Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, announced that his “American Comeback Tour” would continue.
“Our campus tour this fall will continue,” she said. “There will be even more tours in the years to come. AmericaFest here in Phoenix this December will go on. It will be greater than ever. The radio and podcast show that he was so proud of will go on. And in a world filled with chaos, doubt, and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain. And it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever. And his wisdom will endure.”
Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, confirmed that the tour would continue this fall, including a stop at Utah State University on Sept. 30.
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A new release from law enforcement suggests a political motive in the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said accused gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, texted his transgender roommate, urging him to “drop everything” and read a note he had left under his keyboard.
“I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” the note read, according to charging documents.
“I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” he added in his texts, referring to Kirk.
Furious Republicans have pushed back on the left-wing narrative that Robinson was somehow tied to President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
They have also called out Democrats for days after Kirk’s assassination over their years-long use of harsh rhetoric to describe Trump and his supporters, calling them “Nazis,” “fascists,” “homophobes,” and “threats to democracy,” among others.
In that vein, tensions flared on Fox News’ The Five on Monday after co-host Greg Gutfeld forcefully rejected fellow co-host and lefty Jessica Tarlov’s attempt to frame political violence as a “both sides” issue in the wake of the assassination.
Gutfeld opened by noting a one-sided trend. “What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That’s all we need to know,” he said.
Tarlov interjected, pointing to other recent incidents of political violence, including the killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and other attacks that have targeted Democrats.
Gutfeld immediately cut her off, raising his voice. “None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died. And the… Don’t play that bulls—t with me. There was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.”
The back-and-forth escalated as Gutfeld rejected the premise of equivalence between Kirk’s assassination and other killings. “The both sides argument not only doesn’t fly, we don’t care. We don’t care about your both sides argument. That s—t is dead,” he said.
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He framed the dispute as one between reality and rationalization. “On your side, your beliefs do not match reality, so you’re coming up with these rationalizations, like, ‘What about this,’ or, ‘What about that?’ We’re not doing that, because we saw it happen. We saw a young, bright man assassinated and we know who did it. We are not coming up with rationalizations. We are calm, we are honest, and we are resolute. We’re not defensive.”
Gutfeld argued that left-wing rhetoric had created the conditions for violence. “If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you’re not the good guys. If you sat 600, 700 cases of harassment against Republicans and you said, ‘But what about this? What about this?’ And then you see this murderer after calling somebody a fascist, you realize, ‘Maybe I’m not the good guy.’”
He added that Kirk’s assassin, Robinson, had been influenced by what he called “direct-to-consumer nihilism” and radical ideologies. “He was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct-to-consumer nihilism, the trans cult,” Gutfeld said. “If you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that murder is okay and that humanity’s expendable.”