Join us as we navigate the sorrow and implications of the tragic loss of Charlie Kirk. This episode covers everything from the immediate responses and investigations into his assassination to the broader discourse on political division in the United States. Through heartfelt discussions and interviews, we aim to remember Charlie Kirk not only for his influence but also for the manner in which he championed respectful dialogue and free speech in increasingly polarized times.
SPEAKER 04 :
today on the show we pay tribute to charlie kirk and give you an update on the latest in the investigation keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever this is seculo we want to hear from you share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110 And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to Sekulow. This is Logan Sekulow. Jordan Sekulow is in studio as well, and Will Haynes. We’re going to be joined a little bit later by Rick Grinnell, as well as an update in ACLJ case where we had a victory. So we’re going to talk about that. But of course, the news this morning is all eyes are on the horrible assassination of of uh charlie kirk founder of turning point usa someone who we share a network with on the salem news channel um i’m not going to overblow our relationship with him and talk like we were good friends by any means or anything like that but i will say that we’re obviously all reeling from this this uh you know it’s very close to home for everyone who’s probably watching and listening um There’s been an update that’s just happening right now. I want to make sure that we’re going to cover. So make sure if y’all are watching right now, the FBI has just released images. This is in the last five seconds.
SPEAKER 02 :
Can we get this up on our screen?
SPEAKER 01 :
We can get it. Just give it a moment here. We’ll get it up. A person of interest, and they’re asking if you have any connections to this person, to please let them know at 1-800-CALL-FBI. We will put that up on the screen as soon as we can. It is just… breaking as we speak i mean this was not how we planned on opening this broadcast but this is uh where we’re at obviously we know a lot of you are hurting we know a lot of your kids are hurting your grandchildren people who he highly influenced and was a big part of their lives and again uh i like our prayers like i said i’ve been with the family and with everyone at turning point um It’s a sad day for America as we also are obviously honoring September 11th. I saw a friend of mine who’s kind of posted said the September 12th, 2001 us would not be very happy with the September 11th, 2025 us. And I think that that’s a pretty stark reminder of where we were then and how far we’ve gone.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and let me just tell you something. I mean, the effect that Charlie Kirk in Turning Point had on the political process in America, it really hasn’t even been fully studied. But I really give them a lot of credit for… for Donald Trump’s second reelection in his campaign when he ran again for a third time because they were able to get to college campuses and convince enough college-age voters, which is typically, as someone who was a former youth director for President Bush, The 18 to 29 year old vote is very difficult sometimes to get out to vote. And when they do vote, that’s usually overwhelmingly Democrat. So anytime you make those margins closer, you’re winning as a Republican and turning point was changing things dramatically. I mean, I’d say next to the RNC or maybe even equal to, they were the most effective grassroots conservative organization politically in the United States of America. And again, I, I just don’t want to take away from any of what those accomplishments were that were made by Charlie Kirk as we mourn his loss and really mourn the loss and pray for his family. Young family, a young wife, two young children. And again, just the… the prayers that need to go out, and also the discussions about his life in a positive way, not just focusing on the rhetoric and the negatives, but the idea that this was about free speech in the United States of America, and we should be able to have free speech in the United States of America, even if it’s tough free speech, without fear of being politically assassinated. And I want to get into that now because we now know because of the bullet casings… Yeah, there’s a lot more information…
SPEAKER 01 :
Coming upon that, I did want to say we do have that image, and I want to go ahead and put that up on screen for those who are watching, especially on the Salem News Channel. They are asking, again, this is from the FBI of Salt Lake City, asking for the public’s help identifying this person. They believe this person was connected to the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, it says, and to please call 1-800-CALL-FBI. The pictures are up there right now. If you are not watching, you can find them as we broadcast on ACLJ.org, and I’m sure they are everywhere. But again, I wanted to make sure that we get that word out there as well. Really, the first true political assassination of our lifetime, if we really think about it. There’s not been one like this in America that has happened. So if you want to know why people are reeling in a very different way, we have not seen something like this. Obviously, it got very close with President Trump. But here we are in mourning. And we’ll be back in just a moment. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to Sekulow. Again, obviously all the news currently is focused on the unfortunate and the just horrific assassination of one of our colleagues, of Charlie Kirk. Again, I don’t want to pretend or say more words than we have in terms of our relationship with Charlie. I’ve been in the same room with the guy many times, been on many email threads with our friends here at the Salem News Channel. And it’s really heartbreaking, though, when you see the imagery of his family. Now, the FBI has just released an image, and we talked about this. I think let’s get it back up on the screen. Might as well. The FBI has just released an image of a person of interest and asking people to call in if you know who this is or you have any information. 