1
00:00:12,680 --> 00:00:19,040
Speaker 1: It was an enormous shock to learn that Charlie had

2
00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:23,800
Speaker 1: been killed. The fact is that he was such an

3
00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:30,280
Speaker 1: enormous figure, had so much energy, was so totally committed

4
00:00:30,360 --> 00:00:35,120
Speaker 1: to freedom and to helping America find its way back,

5
00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:40,600
Speaker 1: and was so courageous in going into campuses and neighborhoods

6
00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:42,920
Speaker 1: talking to people who he knew were the other side,

7
00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:47,239
Speaker 1: but doing it deliberately to create a common dialogue and

8
00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:52,040
Speaker 1: a common sense as Americans wouldn't solve this. I'd known

9
00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:55,720
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk for a long time, and I'd admired him.

10
00:00:55,760 --> 00:00:58,320
Speaker 1: We'd done a number of things together. We had a

11
00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:03,640
Speaker 1: very emotional podcast together at the Republican Convention just a

12
00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:08,679
Speaker 1: few days after President Trump had been shot, and the

13
00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:13,400
Speaker 1: since we had then of how dangerous politics had become

14
00:01:13,959 --> 00:01:18,480
Speaker 1: and how tragic it was that some Americans wanted to

15
00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:21,920
Speaker 1: take violence into their own hands in a way that

16
00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:26,240
Speaker 1: we found shockhands. You know, you can imagine now a

17
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:30,480
Speaker 1: little over a year later, to have Charlie himself the

18
00:01:30,880 --> 00:01:37,199
Speaker 1: victim of an assassination is just so stunning. When Chlistophers

19
00:01:37,280 --> 00:01:38,640
Speaker 1: called and told me about it, they had been in

20
00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:41,959
Speaker 1: the meeting, and it was like you couldn't quite believe it,

21
00:01:42,680 --> 00:01:47,520
Speaker 1: partly because he's so vibrant and with his family, with

22
00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:50,480
Speaker 1: Erica and his three year old daughter and his one

23
00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:55,840
Speaker 1: year old son, they were such a classic example of

24
00:01:55,880 --> 00:02:00,160
Speaker 1: pursuing happiness, leading a wholesome life, doing the right thing.

25
00:02:00,960 --> 00:02:05,480
Speaker 1: And then boom, he's dead. And I thought that when

26
00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:10,400
Speaker 1: President Trump announced it and explain from his standpoint what

27
00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,920
Speaker 1: Charlie had meant to him, it begins to have the

28
00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:17,760
Speaker 1: sense of what a remarkable person this was, starting as

29
00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:21,720
Speaker 1: a teenager in Chicago deciding that his role in life

30
00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,160
Speaker 1: was to be a public civic leader, not to run

31
00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:28,000
Speaker 1: for office and not to acquire huge amounts of money,

32
00:02:28,280 --> 00:02:31,080
Speaker 1: but to go out and organize a network. And with

33
00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:34,480
Speaker 1: turning point, he had built a system where there were

34
00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:38,040
Speaker 1: literally millions of people who were responsive to him. I

35
00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:41,919
Speaker 1: would routinely do his podcasts and talk with him about

36
00:02:42,280 --> 00:02:46,000
Speaker 1: various issues. That the scheme of his reach was remarkable.

37
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:50,080
Speaker 1: He truly was becoming for his generation what Rush Limbaugh

38
00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:52,560
Speaker 1: had been for many many years for the whole country.

39
00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:55,399
Speaker 1: And you could see him growing and you realized that

40
00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:58,239
Speaker 1: probably the most important at thirty one years of age,

41
00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:03,160
Speaker 1: probably the most important conservative leader in the country, and

42
00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:08,119
Speaker 1: his vision and his positiveness, frankly in his happiness kind

43
00:03:08,160 --> 00:03:12,280
Speaker 1: of conservatism you'd like, which was oriented towards a better future,

44
00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:15,880
Speaker 1: towards what Trump is called a golden age. I think

45
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:21,120
Speaker 1: that we all have to take seriously how deeply violent

46
00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:25,160
Speaker 1: the country has become, how much of it is political,

47
00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:29,240
Speaker 1: but also how much of it is some psychosis, whether

48
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:32,480
Speaker 1: it's from drugs, from the internet, from the collapse of

49
00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:36,880
Speaker 1: the family. There is a kind of evil in the world.

