to be a broader impulse in the public for happy, clappy talk.

Oh, well, you know, he's with his savior today, and isn't that?

We should really should be happy.

You hear this sometimes at funerals.

Funerals, which are no longer even called funerals, they're sometimes called celebrations of life.

You can't even admit that one is mourning at a funeral.

You have to celebrate everything all the time.

There is a deep religious truth as Christians to say, well, we entrust these souls to God's care.

Friends of Christ, we entrust to Christ's care

at the particular judgment and in heaven and in the life of the world to come.

It's still sad.

It's still really, really sad because death is still bad.

Even in light of the resurrection, it is still a bad thing.

It loses the sting.

It loses a lot of the sting.

But, you know, Jesus wept when his friend died before he raised his friend from the dead.

Death is a very bad, evil thing.

And we can mourn and we can grieve because the Christian religion doesn't contradict reality.

Plenty of religions do.

The Christian religion does not say, don't believe your lying eyes.

Oh, no, don't,

the thing you're feeling, that's just totally fake.

Just ignore that.

Just deny that.

Just be happy, clappy.

No.

The Christian religion tells you more about reality.

The supernatural perfects nature.

Grace perfects nature.

It doesn't contradict it.

So we should be sad.

We should be sad.

This is a very, very sad thing.

It's good to mourn.

It's good to grieve.

to be, it's good to recognize that this is really

bad.

And there are other going to be other people, and I guess this gets us into a little bit of the political response to Charlie's murder.

There are going to be people who say, Well, they don't know what they've unleashed.

You know,

this, if you strike me down, I'll become a million times more powerful, and this is where we're going to get you, and this is this is the beginning of something much, much greater.

And

maybe,

Yeah, maybe.

But

for the moment, let's just mourn.

There are going to be,

there's a deep, deep anger.

Trust me, I know.

That's for tomorrow.

There is a greater commitment to

our shared purpose.

Yeah, that's good.

And we should double down on that.

I was

supposed to see Charlie 11 days from now.

I owed him a text.

I'm very bad at texting, and I owe him a text about actually about something religious and something later down the road, which will now likely not come to pass because

we imagine these futures for ourselves, even though we're not promised tomorrow.

We imagine these futures, which is part of the sting of this kind of a grief.

So you say, no, but this was supposed to happen.

No, we were supposed to do this.

No, we were supposed to talk about this.

No, he was supposed to be president.

But

we're not guaranteed a future.

In any case, on our political import here and on the shared purpose politically,

Charlie and I were supposed to do an event together on campus in 11 days in Minneapolis.

I was on a show not long ago.

We were talking about it.

On this tour,

obviously,

I have not spoken to TPUSA.

We're letting them grieve, of course.

And

beyond personal messages and things like that,

I don't know what's happening there.

I'm sure they don't know what's happening there.

This is a very live situation.

So, you know, take everything with a grain of salt.

From the 30,000-foot view, though, I know some people are talking about canceling events and not going to the campuses anymore or anything like that.

I had already pared back a number of those events.

I do not intend to cancel any events.

I don't intend to cancel any of them.

I'll be going out.

If the events are to occur, if the doors are open,

I will be doing that.

I suspect a lot of other people on the right will be doing that too.

We will not

be cowed by this.

So

there will be more information about that coming.

I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, when these things are going to look like, but

for now, at least, while there's still so much confusion about what the future looks like, I will not be canceling a single event myself.

But the events will

certain events will be canceled, just generally in politics.

That's just how these things go.

And I think, broadly speaking, the political import of Charlie's assassination beyond the personal side is that

these kinds of events are broadly over.

You know, what did Charlie do?

What did she, he did did a lot of, he did a million things.

What was he best known for in this moment?

What did he dominate in this moment?

What did South Park feature him for as an amazing tribute toward the end of his life, though none of us knew it would be the end of his life?

He

showed up to campuses and debated ideas.

He showed up to campuses and elsewhere and sat down and debated ideas graciously with people.

And they killed him for it.

Which means

we're probably not going to have as much debate in the future.

Because Charlie did that.

He did that really, really well.

He did it actually better than anybody right now.

And they killed him for it.

And in a battle, whether you're talking about a physical battle or a battle of ideas, your opponents get a say too.

He showed up, he wanted to debate ideas, and they killed him,

which means that

we're probably not going to get as many debates in the future.

If one side doesn't want to debate, we're probably not going to get as many debates in the future.

I felt that the Harvard law professor,

whom I greatly admire, Adrian Vermeule, had a good point yesterday on this, which is he said, you know, Charlie dedicated himself really in this beautiful way to the free exchange of ideas and the debates, and his enemies found that intolerable, and so they assassinated him.

And

there are two responses that one can have to that.

The bad response is

repaying violence with private violence.

Not justified violence, which is self-defense and there are other kinds of, but

some of this talk of retribution and, you know, you take one of ours and we'll take two of yours, you know,

that would be unjust.

That's one response.

The other response, however, is to say, okay,

we like the free exchange of ideas.

We endeavored to do that.

We did it in as good faith as one could possibly do it.

Charlie Kirk was literally a Boy Scout and was just so wonderful to his opponents.

And

now we need to

restrain the people who are doing violence against us.

Now we, if, you know, if you don't want to engage in that kind of thing, then we need to arrest more criminals.

We need to

be less permissive.

of social pathologies and

mental illness and threats of violence and all of the things that we've just kind of let run amok.

We need to be a little clearer about what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false.

We need to be a little clearer about that.

We need to be a little less hands-off.

We need to assert our moral vision.

Because

if vigilantes on the left, and some people with state power on the left, are asserting their moral vision.

and in an unjust way,

in a way that no one but the most despicable sorts of people would defend.

Well, we need to do it in a just way, in accordance with the laws.

That seems to be the inescapable political conclusion here.

An event like this

is massively significant.

And

a lot of us have been kind of just walking around in a fog.

And I was walking around at home, finally got home late last night and I was talking to Elise about it.

And

at first I thought that the heaviness of it all was just because we were friends, Charlie and I.

I thought it was largely just personal.

I don't think it's that

because as we'll get to momentarily,

there were

tributes from everybody, every major significant, all the presidents.

And Yankee Stadium.

Yankee Stadium was the one that really got me.

Yankee Stadium had a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk before the game.

Heads of government around the world

were sending in eulogies and obituaries, tributes to him.

This is politically very significant.

And

coincidentally, however it worked out, today's 9-11 is one of the most significant dates in American history.

And there's an impulse when these significant events happen.

to just go on as if nothing happened, to go on as if nothing's changed.

I just don't don't want to grapple with the fact that something's changed.

Something's changed.

Something has changed.

And I know it's

sad.

It's another layer of sadness

to add to this event.

But

for 10 years now, the right has endeavored in good faith to openly debate ideas in

the case of Charlie, just in a field, you know, in just in the open, a physical space that was totally open with ideas that were totally open.

We really, really tried that.

And you killed him.

You killed him for it.

And now we got to do something else.

Now

we need to react to that.

What you did, what you did

is probably the end of that.

As to the murderer,

I'm not going to get into speculation.

As of the beginning of this show today, I'm sure my team would have updated me if something had changed.

The murderer was still on the loose.

We don't know who it is.

And I'm not going to speculate.

The closest update we have, this is via Daily Wire, is that the FBI believes that it recovered the assassin's rifle.

And the authorities recovered what they believe to be the weapon.

This is according to Robert Bowles, the special agent

in charge of the FBI's Salt Lake City Field Office.

He says it was a high-powered bolt-action rifle recovered in a wooded area where the shooter had fled.

The investigators are currently analyzing the rifle.

The FBI is also analyzing a footprint, a palm print, and forearm prints.

That's it.

They don't have the guy.

Now,

analysis of the analysis has led the Daily Wire to conclude that the suspected assassin appears to be college-age.