1-800-CALL-FBI. I just wanted to make sure that that is out there and shared as much as we can as possible. You know, it looks like a very young person who they’re looking for, another potentially college age, as they said, college age person who potentially committed this. Like I said, the really, truly the first politically motivated, what feels like a successful assassination attempt in our lifetime. You think about those moments in history, obviously JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King Jr. These are things we talk about. you know, in sort of a historical fashion now, but now for it to show up on our front door as we are on the anniversary of September 11th, it all kind of just feels like it’s coming down. And I think we have to in a moment say, I’ve seen so many good posts from people who I vehemently disagree with on most issues actually stand up and say, this is ridiculous. We can’t do this anymore. And I’m proud of some of those. I’ve also seen the opposite. And I’ll say to those people, I feel very upset for you that the darkness looks back in the mirror at you, that you can’t see past a political difference. And it’s upsetting because I think a lot of the people who probably inspired those people don’t agree with that. But you have people who can get motivated and these horrible things happen. And it’s where we are as a country. We didn’t agree 100% with what Charlie would have said. I don’t think I agree with anyone who’s on this network or anyone that’s on this panel right now. That is not how it works in America or modern society. We all have our own minds. We all have our own decisions to make. And here we are, though, at a big – some people said, is this America’s turning point where you do see – A bit of unification going, we have gone. We’ve gone too far. This, plus September 11th, plus the attack in North Carolina, all of these things are building to something that is hopefully going to hopefully build to a point where we do have to course correct in a major way.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and Logan, as you mentioned, some of the takes even from people on the left, especially in the spotlight that have been positive. I mean, Ezra Klein. who’s a reporter and opinion writer for New York Times, very well-known, very non-friendly to conservative philosophy, has an opinion piece. Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way and goes into the manner of which he practiced put conservatism out into the world was not by isolating himself from people who had ideas differently from him. The tragic irony of what happened to Charlie Kirk is that he was doing what the founders and what made our country great, which is going out and speaking to people on the other side. Yes, they would be contentious issues. They would be things that they vehemently disagreed, but he would speak with people that disagreed with them, give them a platform, allow them to speak openly in front of people online and share their voice. And he did it with respect and he treated others as human beings and, and, uh, letting everyone voice their opinions. And yes, he wanted to change your mind. He wanted you to believe because he was passionate in his convictions, in his faith and in his politics. He wanted you to join that side, but he didn’t disparage you or call you names or do anything, but exercise the great first amendment rights that we have in this country.
SPEAKER 01 :
I remember we were at an event with him, a Fox news event with Pete Hegseth. This is pre, uh, the, This was before President Trump, I think, had just announced he was running for re-election. It was Pete Hegseth. It was Charlie Kirk and a panel of Fox News kind of people. And there were things I agreed with Charlie on. There were things I definitely disagreed with him on. But, you know, when we were leaving, and we were a good 10 years or so older than him, and I think that’s what we’ve got to think about now, is he was 31 years old. I’m about to be 40. Jordan is in his early 40s. Will, same place. I actually remember talking to my friend and going, you know, I really look forward to seeing what Charlie Kirk is doing in 10 years, in 15 years, in 20 years, when his children have grown, when he has seen the differences, because that may be where some of our differences may have misaligned to going when he’s been through these things that a lot of us had started to go through as young parents and to see how he could then influence that next generation based on his own life experiences. It is so unfortunate that we don’t get to see that. And it’s hard to put into words. It was hard for us to have a day yesterday, but it is not on us. This is not about us. This is not about anything other than right now, a call to action and saying, listen, right now the FBI is looking for this person. Help them out. The FBI is also, they put out some statements and there’s been some more information that’s been released. There’s been updates in the investigation. And I want to make sure that that gets out there as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. This morning there was a press conference. It was at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. It was 7 a.m. local time. They were early in the morning wanting to get this information out, and they went through a list of items. They had found what they believed to be the weapon. It was wrapped in a towel in a wooded area. They were able to trace through surveillance footage and other footage. means the path of the suspected assassins entry onto campus and then exit jumping off of a roof. They found in that rifle that they had found in the woods. It wasn’t a semi-automatic rifle. It was a bolt action hunting rifle, meaning you have to manually open and close the bolt for each round. Only one round was fired. A spent shell casing remained in that rifle, so it didn’t even eject the shell. And they believe that that individual went through this wooded area right off campus and then into a neighborhood. The FBI this morning… Also told us they believe it is a college age male, which we have now seen this video, this photo they’ve released from security camera footage. They at the time this morning were not releasing this image and were not releasing this video. And many were saying that when the FBI gets out and gives you some information. but not necessarily calling for a direct ask for help. That’s a sign that potentially they are confident in their leads and where they are headed and whether or not they can bring this to a close without necessarily going directly to public help. Whether some leads have dried up or whether or not they now feel, obviously, at this point, they need some direct help from the public. You remember with the Boston Marathon bombings. Boston bombings, they originally went out and didn’t ask for anything and then felt like they were at a point they needed help from the public to identify and find the Tsarnaev brothers, which they did and quickly were then able to round them up. People know who this guy is.
