In this poignant episode, we delve into the tragic loss of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Through personal stories and reflections from those who knew him well, we explore the characteristics that defined him as the ‘nice guy’ striving for national dialogue amidst a divided political climate. The discussion transitions into a broader analysis of the media and lawmakers’ responses to the violence that continues to plague civil discourse. Outspoken voices share their perspectives on the escalating rhetoric and the challenges of maintaining peace amidst personal loss.
00:01:04 Broadcasting Challenges and Eulogy to Charlie Kirk
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SPEAKER 05 :
These are the times it gets really hard to be in broadcasting, I’m not going to lie. And we’ve covered a lot of these stories. We’ve covered a lot of, whether it’s mass casualty incidents or news tragedies involving politicians. And I was on air to talk when we lost our late friend, Andrew Breitbart. And This is difficult because we all know Kirk. My husband and I have known Charlie Kirk since he was a teenager, since he was I think 17 or 18 years old. And I know we were one of the early supporters of Turning Point USA because there hadn’t been up till that point, aside maybe from YAF, a group that was focusing strictly on college kids and we needed more because the halls of academia are where it… these battles are really originating. I mean, look at every nation that has descended into tyranny. I mean, it all starts with colleges and Russia with Marxism and China with the color revolution, all of that. And it was needed. And we knew him for a long time, didn’t agree with him on everything, but who cares? Who agrees with anybody 100% on everything? I think the point of this, and I wrote in Substack last night, is that Out of everyone in this industry and there’s some really ghoulish people in this industry and there’s some really bad actors that are on the right. He was who he was publicly privately. That’s really rare. I can’t tell you guys how rare that is. He was the exact same person privately as he was publicly and he was very consistent. And he really did care about what he was doing. He initially got launched by another great guy, Foster Freese, who I had the pleasure of having dinner with one time. He’s a very nice guy. And Charlie left college and then basically became 10 times greater than I think he would have been if had he stayed in college. And so it’s difficult because… You still have to go on television and you still have to talk about it, even though you know this person and you met their wife and you’ve seen their kids. And you don’t like to see this befall anyone, especially someone who was the nice guy. He was the nice guy. When everyone says we need to have a national conversation, Charlie was having it and they shot him for it. So I don’t know what you’re expecting to hear from me today. If you’re expecting to hear some words of like wisdom or calm or restraint. But I really don’t have a spirit of peace right now. So I’m going to tell you that. And when you see good people for no good reason mow down the way he was, there is a rage. And I got to tell you as well. I think that. It is a righteous rage. And I’m already tired of seeing these people preening and giving lectures on how they think you should react and when and how you should express anger. Let people have their righteous rage. Because it’s deserved. Some of us have been doing this for 15 and 20 years. And we’ve been down this road so many times. And we’ve heard, oh, well, we need to have a national conversation. The right is the only one having the conversation. And as much as people don’t want to put this in the categories of right and left, and I’m not eager to do it, but I’m also not going to sit here and gaslight my audience for the purpose of some BS fairness that, oh, well, this, you know, it’s both. We’re not doing both sides of them because there’s one side that’s doing the killing. There’s one side that has consistently done the killing. And for just purposes of understanding that we’re going to dive into that. And I’m going to give you the history of it here. But there’s one side that’s been doing it. Today, we’re going to talk about some of the media response, some of the lawmaker response. And can I just say the overture in all of this was Luigi Mangione. If people didn’t think that it was disturbing to watch swaths of the American citizenry celebrate a guy who in cold blood shot a man to death in the streets of New York over health insurance, he was celebrated. I mean, they did. They gave him the Boston bomber treatment. That’s that’s what this is right now. That’s what all of this. It’s it’s it’s it’s infuriating. So we’re going to dive into all of this. And we have my friends Kurt Schlichter. We’re also going to talk with David Boesel from Media Research Center because it is about as bad as you would think. The left on blue sky apparently was horrific. The latest that we know is apparently, and the Wall Street Journal confirmed this, it was a Mauser 30-06. And I thought originally it kind of sounded like that because of the heavy… It was kind of hard to tell from the