12. What Charlie Kirk ACTUALLY said in those quotes/debunking false claims
"B-but, he doesn't deserve empathy because he said empathy bad"
"B-but he said gun violence good!"
"He said he'd force his daughter to carry her rapist's baby!"
Shut the actual fuck up. None of you have a single clue what you're actually quoting, you just want an excuse to justify your blatant celebration of a murder. That's literally it. Not a SINGLE ONE of you have actually watched one of his debates, you've only seen short clips taken out of context and twisted by your radleft media. And you, of course, are immediately outraged and scandalized because that's what you're supposed to be. And then you parrot it everywhere like a good little bot.
Imagine somebody shows you a painting, and you say "oh wow, what a gorgeous painting." Then they tell you it was painted by Adolf Hitler. Of course you're shocked, so you say, "Damn, I didn't know that. It's a shame he became so evil and didn't just stick with art. He was a horrible person, but I gotta to say he did some pretty good stuff. I mean, look at the details and realism here." Of course, by "stuff" you're referring to artwork, since you're literally looking at and talking about one of his paintings when you said it -- but it doesn't matter. What the headlines would read is only "____ says Hitler 'did some pretty good stuff'."
Here are the FULL responses that your "quotes" are pulled from.
1. "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up, new age term and it does a lot of damage."
Full quote: "The new communication strategy is not to do what Bill Clinton used to do, where he would say 'I feel your pain', instead it is to say you're actually not in pain. Bill Clinton in the 90s, he was all about empathy, about sympathy -- I can't stand the word empathy, actually. Empathy is a made up, new age term that it does a lot of damage -- but it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy I prefer much more than empathy, but that's a separate topic for another time." He later goes on to say, "Empathy is where you try to feel someone's pain and sorrows as if they're your own. Compassion allows for understanding."
In the video where he was saying this, he was SPECIFICALLY discussing how empathy is used as a tool in politics by people like Bill Clinton to appeal to a voter's emotions. "It is very effective when it comes to politics" -- as in, it's very easy to manipulate people by projecting a sense of relatability in order to get them to vote for you. No one can truly know what another person's pain feels like. That's why Charlie said he prefers using terms like sympathy and compassion, because that is more like saying "you're in pain, and I can't truly know how it feels, but I see you and I understand that you're in pain."
Saying to someone who is suffering, "I feel your pain" honestly comes across as tone-deaf to me. Like, no you don't, the fuck? You're not me, you DON'T know how it feels to me and you certainly don't feel it yourself. It's impossible. I'd much rather someone say "I'm so sorry you're going through this. I can't possibly imagine how that feels, but I care about you and I'm here for you."
2. "I think it's worth it to have some gun deaths, so that we can have our guns"
Interviewer: "I just had a question related to 2nd amendment rights. We saw the shooting that happened recently and a lot of people are upset. But I'm seeing people argue from the other side that they wanna take our 2nd amendment rights away -- how do we convince them that it's important to have our right to defend ourselves?"
Charlie Kirk: "Yeah that's a good question, thank you. So, I'm a big 2nd amendment fan. But I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment is not about hunting -- I love hunting -- the 2nd amendment is not even about personal defense, but that is important. The 2nd amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. The people need an ability to protect themselves, to protect their communities, and to protect their families.
Now, we must also be real, we must be honest -- having an armed citizenry comes with a price. And that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price -- 50 thousand. 50 thousand people die on the road every year. That's the price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50 thousand less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving -- the accessibility, the mobility -- is worth the cost of 50 thousand people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear, that we're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them, by having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools.
We should have an honest, and clear, reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one. You will never live in a society where you have an armed population and not a single gun death. But I think it's worth it -- I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the 2nd amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
So then how do you reduce them? Very simple. People say 'oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings?' I dont know, how did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How did we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How do we stop all the shootings at gun shows -- notice how there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, where there's all these guns? Because everyone's armed.
If our money, and our sporting events, and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?"
I think this one is fairly self-explanatory. And I think the car analogy was the perfect comparison for this. I will also add another analogy -- 8 million people die from surgery every year. So does that mean we should just stop performing surgeries? No.
I'll likely add to this post as more misconstrued quotes pop up.
EDIT 1:
"I will pray for him as much as he prayed for the people in gaza"
Literally 48 hours before his death, Charlie Kirk spoke about the genocide in Gaza. He has also criticized the Israeli government in the past.
"We've pushed back on the media about Covid, on lockdowns, on Ukraine, on the border -- maybe we should also ask a question: is the media totally presenting the truth when it comes to Israel?"