SPEAKER 02 :
If you don’t know this person, it might look grainy and it might be hard for you to identify, but if you know that person, you immediately say, I know who that is.
SPEAKER 01 :
If they’re in college with
SPEAKER 02 :
If that’s a student at this school, there are enough people seeing this image right now who are saying, I know exactly who that is. And so while that’s more difficult for us who wouldn’t, for people on campus who were seeing those persons on a daily basis or regularly, they should be able to point them out. That doesn’t mean they’re anywhere nearby anymore. But I think that, as Will said, they released this information strategically. And I think that, you know, Getting this person apprehended is the top goal right now. But we do know that this was a political assassination. We can confirm that from the FBI because of what was on the bullet ammunition, the ammunition that was engraved with both transgender and anti-fascist ideology. And that was inside the rifle. So this was not just a crazy person taking out a well-known person. This was a political assassination.
SPEAKER 01 :
Similar to what happened with that Luigi Mangione shooting of the banking. Right, right. Remember, he had inscribed things onto the casing. On the actual brass casings of the ammunition. But also, remember, they showed those imagery, and he was masked, I think, from a lot of it, and he was found very quickly. So our hope is that… Now, New York has a lot more camera security.
SPEAKER 02 :
They can pretty much back up…
SPEAKER 01 :
Indefinitely, where this is quite a bit different. We found that one at McDonald’s by somebody, so you never know what can happen. Look, in the next segment of the show, we are going to pivot slightly. Obviously, this is what we’re going to be talking about.
SPEAKER 02 :
And we’ll take your calls on it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and it’s going to be possible. We don’t want to avoid it, nor will we avoid it. But there was some movement in the case for the ACLJ, and I want to make sure that when that breaking news happens, that we make sure we’re still covering it. So in the next segment, you are going to hear from our attorneys in Chicago right now. You know they’ve been there. Look, it’s a free speech issue as well. They’ve been there supporting street preachers who had been arrested for preaching the gospel on the streets. Don’t think that this isn’t connected. It all feels that way. Again, there are some phone lines open at 1-800-684-3110. Be kind and respectful to the phone screeners, as I’ve said. We’ll do our best to get a lot of your feedback coming up. And there’s someone who did know Charlie a lot more than we did. Rick Grinnell, who is one of his friends, will be on the broadcast a little bit later. So stay tuned for that. And again… We will keep sharing that image as much as we can throughout this broadcast. And if you’re catching it live, hopefully you can help out right now. And if you see it, it’s at 1-800-CALL-FBI. Maybe our team at the ACLJ, if you’re listening, social team, let’s repost that. Let’s repost and share whatever we can. It’s of utmost importance right now. So again, we’ll be right back with your phone calls. Phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. That’s at 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back with one of our lawyers here at the ACLJ, and we’re going to take your calls and comments on the unfortunate assassination of Charlie Kirk. Welcome back to Seculo. Like I said, we’re going to give you an update on an ACLJ case. It’s obviously America. And look, I would say this. Thankfully, a lot on both sides are mourning this incredibly horrendous first political assassination in a lot of our lifetimes. If you’re under probably if you’re under 60. if not even older than that, where something like this has happened successfully, where someone has been taken out for their political beliefs. I do want to put up really quick the imagery that just was released by the FBI, and they are currently asking for help here. The FBI tip line is 1-800-CALL-FBI if you know this person. But Jordan, as we take a moment, and maybe there are times when we can take these kind of moments together, away from this topic of the day to make sure people understand there’s still free speech fights going on around the country. The ACLJ is involved. We’ve been involved in a lot of them. We’ve been involved in one specifically with Turning Point over the years.