According to the Utah DPS Commissioner Bo Mason, the suspected assassin is a

college-age person.

They said that they have good video footage of the assassin, but they are not releasing the footage to the public at this time.

The quote is, we are confident in our abilities.

to track that individual.

So there are leads and there are leads that have come from the leads, but there's no person yet.

And I'm just not going to speculate on it.

Charlie had enemies on the left, obviously.

He should not have.

He was basically the nicest one of us.

He was really, really gracious to his opponents, and yet.

I won't even today get into the response of people on the left on social media and on the news networks.

I won't.

That's for tomorrow.

But they were not so nice to him.

So I think most people assume this is a person on the left, and maybe that's the most likely.

He did have enemies on the right, or kind of on the right, the fringy parts of the right.

He had plenty of enemies, plenty of people who've made it their raise on debt to...

ruin this guy's life and to go after him for years and years and years.

So I suppose that's a possibility too.

And there's a third possibility,

because when you stop thinking about this purely ideologically and you start thinking about it more politically, meaning more from the significance of the person relative to power structures in the country,

Charlie was really big, physically giant, but really, really big.

Part of the reason I think that this feels so politically significant is we're thinking about him as a nice kid who would give speeches and have debates.

this is one of the most influential and important political figures in the entire country

i i've said

i might have said it with charlie actually somewhat recently that the the guy like runs the republic ran the republican party you know ran like the the american right in many ways other than trump you know he was like one of the one of the big guys

and

So there is a question of whether or not there's, it was not just some lunatic,

most likely on the left, I guess it could have been someone on the right,

but that

maybe this was a more targeted assassination of someone who wielded immense political power in the country, immense cultural influence, who had the ear of the president of the United States for a decade, who

was a big guy, and who

would have been president.

Those are the options.

I'm not going to speculate,

Which is why I'm not even inveighing today against the left or this or that.

It's just his enemies.

Some enemy of Charlie's got him.

And that's significant enough.

My friend Gaston Mooney, President of Blaze,

texted me yesterday.

He had a suggestion that

Charlie should lie in honor honor the U.S.

Capitol.

He tagged Mike Johnson in it.

I think this would be fitting in many ways.

Charlie was as thoroughly patriotic as any figure in American life.

He wasn't just another one, another talker, another organizer, another, you know, he

did something

su generous.

You know, he did something unique.

And I think it would be fitting if that is the wishes of his family, who should

be considered first in all of this.

And I think it would be very fitting.

Because some people, especially those who didn't follow Charlie too closely,

they might recoil at that and say, no, what are you talking about?

He wasn't a governor.

He wasn't a senator.

He wasn't a president.

He wasn't.

Why would he?

Yeah,

he was more important than most of those people.

And

other than the president of the United States himself,

he probably had more influence than any of those types of offices.

I think it would be fitting.

I think it's a really, really good idea.

Again,

I've really tried not to bother

his family and really closest friends just yet.

But if they think it's the right thing to do, I think it'd be a beautiful thing.

Now, as to the reaction that I mentioned,

to show you the significance of this politically, the President of the United States gave a somewhat lengthy Oval Office address

to

speak to the nation about Charlie's murder.

To my great fellow Americans, I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah.

Charlie inspired millions and tonight all who knew him and loved him are united in shock and horror.

Charlie was a patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and the country that he loved so much, the United States of America.

He fought for liberty, democracy, justice, and the American people.

He's a martyr for truth and freedom, and there has never been anyone who was so respected by youth.

Charlie was also a man of deep, deep faith, and we take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at peace with God in heaven.

Our prayers are with his wife, Erica, the two young, beloved children, and his entire family who he loved more than anything in the world.

We ask God to watch over them.

in this terrible hour of heartache and pain.

This is a dark moment for America.

Charlie Kirk traveled the nation, joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good faith debate.

His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever,

to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense.

On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace.

It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scales and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people.

and taken too many lives.

Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died.

The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.

Charlie was the best of America and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country.

An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message, and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.

Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before.

And it's not even close.

May God bless his memory.

May God watch over his family.

And may God bless the United States of America.

Thank you.

We've now gotten an update.

Since that time, President Trump will award Charlie the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He announced this when he was speaking at the Pentagon 9-11 ceremony, an absolutely fitting honor.

He deserved it before he was assassinated.

He deserved it.

Oh, he deserved it for years.

When Trump says, you know, Charlie's mission was to bring young people into the political process, and he did it better than anyone ever.

That might not have a hint of exaggeration to it.

Pericles, did he?

I don't know.

He didn't focus exactly on young.

I mean, Charlie

brought

so

many young people into the political process, to the right side of the political process, in the strongest country in the history of the world.

So much so

that his side won the popular vote for the first time in two decades

when Charlie was put in charge of a a lot of it.

Okay, so that's from President Trump.

He posted much, much the same, a truncated version of that Untruth Social.

His wife, Melania,

had a really beautiful post.

I don't have it here in front of me, but she said, you know,

she gave a very feminine take on it, a very motherly side of it, which is, you know, Charlie's kids now are going to grow up with stories rather than memories.

And they're going to grow up with photographs rather than a father who bounces them on his knee.

I think for a lot of people,

even more than the political significance, which is so great that it merited an Oval Office Address, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and declarations from all of the other presidents, which we'll get to in a second.

Somehow, even we're talking about the height of political significance in the world, for heads of government around the world.

And yet, Melania's observation is even worse.

That's where your heart really breaks, is for his wife, and especially for his kids.

That someone

murdered those kids' dad

because he wanted to have an open debate about mainstream ideas.

They took their dad away for that

because

they didn't want him to debate ideas, ideas

that virtually everyone agreed with like 20 years ago.

Because Charlie wasn't some fringe guy by any stretch of the imagination.

He was the most mainstream conservative and in many ways, the most mainstream young political figure in the whole country.

President Bill Clinton said, I'm saddened and angered by Charlie Kirk's murder, and I hope we all go through some serious introspection and redouble our efforts to engage and debate passionately, yet peacefully.

Hillary and I are keeping Erica, their two young children, and their family in our prayers.

Nice statement.

Barack Obama, we don't yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.

Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie's family tonight, and especially...

his wife, Erica, and their two young children.

It's good that he put out a statement.

Don't think we needed the preface before he expressed his statement.

We don't yet know.

Just want to point out, we don't yet know.

We don't yet know.

Hey, hold on.

Don't.

Whatever.

Kamala Harris put out a statement.

I'm deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah.

Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family.

Let me be clear.

Political violence has no place in America.

I condemn this act.

And we must all work together to ensure that this does not lead to more violence.

That's good to hear from them.

We're hearing different things from other

mainstream elite people on the, not just the fringe, but the mainstream elite people on the left, which we'll get to tomorrow.

I don't have it here for some reason, but Joe Biden issued a statement as well.

So you have every living president.

Here we are.

Here's Joe Biden.

There's no place in our country for this kind of violence.

It must end now.

Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk's family and loved ones.

This was relatively early yesterday when Biden released his statement when it was still

a little bit unclear.

Oh, George W.

Bush.

I don't have his printed out here either.

George Bush said today a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views.

It happened on a college campus where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct.

Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square.

Members of other political parties are not our enemies.

They are our fellow citizens.

May God bless Charlie Kirk and his family, and may God guide America towards civility.

One can look at all of these statements pour in, and there will be others, not just from around America, but from around the world.

And say, wow, what an honor, what a tribute to this guy's life.

Obviously, this guy really mattered.

This guy was really significant.

31 years, and he mattered more

to...

the political world, to society, than, I don't know, however many people in however many lifetimes.

And yet,

that's little consolation, isn't it, to his family and to his friends and even to his many admirers.

And this gets to a truth that Charlie really got.

And it's kind of funny that Charlie got it.

It seems almost paradoxical because he was at the very heights of politics, the very, very heights of politics.