50
00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:41,520
Speaker 1: The killing of children in Colorado just hours before Charlie

51
00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:45,480
Speaker 1: himself was killed, the killing of the young Ukrainian refugee

52
00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:48,360
Speaker 1: in Charlotte, and what is one of the most brutal

53
00:03:48,920 --> 00:03:53,000
Speaker 1: four minutes of video I've ever seen, in which nobody

54
00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:56,920
Speaker 1: on the entire trank car, nobody comes to help her,

55
00:03:57,640 --> 00:04:01,040
Speaker 1: and she's killed for no reason. And himself as admitted

56
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,000
Speaker 1: that he's insane, and yet there he was. The two

57
00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:08,280
Speaker 1: young children eight and ten years old who were killed

58
00:04:08,760 --> 00:04:14,000
Speaker 1: in Minnesota while praying at mass, and another thirty one

59
00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:18,200
Speaker 1: were wounded by somebody who the US attorney said, seems

60
00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:24,240
Speaker 1: to hate everybody. So we're faced with exactly the intersection

61
00:04:25,120 --> 00:04:28,640
Speaker 1: that Charlie wanted to help us avoid. He believed it

62
00:04:28,680 --> 00:04:32,919
Speaker 1: was possible to create civility. It was possible to have debates,

63
00:04:33,279 --> 00:04:35,840
Speaker 1: It was possible to talk with each other, and you

64
00:04:35,839 --> 00:04:40,120
Speaker 1: could do so without violence, and frankly, without much hostility.

65
00:04:40,640 --> 00:04:42,200
Speaker 1: If you look at what he did and how he

66
00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:44,880
Speaker 1: did it, he say he was cheerful about arguing, but

67
00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:47,560
Speaker 1: he argued from the facts much more than from emotion,

68
00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:52,360
Speaker 1: and I think he felt that he was truly helping

69
00:04:52,440 --> 00:04:55,560
Speaker 1: create a better future. I'd gone to some of his events,

70
00:04:55,560 --> 00:04:59,240
Speaker 1: and they're amazing. He would rally thousands and thousands of

71
00:04:59,279 --> 00:05:03,039
Speaker 1: people who were cheerful and excited and enthusiastic. It was

72
00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:06,599
Speaker 1: sort of the beginning of the next generation of a

73
00:05:06,640 --> 00:05:10,720
Speaker 1: governing conservatism, building on what Trump had achieved, but building

74
00:05:10,720 --> 00:05:13,440
Speaker 1: on it with a whole new generation of people, a

75
00:05:13,480 --> 00:05:16,359
Speaker 1: whole new set of ideas, and with a very positive,

76
00:05:16,880 --> 00:05:21,280
Speaker 1: joyful approach. So if somebody of that caliber and that

77
00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:25,520
Speaker 1: spirit cut down at thirty one years of age was sober,

78
00:05:25,640 --> 00:05:28,080
Speaker 1: the only thing I could compare it to was when

79
00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:30,880
Speaker 1: I was a graduate student and a friend of mine

80
00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:34,120
Speaker 1: who was the only African American student in our graduate class,

81
00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:37,600
Speaker 1: that Tulane called me and said that Martin Luther King

82
00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:41,680
Speaker 1: Junior had just been assassinated, and that sense of despair,

83
00:05:42,520 --> 00:05:46,360
Speaker 1: that sense of loss, and so that came back to

84
00:05:46,400 --> 00:05:52,000
Speaker 1: me once again that we had lost someone worthy of

85
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:55,359
Speaker 1: a long life. We'd lost somebody who had done everything

86
00:05:55,480 --> 00:05:58,640
Speaker 1: right and who was trying to be a great citizen,

87
00:05:59,080 --> 00:06:02,320
Speaker 1: a great husband, a great father, and a good friend.

88
00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:06,400
Speaker 1: And I think that it's really important to recognize that

89
00:06:06,520 --> 00:06:10,279
Speaker 1: this is a very sad moment for America, and that

90
00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:13,640
Speaker 1: each of us, in our own way, should take up

91
00:06:13,680 --> 00:06:17,640
Speaker 1: the cause that Charlie worked for, lived for, and only

92
00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:21,279
Speaker 1: died for, and that together we should be committed that

93
00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:25,440
Speaker 1: this country will in fact go forward in freedom, that

94
00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:28,680
Speaker 1: it will in fact go forward in Lincoln's formula of

95
00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:32,400
Speaker 1: government of the people, by the people, and for the people,

96
00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:35,119
Speaker 1: and that Charlie's life will not have been in vain,

97
00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:38,440
Speaker 1: but in fact he will be one of the martyrs

98
00:06:38,720 --> 00:06:42,640
Speaker 1: who creates the framework within which a better America, a

99
00:06:42,720 --> 00:06:47,560
Speaker 1: more peaceful America, a more optimistic America, can emerge. And

100
00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:50,960
Speaker 1: we owe him that, and we should dedicate ourselves to

101
00:06:51,040 --> 00:06:52,240
Speaker 1: that future in his name.