SPEAKER 02 :
I wanted to mention that because you said, you know, generationally we’re in different generations than Charlie and the base that he was talking to, of course, was college students and doing a great job focusing on those young people and activating them for the conservative movement. But, you know, when they faced an issue of censorship by social media companies under the Biden administration. Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA came to the ACLJ for us to represent them. Ultimately that was resolved because Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X and they were able to again see their average retweets and their posts were started to reach the same amount of people. So they were the shadow banning, the blocking, the suspending. They were involved in all of that. One of the originals of those. Yes. And so it was an honor at that time to represent a group like Turning Point USA and to represent Charlie Kirk and what they were doing. And it was great to see a positive outcome in that case for free speech. And this is really what this is all about is Free speech in the United States of America and how dangerous the idea of having dialogue is becoming in the United States of America if it’s political dialogue. And we have to get back to a spot where we can debate and try to change minds without having to worry that in those debates we could lose our lives i mean that that’s not the american system the american system is we can strongly disagree have debates and still disagree after the debate and shake hands yeah and that even goes to religious speech and i think that’s what we want to pivot to right now is uh one of our attorneys liam who is currently in chicago uh after we’ve been talking about this street preacher case maybe um
SPEAKER 01 :
Do we want to give a brief rundown of the case and then the results today, which again, if there are some bright spots in these days right now, we should definitely showcase them.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And we have represented now multiple individuals in Chicago that were cited by police for sharing the gospel. We’ve talked about the crime issues in Chicago and the focus that the police was putting on trying to silence the speech, the First Amendment rights of our clients. We had already secured a victory for one of our clients, but there was a trial that was scheduled for today, September 11th, 2025. where two other of our clients who are friends with the first client who we secured a victory for were supposed to face trial today for preaching the gospel outside in Chicago. And Liam, you are in Chicago with a team there today. You showed up to court with our clients prepared for trial and give us a rundown of what happened today.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Only two days after, two or three days after we secured the dismissal in that first case, two more street preachers were arrested. We’ve been waiting for this trial for six months. Chicago has asked for continuances and kept pushing back this trial. But today we finally told the judge that, you know, we were ready for trial, which was their last chance. And the city of Chicago was not ready for trial. They were forced to let the judge dismiss the case over their objection.
SPEAKER 01 :
So this is essentially a big win, Liam. I think that people may hear that as a dismissal, but you also see it as them throwing in the towel, if you will.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, let me tell you, when it comes to free speech issues like this, the process is the punishment. These are small misdemeanor crimes. Their goal is not to secure big prison time. It is to make you go to court. It’s to make you lawyer up. It is to make you go to multiple hearings. And that’s exactly why the ACLJ was so happy and ready to stand in the breach for these guys.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that’s why the ACLJ is so important, Liam, is because of what you just said. They want to kind of almost bankrupt you financially to defend yourself, so to really put some economic pain even before the trial because you’ve got to prepare for the trial. But because the ACLJ can step in at no cost to those clients, those clients don’t have to worry about that aspect of their defense. And you see after we secured that first victory, These police officers who did the wrong thing again didn’t even want to show up in court, Liam. And I think that that just shows, one, the strength of the ACLJ in that first case. And second, why it’s so important that we are able to represent clients like this at no cost or else they would be charged with these misdemeanors. I mean, they may not have been able to afford misdemeanors. the legal representation necessary to handle these kind of complicated, they shouldn’t be, but complicated free speech issues involving law enforcement. And so, Liam, I thank you for being out there and also for our team for getting that first victory because I think that set the stage for these second to arrest and now these individuals with the charges dropped and being vindicated is just great news. And again, it all ties to kind of this war on free speech by even law enforcement, not knowing what speech is allowed, what speech isn’t allowed. And I think that what we are facing in a country is we’re a country, Logan, founded on free speech, and free speech can be offensive. and and free speech can challenge you and it can anger you and but we’re supposed to be able to debate it and then at the end of the day you can dislike someone’s view you can dislike the person but you can also agree to disagree and move on and say you know what we’re going to take this ultimately to voters anyways and they will decide but you know i just want people to be clear the influence that Turning Point USA was having on young people. And I hope there’s a way for it to continue in his memory to have that impact because it was changing a generation who was being indoctrinated in universities with leftist ideology. It was giving them a home. It was giving them a safe place to go. And now you can’t call that anymore a safe place to go, but a safe place to go to organize, to say, you know, we don’t all agree with this radicalism that’s on our campus.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right, Jordan. And also just a reminder to folks about we had that victory. This is now the second victory we’ve secured for. free speech for religious speech in Chicago but our fight doesn’t end there because we do have a federal lawsuit against Chicago that and now that we have both these victories I think even helps that more as we progress forward fighting back against how Chicago was weaponizing law enforcement against the first amendment rights of our clients.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, absolutely. Phone lines are going to be jammed right now. And I’ll be honest that in the next segments, we’re going to take your calls because we’ll have Rick joining us at the end. So instead, stay on hold right now. I will get to you coming up in the next segment. We have a second half hour coming up. If you don’t get us on your local station, some of your terrestrial stations, we will be broadcasting live still for another half hour. And again, Rick Rennell will be joining us at the end of the broadcast. And we’ll be taking your calls coming up. If you want to find it, go to ACLJ.org. Find us on YouTube, on Rumble. Hundreds of thousands of you, millions are watching us. And make sure to share this right now if you can. Again, share it also because we keep putting up the imagery. Maybe we can do it again. Currently, the manhunt that’s happening right now for that suspect, 1-800-CALL-FBI. If you know this person, if you have any information about them, I want to make sure we keep sharing that as much as absolute possible. The work of the ACLJ does continue. You can find out more about that at ACLJ.org. Again, that’s at ACLJ.org. We’ll be back in less than a minute on Sekulow. This is our second half hour as we continue our coverage of the horrific tragedy, the horrific assassination of a fellow broadcaster on this network. If you’re watching on the Salem News Channel or someone who we have worked with over the years again, and we’ll be joined by Rick Grinnell, who was really his close friend. And I don’t want to pretend that we had that kind of relationship with him. But I will say that it has hit very close to home for a lot of us. I know for a lot of you as the assassination, really the first political assassination in our lifetime that was successful on Charlie Kirk, a 31 year old dad who founded Turning Point USA. And again, you may have agreed with him or disagreed with him. It didn’t matter. You could not you could not. ignore the influence that he had and his organization has on American modern politics and faith. They definitely went hand in hand in their organization. And we saw that continue to grow. I know people who were not political who ended up becoming political activists, if you will, because their children introduced them to Charlie Kirk and introduced them to what was going on. And I mean that genuinely. Their high school kids said, Dad, you need to see this. And people I knew who were historically apolitical, who did not care at all, all of a sudden really cared.