audio because of the acoustics of the area in which he was speaking. But it sounded more… It sounded… Not like a .22, that’s for sure. And we have a Mauser. I have this rifle. It’s bolt action. And one spent round was in the chamber. And apparently the shell casings had engraved Trans-Tifa stuff carved on them. That is some of the latest. That was confirmed earlier by the Wall Street Journal. And they’re investigating it. Of course, CNN said federal officials probe rifle and ammo scrawled with cultural phrases. They weren’t cultural phrases. It was the trans Tifa call to war. We’re not going to we’re not we’re not letting the media get away with us. We’re not letting lawmakers say, oh, well, the people who are being killed and shot at need to tone down their rhetoric. No, maybe it’s the left. Joe Biden once called Republicans verbatim an existential threat to the security of this country. How long do you think that these politicians, these lawmakers can say this type of stuff, these things before somebody is like, well, you know what? I’m convinced they really are an existential threat. So I guess I should react to it. Words aren’t violence. Violence is violence. But I will be damned if I am lectured to by anybody who has been applauding that kind of language that we have heard from the left for the past 30, 40, 50 years. Not doing it. So it’s a hard show today. Because like I said, I do not have a spirit of peace. And I really ultimately, the irony in that is that that’s kind of how I think it should be approached. Because Charlie Kirk only ever wanted to go and have a conversation with people. My gosh, he went to college campuses and he smiled about it. And he never got any aggressive beyond level one sassy. And he was super nice. He was the moderate. He was the nice guy. He was the one that had good intentions and his gestures were rooted in good faith. And you have people out there that are so hyperbolic that everybody who disagrees with him is Hitler. Everyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi. Everyone who disagrees with them is a fascist. Everyone who disagrees with them is a racist. These people who sodomize the English language with their hyperbole, they are the ones who cannot live with a difference in idea. He could. And he went into the lion’s den. And he calmly and peacefully debated with a motivation that was rooted in goodwill and a knowledge base that was moored in fact. So spare me the national conversation because we tried it. And now you see what happened as a result. Here’s another thing that I’ll caution people. Everybody who’s lecturing, we need restraint, we need calmness. I don’t discount that, but I don’t feel it in my heart. I really don’t. I mean, I told Jesse Waters last night, it’s really hard to be a Christian right now. The discipline required to walk that walk of discipleship is very difficult right now. And it’s not made easier by charlatans. in office on MSNBC, on CNN, who have refused any accountability for where they have driven us with this logic. If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Warning, Kavanaugh. You guys remember all of this. We’ll play the hits for you here. No, we’ve been having a national conversation about this for quite some time. It is a war of good and evil. I don’t even think it’s a war between right and left anymore. I think we need to stop dressing up evil with distractions. It is evil. It’s not political. It’s evil. This is a battle between good and evil. And it doesn’t just take place in this plane. So we have some things to break down, but I just wanted to kind of let you know my perspective on this. I don’t know what approach you’re expecting me to have, but as I said, I do not have a spirit of peace right now at all whatsoever. Jesse made the remark to me, we’ve been down this road a couple of times before and we have. And you kind of get burned by it and tired of of seeing the double standards. And you’re tired of seeing people who are insistent on dragging American society right to the precipice of disaster and then completely refuse any all accountability. Oh, let’s just move along to get along. We should be able to talk. Well, that’s what we’ve been saying for 20 years now. This is not something that you can get away from. Did you know that fall is one of the best seasons for planting? Many trees and plants thrive when planted now, but knowing where to start makes all the difference. That’s why you should turn to Fast Growing Trees, the largest online nursery in the United States. They offer thousands of plants from fruit trees to privacy hedges. all tailored to your climate, so landscaping feels stress-free. Plus, their Alive and Thrive guarantee means that your plants arrive ready to grow. No more loading up a dirty car or wandering around a nursery with limited options. And grown to last by American farmers, all on American soil. Whether you want privacy, shade, or natural beauty, fall is the time to plant. And with fast shipping, expert support, and top quality plants, Fast Growing Trees makes it happen. 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SPEAKER 06 :