"So now, Bibi and the Israel hard-right government has a mandate -- I have to be careful the way I say this -- they're going to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And I don't use that term lightly, okay? They're talking about basically removing 2.5 million people. This idea that they can have a peace treaty is morally crap, after you see women and children be burned alive and dragged through the street. There are some serious questions here Patrick, and let me tell you, my pattern recognition over the last 5 years has become pretty sharp. Covid, Maui fires, Epstein -- when I see a story and it doesn't click...."
"I have less ability sometimes online, to criticize the Israeli government without backlash than actual Israelis do. You're not allowed to! It's just some type of paranoid, 'we're just going to stamp out everything' kind of process."
"You and I believe that we're Americans, and Americans first, period. We are citizens of THIS nation. And Israel, we have funded, we have supported, but honestly, the way they are treating me is SO repulsive -- I have text messages calling me an anti-semite. My moral character is now being put into question."
"What I find strange is that we're able to criticize the American government sometimes in the Christian world, with more freedom than the Israeli government. To be pro-Israel means you believe in the NATION of Israel, not necessarily the government of Israel. When Joe Biden was president, we loved America, but we detested our government. And those two things beautifully coexisted."
The woman interviewing him also mentions that the Israeli government has "come after" Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, in the past. Apparently Kirk was moderating someone else's debate, and gave equal speaking time to several debaters. One happened to be pro-Israel, and the government was not happy that Kirk didn't allow him continue to talk past his allotted amount of time. Kirk expressed his frustration with having to "walk on eggshells" and not "being allowed" to say anything they might come after him for.
EDIT 2: "He said MLK was an awful person"
While the things MLK stood for were good, he was indeed what most people would consider a bad person in his private life -- people have just chosen to ignore his history in favor of his message.
On May 30th 2019, David Garrow (Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of MLK) uncovered FBI memos on the National Archive's website. These memos were initially sealed by court order until 2027, but thanks to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, they were made accessible to the public. One of these memos details King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping or reporting it, the transcripts show that he laughed and encouraged the attacker to continue. The full audiotapes, photographs and film footage corresponding with the memos will be unsealed in 2027.
Garrow explains in his article: "Without question, the agents had both the microphone-transmitted tape-recording and a subsequent full transcript at hand while they were annotating their existing typescript; in 1977 Justice Department investigators would publicly attest to how their own review of both the tapes and the transcripts showed them to be genuine and accurate. Throughout the 1960s, when no precedent for the public release of FBI documents existed or was even anticipated, the agents could not have imagined their jottings would ever see the light of day."
King married his wife Coretta Scott in 1953, and while on the outside they seemed a happy couple, King cheated on her countless times with many different women during his travels. This too was captured on FBI surveillance tapes due to their planting bugs in hotel rooms -- FBI records describe this as "intense, nearly constant sexual activities with countless women."
According to King’s closest friend Ralph Abernathy, just about everybody attached to King participated in similar activities with him. When King traveled to Oslo to receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, for example, two of his associates nearly got themselves kicked out of the hotel when staff caught them chasing nearly naked prostitutes through the halls. According to another of King's associates, King was especially fond of arranging sex with women he met at his speeches.
These incidents did actually become common knowledge; even Jackie Onassis admitted that Robert Kennedy had told her all about the FBI recordings, and that what he knew appalled her. An anonymous person at the FBI even sent copies of the tapes to both King and his wife. King allegedly brushed off the exposure with a remark about being "surprised that they knew so much about him", while Scott later claimed that she couldn’t make out what she heard and ignored the whole thing.
Lastly, King had no qualms about hitting women. Abernathy in his 1989 book recalls an incident that happened on the very last night of King's life, in which he woke him at 8 AM asking for "help dealing with an angry woman who had been waiting for him all night long". This came after King had spent the entire night with two other women. Abernathy followed King back into his bedroom, where he witnessed the argument quickly become physical. He wrote that King eventually struck the woman "hard enough to knock her across the bed", and that she left soon after. Just 10 hours later, King was shot and killed on the balcony.
MLK also plagiarised whole paragraghs of his dissertation, plagiarised his entire first public sermon, and regularly appropriated other peoples' work without crediting them in his college assignments.
And yet, people refuse to acknowledge these facts. They're willing to acknowledge that Thomas Jefferson had children with a woman he owned, and that Benjamin Franklin owned slaves while being a proud member of anti-slavery societies, or that Theodore Roosevelt embraced eugenics -- but somehow it's not allowed to talk about MLK's serial adultery, complicitness in rape and assault, and blatant contradiction to his Christian messaging.
EDIT 3: "He said gay people should be stoned!"
This misquote comes from our old friend Stephen King, who loves spouting BS about conservatives that isn't true. I guess Charlie's death was just too juicy of an opportunity for him to pass up. What he didn't expect, I bet, was to be instantly called on the carpet for it this time -- he quickly back-tracked (as all celebs do) and "apologized".
The misquote comes from an interview where Kirk was shown a clip of Ms. Rachel discussing scripture regarding homosexuality -- the interviewer asks Kirk for his take on it. In the video, Ms. Rachel defends her decisions to include trans creator Dylan Mulvaney and drag queens on her show, quoting "love thy neighbor" verses from the Bible.
Kirk likewise quotes the Bible to show that it does indeed condemn homosexuality. He uses Leviticus 20:13, "If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them".
It's important to note two things: that this is not the only verse in the Bible that condemns homosexuality, and that the death penalties described in Leviticus were specifically part of a legal code given to the ancient Israelite nation. With the arrival of the New Testament and Christ dying for our sins, these Old Testament laws and death penalties were no longer required. This includes the famous "gotcha" that atheists try to use about wearing mixed materials in clothing.
EDIT 4: "Charlie Kirk was homophobic! He hated LGBT people!"
At one of his Turning Point events, he scolded a conservative audience member who grilled him about letting a drag queen take a picture with him:
Kirk: "So, I'm going to ask a very respectful question -- as respectfully as I can -- what does what they do in their private life concern you so much, that you have to go up in front of a crowd and--
Other dude: "It's against God, that's why! Are you a Christian or not?!"
Kirk: "So let me ask you a question -- Do we live in a theocracy? Yes or no?"
Other dude: "You said you're a Christian!"
Kirk: "I -am- a Christian. And do you know what? Guess what, I will say this: part of being a Christian also means to be long-suffering, and patient, and loving, and kind. Jesus Christ talked to all people. Jesus Christ went and did his ministry through Judea, and Samaria, and he had dinner with tax collectors, and he had dinner with prostitutes, and he did his ministry in every part of the mediterranean. What it means to be a Christian, my friend, is to be open-minded, but firm in your belief. But if you say there's something inherently wrong with communicating or associating just because they make different personal decisions than you, then you, sir, are NOT a conservative. Thanks for being here tonight." (Source so you can watch for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJmcqjP8mhk)
He further emphasized that he does NOT hate LGBT people in a different debate where a woman asked him outright if he hated the LGBT community:
Kirk: "I do not have hate for a group. I do not have hate for a people."
Woman: "So, just so I can get it on my camera...."
Kirk: "Don't worry, we have plenty of cameras, but yeah."
Woman: "So, you do not hate the LGBT community, and Turning Point is not against LGBT?"
Kirk: "How could I hate that which I have a heart for? And I might not agree with some of the lifestyle choices that some people make, but of course not. And if someone said, 'Charlie, what's your view on marriage?' I'd say I believe marriage is between one man and one woman. But if you ask me 'do I have hate in my heart for somebody that doesn't choose the lifestyle that I believe that God laid out in the scriptures'? Of course not." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0hmgxZssQ4)
EDIT 5: "But he was transphobic!!!"
Charlie Kirk never hated anyone, as shown in the previous edit. It still applies here. He also regularly conversed with trans students, one of whom he had this to say to after hearing her story: "First of all, thank you so much for that. So, I'm going to have an opinion that very few people will ever tell you. Which is I want you to be very cautious about putting drugs in your system in the pursuit of changing your body. I instead encourage you to work on what's going on in your brain first; I think what you need first and foremost is just a diagnosis, just someone that is going to listen to what you've gone through, and listen to what else is going on. My prayer for you, and again, very few people will say this -- I actually want to see you be comfortable in how you were born. I know that you might not feel that way, but I think that is something that you can achieve. I think that with the right team and the right people, you don't have to wage war on your body -- you can learn to love your body." https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FhzqKQzueKU
Exactly what part of encouraging people to love their bodies the way they are is "spreading hate" to you? Should people with gender dysphoria not love themselves? Or is loving their body only acceptable once they surgically/chemically alter themselves? How about the many detransitioners who were pressured into transitioning and now regret it? Is it not hateful to tell someone "you will only be able to love yourself if you do this"? Is it not damaging to tell someone they should simply change their body instead of addressing the root cause of their discomfort?
By the way, the definition of the word transphobia is: "discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of transgender people." (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transphobia) Charlie Kirk exhibited none of those. It's a term that only began to be used in 1992 and has quickly become overused to describe anything that goes against transgender ideology. Saying "there are only two genders" is not transphobia. Calling someone who was born a man a man is not transphobia. Women saying they do not feel comfortable with a biological man in their restroom or changing room is not transphobia. Saying "trans people should just off themselves" IS transphobia. Refusing to hire a trans person strictly because they're trans IS transphobia.
EDIT 6: Hoo boy, this one's gonna be a doozy. Just responded to a metric shit ton of butchered quotes that somebody commented over on my other post, so I figured I'd add my responses here as well. This post is gonna end up being a mile long LMAO
1. "He defended pedophilia because a minor could be a ”minor attracted person” "
Congrats on being THE most misconstrued bullshit argument I've come across so far. In the actual debate you're pulling this from, a girl said she "doesn't subscribe to the idea of consequences for people's actions". Charlie aimed to test how quickly that would crumble when it came to heinous crimes such as pedophilia.
Kirk: "So then let me ask you a question: if you do not believe that there's a consequence to your action, why wouldn't you do the action?"
Girl: "See, that's again the ideology of consequentialism, I don't really subscribe to that."
Kirk: "Yes, there should be consequences."
Girl: "No but, I think that consequences-- your actions can exist outside the vacuum of consequences, right? We can't make our decisions based on whether or not we think the actions will lead to a certain outcome, because those will always be random, right? So I revolve more around we try to do things that we think will promote general pro-social attitudes."
Kirk: "Ok, let me ask you a hypothetical -- and this will tell me a lot -- is pedophilia wrong?"
Girl: "Pedophilia I consider to be wrong because it is actively damaging someone else, right?"
Kirk: "But what if they say they're a minor-attracted person and it's 'pro-social' to be with a young person? Why are they wrong?"
Girl: "Pro-social generally means like, working together, socialization..."
Kirk: "Well, they're 'socializing' with an 8-year-old."
Girl: "That's not socialization and you know it." (She goes on to string together half-sentences that don't really make sense about "anti-social behaviors")
Kirk: "So then, should pedophiles go to prison?"
Girl: "Uh, pedophiles go.... I do not know what's the best way to handle pedophilia, because-- (crowd booing her) no, because-- how do we know-- I don't think that anyone should molest a child, god forbid, I really don't!"
Kirk: "But, WHY shouldn't a pedophile go to prison?"
Girl: "What??? That's-- again, we're getting really off topic, let's go back to the idea of good and evil...."
Kirk is showing her the flaw in her logic, because if there are no consequences, there is nothing to stop people (like pedophiles) from doing evil as long as they call it "pro-social" like she does. If anything, the student is the pedophile-sympathizer here, since she "doesn't know the best way to handle pedophilia" and doesn't want them to go to prison for their actions because that's a consequence... Here's the full clip so you can un-brainwash yourself. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GqXP0vbltHI
2. "black people were better off under slavery"
Amazing what changing one little word can do to a quote. What he *actually* said was "black people were better off AFTER slavery", around the 1920s - 1940s. Black people were more united, and had more whole families back then, until the government pushed the black father out of the family in the 60s. Now we have broken homes, a higher rate of single mothers, a higher rate of teen pregnancies, and "baby daddy/baby mama" culture. There's more division and violence in their community than ever before.
Charlie was speaking in terms of the nuclear family and relationships in the community.
3. "black women are too unintelligent to be taken seriously"
This misquote stems from Karen Attiah, a black former columnist who was fired from the Washington Post. Here's the false quote she posted on Bluesky: " 'Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot' -- Charlie Kirk"
The Post fired her on grounds of gross misconduct and endangering the safety of colleagues. Attaih of course complained, and seems to be oblivious of the fact that when you are a professional journalist working for a large outlet, you actually can't just put quotes around words that someone never said and claim they did. Furthermore, the fabricated quote is not actually what got her fired, as she led people online to believe -- it was the disparaging remarks about white people she often posted and her poor performance.
Now, she didn't just pull her fake quote out of her imagination -- she took a quote from Charlie Kirk's show and when it didn't look "bad" enough for her, she decided to chop part of it off and make up the rest. In the actual clip, Charlie is specifically talking about 4 women (Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, Ketanji Brown Jackson), and never once says the words "black women":
"If we (conservatives) would've said Joy Reid and Michelle Obama, and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would've been called racist. But now they're coming out and saying it for us. They're coming out and they're actually saying, 'I'm only here because of affirmative action'. Yeah, we know -- you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously." He then goes on to play a video of Sheila Jackson Lee herself talking about it.
Here's a video that breaks down the whole situation pretty well, including the misleading "fact check" that Snopes did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHY1hj_1owg
4. "said 1964 civil rights act was a ”huge mistake.” "
Congrats, you actually got one quote right! Unfortunately, you completely left out WHY he said it.
"There's parts of it that are good. But I'll give you an example: Merrick Garland (attorney general) recently said that states cannot have voter ID because it's a violation of the civil rights act. So, that's insane. Now, if you go to a Walgreens and someone says 'blacks shall not come in', that should obviously be illegal."
"Parts of the Civil Rights Act were great, but the way it's now being implemented to force men in female bathrooms, to push forward the trans agenda -- the intent of the Civil Rights Act is way beyond what it was originally authored for. So, the intent and the law are two different things. The intent was noble, which was to say that no American can be not allowed into a place of business based on the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage. Totally in agreement with that.... But what the Civil Rights Act did is that it went beyond disparate impact, and then went to disparate effect -- in the sense where if black Americans are not doing as well as white Americans in a certain category, you can now use the Civil Rights act and say 'that's a violation of the civil rights act', even though their might be other contributing factors."
TL;DR: He knows that the CRA was necessary and a good thing for its time, but it's now being used way beyond its original intention in bad ways, as a sort of "get out of jail free" card in politics and legislation.
5. "abortion should be illegal"
...And? A ton of people hold that opinion. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a bad thing lmao. I have a whole ass blog about why it should be illegal (with certain exceptions).
6. "said parents should prevent their daughters from taking birth control."
Actually he didn't say this, he said "people should make sure their loved ones are not taking birth control" -- because of the laundry list of side effects that birth control has, some of which can irreparably damage a woman's fertility, especially if she began taking it at a young age. Birth control is regularly overprescribed by doctors for stupid stuff like acne and mood swings. My primary doctor literally wanted to put me on hormonal BC at 13, "for pimples". It's absolutely NOT unreasonable for him to be cautioning people against it.
7. "rape victims should be forced to give birth, even if it was his own daughter."
This is pretty much the only one on your entire list that you actually have a valid point on. I don't agree with his stance or statement on this particular aspect of abortion. In my own post about abortion I make it clear that I support exceptions for rape (for any age), incest or cases where the mother's life is at risk.
8. "suicide rates are higher because of the sentence ”you are enough.” "
Once again, something he never said. This comes from a debate he had with a student about whether baptism is necessary for someone to go to heaven.
Kirk: "I have a question, tell me about your shirt -- is that a theological statement, or...?"
Student: "This shirt? Yeah uh this shirt... (looks down at it) oh, it says 'you are enough'. I think the company that makes it is a faith-based company, and um this is just my message to everyone here is that you are enough."
Kirk: " 'You are enough' -- what does that mean though? It's like very new age-y."
Student: "Okay gotcha, um it's a company that is faith-based--"
Kirk: "I know, but what is the statement 'being enough'?"
Student: "Right right uh, it's to help suicide prevention."
Kirk: "Ah, okay."
Student: "So by saying someone is enough, you are enough, like... just the fact that you matter, that you're alive, and that alone makes you worthy of value."
Kirk: "Super noble cause. Do you think it's effective?"
Student: "I believe so, I've had lots of interactions on this campus while wearing this hoodie and it's been great."
Kirk: "Cool, I'm glad to hear that. I actually think that that's the reason we have so much suicide is those sort of messages, actually. I think that self-esteem actually drives people to think of themselves more than duty and obligation, and they look inwardly and not externally. But I know you mean well, so I don't want to bash you for that. But that's why I was interested, because it's not a Biblical thing to say people are enough, actually. -Jesus- is enough; you are not enough (on your own) actually."
Student: "That's true, that's true."
Kirk: "That's why I wanted to just ask you about that. The fact is we're far from being enough; we're sinners that should be in eternal damnation, and only thanks to the blood of Christ are we given eternal life. But I know you mean well so, I don't mean to bash on your good parade there."
It's important to note that BOTH Charlie and the student are Christians, so this entire video and conversation are based on a strictly Biblical view of life. It is Biblical that as a human, we are not enough on our own; without Jesus Christ we would be completely doomed. But Charlie respected the intention behind the student's message and said it was a noble cause.
Here's the full clip (starts at 2:38): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUCEkFqCMj4
9. "anti-vaccine ideology."
Again, acting like somebody having an opinion is a crime. Your head might explode when I tell you I didn't get the jab. There are plenty of scientifically backed reasons why someone would be against vaccines -- I'll let you do your own legwork on that one.
10. "believed debunked ”13/50” statistics"
"Debunked" by who exactly? Because the only sources that come up are a garbage AI "fact checker", reddit threads, "know your meme", and articles on Medium by random people. Pardon me if I believe the FBI who actually has access to crime databases rather than somebody's aunt.
Also, y'all are way too focused on trying to discredit the statistic itself rather than discussing what factors contribute to it.
11. "abortion is worse than the holocaust."
Charlie Kirk is a Christian and believes an unborn child has the same value as a grown adult. 64,771,132 babies were killed via abortions between 1973 - 2024 (51 years). 6,000,000 people were killed in the Holocaust. So by his logic, yes, a difference of almost 59 million deaths makes abortion worse than the Holocaust in terms of loss of life, especially considering it still continues and many people don't see babies as human beings.
There are an average of 1,270,022 abortions performed every year. It would take less than 6 years for the same amount of lives to be taken. In the past 51 years, we've essentially had 10.7 baby Holocausts.
12. "wanted children to watch public executions."
First of all, he wasn't the one who said that -- it was someone else from the podcast he was being interviewed on.
Kirk: "By the way, this is my other problem with the death penalty -- it takes too long, too many appeals -- it should be public, it should be quick, it should be televised."
Other guy: "Honestly, that's like what we should be doing, I agree. It should be public,"
Kirk: "By the way, do you-- you could sell--" here he is interrupted by the other guy, who says "force kids to watch it". Kirk ignores it and finishes: "You could fund the government, you could have like 'brought to you by Coca-Cola'."
They are discussing the worst of the worst criminals here -- rapists, serial killers, people who have done absolutely heinous crimes. The reason they say it should be public is to deter people from committing those crimes. As the justice system stands right now, criminals spend YEARS on death row, getting to live off of taxpayer dollars without actually fearing the punishment that awaits them "eventually". Lethal injections are also incredibly expensive.
And be forreal here for a second -- is there a single one of you reading this who hasn't thought the same? The people criticizing him for saying it are the same people who make comments like "the only cure for pedophilia is a woodchipper" and "kill all rapists" -- what exactly is the difference here? Oh, wait -- the difference is that now it's a conservative who said it. Therefore you have to say booooo, look what he said, how awful.
13. "said most people are scared when they see a black pilot flying a plane"
He actually never said this at all, but I believe you're trying to pull from his debate about DEI and pilots. He was asked for clarification on some of his statements at a later event, and he said this:
"Okay, so this was in response first and foremost to United Airlines saying that half of all their new pilots are going to be women or people of color. Currently, they're 15%. So they want to go from 15% to 50%. A conversation then ensued about how every time 'affirmative action' is employed, standards have to be lowered. There's not a single instance where that does not occur. So then I said, 'Boy, if I see a black pilot, now I'm going to wonder is that individual qualified, or were they selected because of their race? But that's NOT who I am, but this (DEI) makes me think this way.' And I stand completely by that statement.
Secondly, DEI and affirmative action, what it does is it lowers the merit. It lowers the threshold of standards and increases things that do not matter, such as skin color and ethnic background. That is what I said. Now a more important question to ask me is, 'Charlie, do you believe that black pilots can be qualified?' OF COURSE. Any individual can be qualified. I want a hiring quota and program that ONLY cares about qualification, not skin color."
And here's the clip where you can watch it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBiiQY0Rgpg
14. "taylor swift should reject feminism and submit to her husband"
This one is just kind of funny honestly. I mean, she's tried everything else and clearly it hasn't worked out for her. It's a joke, live a little.
15. "no one should be allowed to retire"
I'm not sure where y'all got this one from tbh. I've been searching for a good 20 minutes and I can't find anything in regards to comments on retirement. The only scrap I was able to find was a short AI summary from "Factually", so take that with a grain of salt:
"The only source that mentions Charlie Kirk's views on retirement is [1], which suggests that he believes in personal investment over government-managed Social Security. Charlie Kirk discusses his views on Social Security and retirement, stating that he doesn't like the idea of retirement and thinks people should be able to opt out of Social Security payments, believing they can invest their money more effectively than the government".
Sounds like he's in favor of freedom of choice, and it doesn't say anything about "not allowing people to retire".
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