SPEAKER 02 :
I just wanted to get this in as we continue the discussion too. I know people say the prayers, people call for the prayers, we’ve called for the prayers, but for right now, especially even if you’re driving, you can say a prayer without closing your eyes. Pray for his wife, Erica, very young, and his two very young children who have lost their father. And, you know, in any political discussions or whatever happens with Turning Point USA, their dad is gone and their husband is gone. And they are very young kids who didn’t get much time with their father who loved them. And so let’s not forget that human angle, which I think hit us so hard yesterday. Those of us who have young children and are involved in the political process that, you know, how quickly… You can be going about kind of your normal practice, which this was for him, doing these events, and not make it home to see your family the next day or that evening. And of course, we’re not promised any amount of days by our Savior. But again, the prayers, I think, for that family and really his wife and those two young children, they have… A lot of trauma to work through. And unfortunately, it’s going to be a trauma that is, you know, it’s all over the media as they grow up, as they get older. You know, it’s just a very tough situation. They’re going to need a lot of prayer, a lot of support. And let’s just make sure we don’t forget them.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, we have opened up a few phone lines. I think some people had to hang up because they’re on hold for so long. So 1-800-684-3110. But Jordan’s absolutely right. These kids are sadly going to grow up probably with little to no memory of their father. But Thankfully, there is a lot of interesting footage that they’ll be able to go through because he obviously has been so outspoken and so prominent in the last decade. Let’s go ahead and take a quick phone call before we get to the next segment. We only got a minute and a half in this one, but let’s go ahead. Bill in Wyoming. Bill, go ahead quickly.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I just want to say something about Charlie Kirk. When I first heard of him, I never really thought that much about him. except that he was a talker and conservative. And then when I started listening to him, I realized that what he would do is he would push back against the philosophy and even results of what this person presented, but he never once at all attacked a person himself.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that was his M.O., is that it was about the open discussion, open dialogue. They were hot topics. Right. They were controversial topics, but he handled it in a way that was American, uniquely American, about having open debate, using your voice, sharing ideas, and trying to convince someone that you’re… take and philosophy is correct while they are doing the same.
SPEAKER 01 :
Phone lines again are open for you. We’re going to take all the calls we can in the next segment. Then we’re going to wrap up with an appearance by Rick Grinnell, someone who’s been a member of our team for a number of years now, but a close real friend of Charlie. So we’ll be able to get his feedback. I know he opened the Kennedy Center last night with a moment of silence. You know, a very classy way to do that. Same with the New York Yankees, by the way, did that as well. So you got to give them some love too as well. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Seculo. We will be taking your calls on this segment as many as we can. So I want to kick that off right now with Cambria, who’s calling, who is an ACLJ champion. Again, I always like to give champions the first opportunity to speak on the air. Not only are you a champion, you’re calling from Utah, where obviously this tragic assassination happened. So Cambria, go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’d like to start out to say that it’s really hit our population here. And for me personally, because he’s really making an impact here, he’s starting to make ground in our state. But I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought. I’ll go as fast as I can.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s okay. It’s okay, Cambria. Look, we all feel that way today. I think if there’s any time to be totally acceptable to have a loss for words or to lose your place, it’s fine. But I think what you were saying to your phone screeners, this just doesn’t feel like even the people of Utah that you know.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. And it took me by surprise, simply because I was lulled into thinking that this wouldn’t happen in a conservative town, conservative county, in a conservative state. And then I realized, you know, that really evil has no boundaries. And it was a stark reminder of that. But I would ask, you know, real quickly for prayer because we had a local church that was Johnny on the spot and they’re already there ministering. So I would just ask you to pray for their strength and wisdom. Absolutely. This would be truly a turning point, and not just here, but nationally.
SPEAKER 01 :
I have to say this, Cambria. I follow a lot of Christian speakers, televangelists, if you will, or speakers or pastors or musicians. It’s just the world we live in. And I did see a few, including, and I don’t know him, but I’m a supporter of Bobby Shuler’s church out in California who did it. It was opening up today for just their members to go and pray for, for Charlie’s family. And I don’t know what the connection is there. He’s a Southern California preacher. Uh, but the fact that they understood that this is impacting their, um, their base, if you will, or their people that go to this church, their congregation, I thought was pretty powerful. And I think you’re going to see that in a lot of different places. So Cambria, of course, we’re praying for the people in Utah. And of course, we’re still praying for the families involved. Let’s continue on and get some more phone calls because a lot of you have been on hold for a while. Let’s go to Bob, line four, watching on ACLJ.org. Bob, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon. In the Bible, there are occasional allusions to the idea of time stopping or the world stopping and things just standing still, which I recall from the 1960s when these political assassinations were stunning to us and to people around the world. It seemed like the world just stopped in that moment. But I want to say that there are people who have accused Charlie of hate speech and that is just a lie because charlie was open to all points of view. He wanted everybody to be able to participate, to see it for themselves about how reasonable and open he was, how he wanted dialogue, and he was totally, totally nonviolent.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, Bob, we’re going to have one of his friends on in the next segment, Rick Grinnell. Yeah, I mean, he was willing to go to Gavin Newsom’s podcast and sit right down. I think that he was taking on topics and obviously taking a point of view that a lot of people disagreed with. That doesn’t mean that he did it out of a place of hatred. Pretty normal in politics. But he would say things that were going to get people riled up. And I think that we’re not going to admit that. We have to at least admit that. However, this is not where you think. I mean, when the last caller said, you don’t think this is going to happen in Utah. Look, we had a school shooting here in Nashville. You didn’t expect that to happen here either. This is all over the world, all over the country right now. This is not localized to your major cities or to Chicago, New York, and Memphis. This is not the world we live in now. I did want to quickly put that image back up because I keep putting up images of the person of interest. 1-800-CALL-FBI if you know this person or if you have any information that you can share with them. I want to make sure that we’re on that as well. So again, 1-800, that’s 1-800-CALL-FBI. Let’s take some more phone calls. Let’s go to Kleiss, who’s calling in Tennessee, on line three. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 07 :
do you hear me we got you okay i just i called in i’ve heard charlie kirk for years and i’m struggling with something and my wife sends me reels every now and then and she’s only came in touch with him over the past two to four weeks so you know it’s affected both of us with the news or else she would not have known about it and I’m just talking about how great of a person he was, and I posted on Facebook, he’s a true martyr.
SPEAKER 01 :
Clice, I think a lot of people feel that way. A lot of people feel, even if you disagreed with them, that this can’t be happening. I have to say there’s been, if anything that could come out of this, and it’s very difficult to see good that can come out of a father at such a young age losing his life for political speech, that that is ever worth it. But maybe it is that we can have a moment of unity as we are here on September 11th. I mean, we barely even mentioned that. I mean, this is something that we talk about every year, the never forget, but news has overtaken. I mean, Fox is still running at the bottom of the screen the names of the thousands of people that were lost on that day. But of course, their number one thing is right now helping the FBI find this person of interest, because this is another one of those moments, as you said, or our last caller said, where the world seems to stand still. It’s how you respond and how the world gets back going.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and I think to that point as well, I saw speaker Mike Johnson on CNN last night. Uh, he was being interviewed by Caitlin Collins, uh, talking about this and he, he admitted, he said there have been, um, people emotional right now. There have been people, uh, both within his, uh, conference in the house of representatives or Republicans and those on the left as well. And what you’ve seen online from some that have decided to, uh, take this moment to just be nasty. But he was saying that while you saw that immediately, he has also having conversations with colleagues in the house and other individuals that he said, I, I truly am hopeful for this moment. I do feel like some of these conversations I’ve had post the, the chaos that you saw on the house floor, uh, in the aftermath of that, that sounded like hopeful conversations about being able to dialogue with people you disagree with and not turn it into a dehumanizing thing.
SPEAKER 02 :
I hope he’s right. Let me say this. If it takes an assassination of a 31-year-old with a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old at home and a 31-year-old wife, is that worth it? I mean, that’s what it took to get members of Congress, adults, elected officials by their constituents to be able to talk to one another is a 31-year-old political activist being shot in the neck and killed on television and media all over. That’s not America. It should not take that kind of violence. We know better. to then come together. We should have been able to come together a lot quicker. It shouldn’t have taken what happened in Butler. It shouldn’t have taken what we’ve seen with ICE. All these different issues is that we as Americans should be able to have these conversations. They can be controversial. They can be heated. They should never be deadly. I mean, that’s the difference. Controversial, heated, tough debate. That’s part of the American experience. What we don’t want to become part of the American experience is that if you dislike or disagree with the person’s view, that you feel like taking their life. And an act of murder and assassination is legitimate because of views that they espouse that you disagree with.
SPEAKER 01 :
I didn’t have some sort of knee-jerk reaction, which I found very odd on a lot of social media accounts last night. I didn’t say anything until very, very late. And what I said was, I don’t feel like people are looking to me to make a statement. I knew we’d have this hour to just spend with you. But I saw a lot of people who, for some reason, felt like they did. who felt like they did feel like people were looking to them to make a statement. Some of the statements they were making were just horrifying. They were statements saying, well, this is the day everyone unfriends me. This is the day you know you do this. And you’re looking at people going, one, no one asked you. No one knows who you are. And all you’re doing is stoking up more of this. Or, you know, then they’ll caveat it with, I saw one person said, you know, a horrible statement of something like, you know, this should be how you live your life where you know that people won’t be celebrating when you die. If you’re making any kind of political statement right now, sorry, that’s sadly what seems like it’s going to happen. I hate that. But it seems like that’s what happened. So you, sir, who said that, who maybe you’re watching me right now, guess what? There’ll be a lot of people who’ll be doing that if that happened to you. So don’t pretend because you are on one side of the story that you are holier than thou. We live in too divisive of a nation. We live in too strong of an area where this is acceptable, where you have to caveat everything. Again, we said, do we agree with everything Charlie Kirk had to say? No. Do I agree with everything Jordan and Will had to say? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that there would be any sort of thought process or even it should enter your mind. It should never enter your mind if someone is murdered for just a point of view. for a political point of view, for a religious point of view, whatever it may be. Not because of an action, not because they committed some kind of crime, not because they murdered someone. That’s not what happened here. This is a guy who went around with a microphone. Okay, and that is really where it’s at ends. We still have a few lines that are full right now. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get to any more calls today. We’ll see. If you want to stay on hold, you can, but Rick Grinnell’s going to be joining us in the next segment. Rick, obviously a personal friend of Charlie’s and someone who I know will want to share his thoughts and feelings, and we’ll let him talk as long as he would like. So if we don’t get to you, I’m sorry. You can stay on hold if you want to. If not, you can call us back tomorrow. Again, we want to thank you all for joining us on this interesting and horrifying day. But I hope we’ve been able to offer something for you that’s a little different. Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us in just a moment, again, to share his thoughts as well. Go find out more information at ACLJ.org. Again, we had a victory. We talked about that earlier in the broadcast. You can rewind and find that a little bit later. Welcome back to Seculo. To wrap up the broadcast today, we are joined by Rick Grinnell, who obviously has been a longtime member of this team here at the ACLJ and currently has the Kennedy Center, among many other things I saw last night, Rick. The tribute that you all gave and the moment of silence that you gave. to Charlie and his family. It’s been a hard show for a lot of us to get through. It’s been a hard day for those of us who just simply somewhat shared a network with him, didn’t know him well. I couldn’t say really at all, but I know that’s exactly the opposite for you. So I wanted to give you the opportunity, Rick, to start off however you would like with this moment that we’re all going through.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, thanks, Logan. Yeah, it’s been a tough 24 hours for me. Charlie was a very close friend of mine, was an incredible champion of mine. And I was on the Turning Point board for many years. And I only did it because Charlie asked me. And I think, you know, just I… I know this sounds so selfish, but I’m stuck in this mode of this last 24 hours of just thinking about me personally and my relationship with my friend. It’s, it’s really, it’s really devastating. I have had moments where I just think, you know what, this is just not worth it. I gotta, I gotta just retreat, go live a different life and retreat from all of this. Why, why fight? So many other people have these great lives where they don’t have to take all this crap. And it’s a very real emotion for me and for others. I spoke to Charlie multiple times a week. We were on a text chain of just a few people that really cared about issues. You know, for me, Logan, I got to tell you that Charlie Kirk was the epitome. He was the tip of the spear of telling people to come to the front. If you disagree with me, I will make sure that everyone around is quieted. You are going to get your time to talk to me and tell me what you think. And I’m going to calmly respond and we’re going to have a healthy debate. That’s calm. And Charlie was the first one to tell his own side that, Stop yelling. Don’t shout this person down. And eventually on college campuses, people knew if you came to a Charlie Kirk rally, you knew you were going to hear from people that disagreed and they were having a safe space, if you will. And to take him out, to take the guy out, it’s hard for me to comprehend because I just think this means the other side doesn’t want dialogue. And then I have to be honest with you. I just left the Capitol and I had a one-on-one meeting with Senator Mark Warner from Virginia Democrat. And I was able to share my heart with them and just say, I’m struggling. Charlie was my friend. And I feel like, you know, the left is not allowing us to even have a dialogue. They want to cancel us. They want to violence, you know, produce violence. And we had a good conversation, and I’m hopeful that that’s a step in the right direction. And I know I’ve got to find a way to fight, but in all honesty, I’m just taking a couple of days to… to grieve my friend.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely, Rick. Rick, I think that’s where a lot of people are is looking back and saying, you know, is it worth it that a 31-year-old is now has been assassinated and his two young children and wife, his two young children will really not get to know him and he won’t get to have those experiences of You know, walking his daughter down the aisle. I mean, and again, we’re never guaranteed time in this world by God. And we all know that. But I think there are plenty of people, they may not want to admit it as honestly as you did and as honestly as we might, that say that definitely everyone does a gut check and says… We all had that conversation with our families last night. Yes, we were all doing it last night saying, you know, with what we’re doing, you have to then put into context… what is it worth? And is it worth that your life may be cut short because of the values and the issues that you’re fighting for? And I don’t know that we can answer that today philosophically, because as you said, Rick, Right now it’s mourning, it’s talking about Charlie Kirk, it’s praying for his young family and all those who were affected so directly at Turning Point, his friends and family. But I think it also opens that discussion as well. Just as he was engaging massive amounts of young people to enter a process which they felt like they couldn’t have much of an influence on and then they saw in the last election cycle they could.
SPEAKER 09 :
You know, I’m also struck with, Jordan, as you’re speaking, is that I know it’s worth it, but I think for me and for others, we think, have we given enough already and should we just bow out? I think that is the reality of a lot of people who are on the front lines. we know it’s worth it and we know everybody has to give and people need to step up. And if you’re hearing us, you know, you need, you need to do your part. But at some point people just think, you know, okay, I’ve given enough. I’ve been in the fight. I’ve taken a lot of hits. Is it just now a time to back down? And I don’t believe the answer is yes, but you know, again, I’m, I’m just sharing with you, my friends, my, my very real emotion and, of me finding out the moment that Charlie was dead, completely breaking down, and having this moment while I’m in the front lines of politics, if I’m being honest.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ll be honest, that’s 100% the conversations that I had with my wife that I’m sure all of us sitting on this panel had. And again, he wasn’t someone that we were close with, and I wouldn’t pretend that. So I knew for you it would be different. I checked in with Will, our producer this morning right here, and I said, hey, is Rick okay to come on still? Because obviously we’d love to hear from someone who really knew him. And someone, by the way, a lot of words get thrown around about the guy, and I didn’t know him. But he had a great relationship with you, a great relationship with a lot of people who may have – People on the internet may have thought there’s no chance that he had a relationship with and clearly was a person who was dedicated to his beliefs and his faith, maybe even more so than we knew. But Rick, I can feel the emotion and it’s hard to not be overcome with it as well and not to decide, you know, have those discussions. I think that’s okay. I put that last night that it was okay to feel like not only are we in a broken world, but it’s okay to feel broken as well right now.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, well, thank you for that. I thought when I woke up this morning, I thought that I would feel a little bit differently. But, you know, I’m definitely fighting the emotions of anger and trying to, you know, put it in the right direction, all of that. I do have to say that meeting with Senator Warner, Democrat from Virginia today, I was very not looking forward to the meeting, especially because of my heavy heart and where my emotions might go. And it was a great meeting. And I left it thinking, you know, this is a good moment. This is at least a step.
SPEAKER 01 :
Rick, thank you for joining us. I’m going to encourage our listeners. There’s a lot of people watching right now who maybe you’ve never seen us before. Maybe you’ve never watched us before, but I know a lot of you wanted updates. You wanted to hear from people like Rick. Say a prayer for him. Not only say a prayer for obviously the Kirks and for everyone at Turning Point, but say a prayer for his close personal friends and people like us who are having to think about what this means for our families and what is worth it. And we know, like I said, Rick’s like, you know that it is, but there are these moments where you go, hey, we’re all young parents here. What does this look like in the future? Look, we’re going to have more tomorrow. Sure. Of course, a lot of you who are honoring September 11th today as well, so we don’t want to forget that, but it’s kind of hard to focus on that when you have such a moment here. For the last 30 seconds, I would like to just put up that image that we’ve been doing just so we can help out the FBI as much as possible. Yeah. So again, if you know who this person is or you have any information, over the next 10 seconds, just 1-800-CALL-FBI. And if you want more information on what we do here at the ACLJ, go to ACLJ.org. I’ll just leave it up for the rest of this five seconds, and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
