President Donald Trump delivered a heartfelt — and, at times, self-deprecating — eulogy for Charlie Kirk at his memorial in Arizona on Sunday, and commented on a recent controversy over comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel’s show was canceled after he claimed that Kirk had been assassinated by a MAGA supporter. The FCC weighed in, suggesting that Disney and ABC might not see their broadcast licenses renewed unless they addressed the issue. Kimmel reportedly planned to double down rather than to apologize for his remarks.
Trump said:
Some of the very people who call you a hater for using the wrong pronouns were filled with glee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children. And the same commentators who this week are screaming “fascism” over the canceling of a late night TV show where the anchor had no talent and no ratings, last week were implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what happened to him. No side in American politics has a monopoly on disturbed or misguided people, but there’s one part of our political community which believes they have a monopoly on truth, goodness, and virtue, and concludes they also have a monopoly on power, thought, and speech. Well, that’s not happening anymore.
“If speech is violence, then some are bound to conclude that violence is justified to stop speech,” Trump observed. “And we’re not going to let that be justified.” He said free speech and open debate were not just essential to democracy, but to western civilization.
Trump’s address also had lighthearted moments, such as when he noted that he was less inclined to love his enemies than Charlie was.
It was a remark made more poignant by the fact that Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, had just forgiven his murderer, saying Charlie “wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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