Other than sitting behind the resolute desk himself,

which I think most people thought he would do someday.

He was at the very, very height of politics.

And yet he paradoxically understood how little all of that ultimately matters.

It matters a lot in a contingent way in our life here to

allow people to flourish and to point them toward the good and to conduce to their natural happiness.

He got all that.

And that's really important.

I'm not saying politics doesn't matter, but ultimately he saw

that's not what matters.

And we're seeing this now, all the statements in the world, all the the heartfelt statements from all of the presidents,

I strongly suspect

are not going to alleviate Charlie's family suffering one iota

or his friends or his admirers.

It doesn't.

There's got to be something deeper that will

ground your activity in the world, that will direct your energies and direct your purposes and will ultimately console you.

And

that's well, there's those three theological virtues I talked about earlier, point to it, faith, hope, and charity.

That's religion.

It's knowing that the point of life from the old Baltimore Catechism is to know God, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to enjoy Him forever in eternity.

That's really what we're after.

And

I know Charlie believed that.

And I know that that is a real consolation.

And

they say that all the way to heaven is heaven.

You could see that bear fruit in his life.

And that

knowing that that's what he thought and that's how he believed is a great consolation to me.

The rest of the show continues now.

We will see you all in the member block.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, we're not going to do any games or anything today, obviously, but we'll chat a little bit

in the membrane segmentum on the iPad.

Patterson family says, I couldn't watch the video.

There should be nothing normal about seeing a real human being murdered on your iPhone.

I did not watch it.

I had just gotten back to the office.

Mr.

Davies came in, said Charlie has been shot at an event.

And,

you know, in my mind, I said, Well, that's very bad.

I was quite concerned.

You know, I was looking up information.

And I said, I hope they didn't get him.

I hope they didn't hit him.

And if he was hit, I hope, you know, it was just a minor hit or something.

I hope they didn't get him too bad.

I hope his recovery won't be too tough.

I hope he'll be back in the gym playing basketball or something soon.

It did not penetrate that it was even a possibility that he could have been killed.

I know, I know.

In retrospecies, of course, of course,

it just didn't.

Sweet little Lisa said the same thing.

We got him.

It didn't, it didn't, and she saw the video.

She said, even seeing the video, she said, it just cannot be possible

that he was murdered.

And so I saw the far away video.

There was a video that was a little far away.

I saw that he had been hit.

That looked bad enough.

Then I heard

that there was another video going around that was closer up.

And I'm very, very grateful that I heard about that before I had to see it on social media.

I didn't watch it.

Don't need to watch it.

I know he's dead.

You don't have to convince me that he's dead.

And

I think that video has been taken down.

I hope it's been taken down.

If you haven't seen it, you don't have to.

Hopecast.

Those people are fascists, Nazis, and threats to democracy.

Someone takes them seriously.

Why would somebody do this?

Yes, if you can't read the quotes in there, that's true.

I mean,

you know, for goodness sakes, to call Charlie Kirk a fascist,

to call, as some of his enemies on the left did, many of them, to call Charlie Kirk a radical, a reactionary, violent.

Are you kidding me?

He was like the nicest one, the most mainstream

center-right.

I don't mean that in any disparaging way.

I mean that in a really mainstream way, and moderation is

the mean between two extremes.

I mean, it in a and his views evolved and changed, and he adapted with new information.

But

that guy was as mainstream as it gets.

And I do think that's also part of the political significance.

If Charlie Kirk

is so outside the bounds of what the left believes to be political discourse, if that is the case, if that is how that went down,

then that means that

they want to murder all of us.

Because

he was the mainstream one.

I think that's what a lot of people have in their minds right now, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Man,

if they're going to shoot that guy, they'd shoot all of us.

If they're going to shoot that guy, wait till they hear about

my uncle or me.

I think that is a little bit of what is nagging people right now as well.

Wolverine 222 at Waffle.

Yes, please don't watch it.

Instead, take time to pray for the Kirk family.

Yep.

Yep, for sure.