Political violence erupts again as conservative activist Charlie Kirk is murdered while speaking on a college campus. How do we fix this evil insanity? The media get mad at the right for pointing out they completely ignored a grisly murder because it doesn’t fit their narrative. And a sitting U.S. senator really thinks our rights come from the government. I’m Greg Karumbas, inviting you to join Jim Garrity of National Review and me each weekday for the 3 Martini Lunch podcast. We’ll give you the top news, usually some good laughs, and we’ll be done in less than 30 minutes. Follow the 3 Martini Lunch on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
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Some of the other news, we’re going to get into how the FBI has released a photo for the person of interest as well. And some eyewitnesses were saying that it looked coordinated. And we’re going to dive into all of that coming up, just an FYI. Some of the other headlines that are making news. Findings by NASA’s Mars rover provide strong hints yet of potential signs of ancient life. This is something that we touched on yesterday. They’re little bitty tiny things, so that doesn’t count to me. Spain is set to introduce strict new countrywide bans at beaches, restaurants, and bars. This is one of the things reported by The Sun. They’re banning smoking in Spain, which is weird because every… I’ve never met a Spanish person from Spain that doesn’t smoke, so I don’t know how they’re going to live through this. But they said they’re banning smoking at all outdoor venues, and that means outdoor restaurants, beaches, terraces, and it includes both e-cigarettes, vapes, as well as regular cigarettes. So that’s something that they’re getting ready to implement if that’s important to you. NYPD is boosting presence at critical locations. This was all in place ahead of our observation of 9-11 today. A huge fire erupted at a Paris restaurant as riot cops are battling the block everything protesters with more than 350 people arrested. This is what, how many weeks now that this has been going? The French are very good at rioting. But they’ve made hundreds of arrests. They’ve been trying to disrupt transportation links and bring the country to a halt. There’s a lot of photos of the destruction and the fires and riots. So, again, that’s going into, like, what, a couple of weeks now. And the Secret Service missed a loaded Glock in a bag at Trump’s golf course. How?
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It’s his life mission to make bad decisions. It’s time for Florida Man.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, this is about dogs. A Florida woman bit a pit bull to save her dog during an attack in Orlando. She’s 70. 70 years old. It was at Shirley Passamanick. She was leaving the store the other day. A pit bull bolted towards her 14-year-old dog, Sparky, latched onto him. She said, we ended up on the ground. She weighs 90 pounds. She used her cane in her hands, and then she bit the pit bull on the back of its neck. And apparently it worked for a guy to grab the pit bull and pull it away and then walk off with the dog on a leash. So she says that her dog survived the attack but is still shaken. Oh, my gosh. See, this is… I’m just saying… This is why you go out, you carry a judge. Just saying. Little Taurus. Just saying. Oh, my goodness. So this… This is a weird headline. Do another one here. This is weird. This has to do with a felon who was found homeless with a bunch of baby sea turtles and also his half-dressed girlfriend. I don’t know. I don’t write these stories. This is literally… This stuff just actually happens. Miami Dade… This happened in Miami, happened in actually Miami Beach, Florida, a 44 year old convicted felon. He’s been in and out of prison for the past like 10 years. He’s got tons of charges because of baby sea turtles. So he the last time he was in jail was because he had tons of cocaine and he was going to distribute. Then he got released. Then he’s back in prison now because he attacked a woman that he had been in an on and off relationship with. And then he hit her, injured her, and then he got busted when police arrived, also in possession of a ton of baby sea turtles. Out of all the random things, this is like playing like Mad Libs with these Florida man stories. Like, oh, baby sea turtles, why not? Anyway, he’s going to court. He’s going to be arraigned this week. So I can’t make this stuff up. That’s very, very interesting. Let’s see here. We also have a Cape Coral man who was accused of stealing $40,000, about 85 to 90 pairs of Nike Jordans. I mean… Are they? Yeah, that’s a great question. Are they? So he took a lot. He made multiple trips through a rear door, used bolt cutters to force entry into this storage unit of the store. He’s in custody in Lee County Jail, made multiple trips. He looks like he does not care in his Lee County Sheriff’s Office mugshot. And apparently, I guess he had some help. There was a female that there were three suspects in total, but he was identified. They also took two signed sports jerseys, a red Nike Jordan golf bag with tailor made clubs. It’s five hundred dollars. And then all of the Nike Jordan sneakers valued at forty thousand dollars. I cannot even believe that like that many. That’s insane.
