It is no coincidence that Charlie Kirk was shot in cold blood while speaking at a campus to young people while wearing a t – shirt with the word Freedom across it. We do not know the identity of the person who shot and killed Mr Kirk but we know he murdered him with a sniper’s bullet, like a coward, because Mr. Kirk debated with young people and loved freedom.
Mr. Kirk used the age-old art of democratic debate, oratory and political persuasion to convince people that his view of the world was more coherent and moral than others. He was a Christian conservative that loved freedom. That’s why he was assassinated.
The Utah Valley University event was meant to be the first appearance on a 15-stop tour around the country, during which Mr. Kirk had previously asked students and guests to “prove me wrong” in debate-style events. The killer who disagreed so profoundly with Mr. Kirk could have just gone to one of the 15 stop tours and argued with him and ‘proved him wrong.’ But that’s not what happened. He murdered Mr. Kirk instead. That’s what some people do.
This is an outrageous attack on anyone who debates or likes listening to debates on any campus on the west. Every single head of every single debating society should understand this is an attack on them and the very idea of civilised debate and free speech. I’ve been debating since secondary school. I don’t intend to stop now.
Charlie Kirk addressed Oxford University a few months ago. It’s worth watching him in action, to appreciate the skills that got him killed:
This was a political assassination and it is a terrible coincidence that it comes when Robert Kennedy Jr is a part of the Trump administration. His father Democratic Senator Bobby Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan a Palestinian-Jordanian man. In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.”
In 1963 Robert Kennedy Jr’s uncle John F Kennedy was assassinated by a communist Lee Harvey Oswald.
As John explained yesterday, “we have a problem in the modern west. That problem is that a large swathe of the political left has stopped consenting to defeat. It views its opponents as not merely wrong, but illegitimate.
Charlie Kirk was murdered, about an hour ago (as I write this), because too many of his opponents thought his politics were illegitimate. Not only that he was wrong, but that he should not be permitted to say what he thought. That his very arguments – on everything from gun control to abortion to the middle east to tariffs and trade – should not be heard, in case people might agree with them.”
Charlie Kirk was a man of faith, family and flag. He loved America. He was a person of faith, a Christian with a deep respect for Judaism. He has been stolen from his wife, Erica Kirk, a former Miss Arizona and their two children, a daughter, aged three, and a one-year-old son.
The following might seem obvious but necessary. Because we are now saturated with violence it can be difficult to understand the horror of such events, you can become immune to it. Yesterday I watched the entire video of Iryna Zarutska being stabbed on a train and dying slumped on the floor. It was chilling. Yesterday morning I watched a sniper’s bullet take the life of Charlie Kirk.
To lose someone you love to an illness or an accident is bad enough. But to lose someone to a violent act is of a different order. Erica Kirk was at the event where her husband was murdered, we can only hope he she did not see him being shot. Jackie Kennedy was looking directly at JFK for the fatal shot, having turned her head after the first shot. Jackie Kennedy suffered serious PTSD afterwards as well as instantly losing her husband, the father of her two young children and her home.
This was not just the assassination of one man, this was an attack on his family, his two young children and the ideas that Charlie Kirk wanted to advocate: freedom and conservatism.
Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire said this:
“Discerning observers believed in Charlie Kirk, not chiefly for his accolades or his appearance, but for his manifest virtue. Charlie’s prudence, the principal virtue in politics, built a generational coalition that helped to transform the American government. His temperance distinguished him as one of the few on the Right to eschew whisky, cigars, and every other delight that might have distracted him from his purpose, for which he had so little time. His sense of justice produced clarity in moral vision and grace for his opponents. His fortitude impelled him to enter the public square without a hint of servile fear.
Charlie’s only fear was the holy sort—awe and wonder, the beginning of wisdom—and his clearest virtues were theological: faith, hope, and charity. We mourn his death, we take up his cause, and we entrust him, as he confidently entrusted himself, to God’s care.”
Ben Shapiro said:
“Charlie was a good man, a man who believed in right and wrong, who stood by his Biblical values. All of us will miss him, and I can’t imagine the pain of his beautiful young family, and we must all pray for them. And we must pick up the baton where Charlie left it, fighting for the things he believed in so passionately.”
Erika Kirk tweeted, before the monstrous attack on her husband, a prayer from Psalm 46:1. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Pray for Erika Kirk and her two children.
Charlie Kirk 1993 – 2025
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen