Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday made it clear that while he disagreed with much of Charlie Kirk’s words, his killing was still a “tragedy.”
Kirk’s killing has been at the forefront of national discussions since the moment he was shot on the campus of Utah Valley University last week. The conservative commentator was 31 years old, and he’s survived by his wife and two young children.
The responses to his death have also become a nationwide issue. While many have mourned the loss, some on the internet — pointing his to divisive speech — have celebrated it. Speaking at the Jefferson Educational Society in Erie, Pennsylvania, Obama called for the Kirk family to be given grace in their time of mourning:
Look, obviously, I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I was generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong; but that doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family. He’s a young man with two small children and a wife who — and a huge number of friends and supporters who cared about him — and so we have to extend grace to people during their period of mourning and shock.
Mourning for the family, Obama added, doesn’t mean one can’t also criticize Kirk’s views:
We can also, at the same time, say that I disagree with the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake. That’s not that’s not me politicizing the issue. It’s making an observation about who are we as a country. I can say that I disagree with the suggestion that my wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain processing power. I can say that I disagree that Martin Luther King was awful. I can disagree with some of the broader suggestions that liberals and Democrats are promoting a conspiracy to displace whites and replace them by ushering in illegal immigrants.
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The post Obama Says Charlie Kirk’s ‘Ideas Were Wrong,’ But What Happened to Him Was a ‘Tragedy’ first appeared on Mediaite.