Screw destiny.

I will say, if I lost my husband tomorrow, my world would be torn apart.

It would be some small comfort to know that millions upon millions of people were also grieving with me.

Yes.

Though, again,

even on that side of things,

there are some people who are not grieving.

And we're not going to give them any attention today.

But Charlie's family has to deal with that, too.

And so I just think,

you know, it's not that, you know, well,

the mourning voices are outweighing the despicable voices, or

it's not any of that.

It's just vanity, vanity, and all is vanity.

You know, it's sit transit gloria mundi, thus pass the glories of this world, that the only consolation

is eternal.

Which Charlie knew.

You know, that in itself is a consolation, the fact that Charlie knew that.

Unlike statistically everyone in politics, Charlie actually knew that.

Charlie got that.

I watched the clip.

I had to see the ugliness of the left with no veil, says Honest Abe.

Yeah, I get it.

I get that perspective.

I have friends who did that.

Chris Perez, nice Calvinist Council of Westminster.

Touch in there, Michael.

Well,

glad you caught that.

I feel hopeless for America.

I wouldn't do that.

You know, Charlie wasn't hopeless.

And he was right.

I don't even mean that as, well, you know, folks,

Charlie would have wanted us to just be happy-clappy.

No, that's not, that's not what it is.

I'm saying he wasn't hopeless.

I'm not saying he wasn't optimistic or pessimistic.

I'm saying he had hope.

Hope is a theological virtue grounded in the fact of the resurrection, which really happened and which is recorded in acts of journalism.

So journalism these days has a bad connotation, but like reliable journalism, that this thing actually happened.

So you have to have hope.

Despair is a sin, actually.

And it's irrational.

That's the hope.

But this is why somebody says, well, are you optimistic about the future?

I think, no.

I know how it ends, and it's going to get pretty bad there for a while.

You know, I know how history begins.

I know the pivot.

I know how it ends.

I know the ending is good, but it's going to get a little rough there for a while.

But I have hope

because hope is not a mere sentiment or feeling like optimism and pessimism, but it's a virtue grounded in a fact.

So you really need to have hope.

It's crazy not to.

Just got back from work, still shocked, says Catherine.

Yeah,

yep.

This is pretty weird.

I gotta tell you, you know, we gotta be tough guys.

We don't wanna be blubbering on TV.

We don't wanna be,

you gotta, for the men out there, especially the men, you gotta be a tough guy.

Come on, no blubbering.

You gotta be tough.

But

I will confess, this one is pretty weird.

This one really just doesn't

this

this doesn't get out of your head.

Ruben Gonzalez, Michael lead us in prayer for Charlie.

Sure, sure.

And I'll say, you know, Charlie and I would all the time, we'd be debating about religion.

Though

people aren't really privy to our off-camera conversations, but

we'd kind of razz each other, you know, especially in public.

But

Charlie thought very, very deeply about religion.

And anyway, one of his last religious clips to go viral is he said, we need to venerate Mary more.

And Charlie was an evangelical Protestant, obviously.

And he said, we need to venerate Mary more.

And

which I was touched by.

I thought that was a wonderful development.

But so anyway, sure.

So, you know, there's

a song, Danny Boy, you know, come, a song about, you know, come to my grave after I've died and come and say an ave there for me.

So let's say an ave.

In nomine patris, et filiet spiritus sancti.

Amen.

Ave Maria, grazi plana, dominus tecum, benedicta tu en mulieribus at benedictus fructus ventristui yesusus.

Sanctum Ria mater dei, ora prinobis, sancta de genitri, ora ora prinobis mater dei.

Non queten ora mortis no strei.

Amen.

Sorry, I'm so

overcome.

I went into another Marian prayer there.

Okay.

Well, everybody, hope you keep your chins up.

Keep praying for Charlie.

Mourn as it's appropriate to mourn.

And then

pick up that virtue of courage, the prerequisite of all of the other virtues,

and keep on.

Keep on going.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles show.

See you tomorrow.