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I want you all to know. That America today, America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.
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9-11
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All these years later, what a still a dark day in American history and even darker still considering the events of yesterday. Welcome back to the program. Dana Lash with you. You can watch us do the radio show at Channel 347, DirecTV. The chat is at Rumble. We’re also on X and Facebook. George W. Bush released a statement yesterday saying, quote, today a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square. Members of other political parties are not our enemies. They are our fellow citizens. May God bless Charlie Kirk and his family and may God guide America towards civility. You know how often and for how long he was called Bush Hitler? Bush was called Hitler. He was called a Nazi. I used to crash protests and disrupt the television, the shots of television interviews for leftists. And I was at one and they were burning him in effigy and they gave him a Hitler stash. Someone made the suggestion, maybe if you’d bothered to push back more when they called you Bush-Hitler, that we wouldn’t be where we are now. And that gave me pause. Because I feel like the country is at an interesting crossroad. And I understand, believe me, the responsibility and the weight that comes with it when you’re on air and you talk to millions of people every single day across the country. And the reason I say that I just still have such a spirit of anger right now is because couldn’t you argue that we did the nice thing for a long time since the W. Bush years? I mean, how did George W. Bush respond? Some of the biggest criticisms that my side had of him is that he didn’t push back enough when he was disparaged and not just when he was disparaged, when his voters were disparaged, when Republicans were called little Nazis for supporting him. A lot of people are too young to remember. Or maybe they weren’t involved enough. to have realized that it was really bad under George W. Bush too, with the left, really bad. And in some instances it’s gotten worse and in some instances it’s been the same. And where did his ignoring of all of it get anywhere? Where did that go? After a ball field of congressional members Were fired into by a Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer. And Rand Paul was about beaten to death in his front yard. You know, people weren’t out there rioting. They weren’t out. You didn’t see you didn’t see Republicans right yesterday. You didn’t see conservatives go through the streets and burn down houses. Raid foot lockers. You didn’t see any of that. So I ask. All of these years, it seems like we’ve been the calm, cool ones. And it’s insane that people have to have go through everything that they have to go through just to speak on a college campus. And all of any of us conservatives, every single one of us who are in media have had to deal with security. We’ve had death threats simply because we speak ideas that are out of agreement or alignment with the left. I have never felt in any ways truly violent towards the leftists for simply them expressing a different idea. I don’t know. It’s because we’re more evolved. Or what? I liked Bush’s statement. But I also wonder, haven’t we been always the civil ones? And I think it has worked. And I think, yes, you get more flies with hunting, but I get all of that. But I think it’s easier for people who have never had to have a security detail to simply walk into a college campus to say that. I think it’s easy for people who have never had anybody fly halfway across their country, the country with a big suitcase enough to fit a dismembered person and pills and try to break into someone’s house. It’s easy for them to say that. I’m not so sure. Now, to this, it’s just it’s the nation still processing all of this. And it hasn’t been helpful for some of the elected officials, for some of the things that we’ve heard. I wanted to talk to you for a moment about the insane amount, the history of left wing terrorism, of left wing violence. It has long been with us. I mean, going back to the weather underground, people remember the weather underground, right? I think they do. You had the weather underground. They committed over, gosh, I don’t even know how many, over almost 3,000 bombings, I think it was. I was looking at my notes here. The number of bombings that they had committed was quite large. They had a lot. I think it’s actually worse than what some have been sharing on social media. There were like, what, 2,500 bombings. They did five bombings a day during an 18-month period between 1971 and 72. And over the next decade, they had more. It was a very far leftist organization. And in fact, you’ll remember the head of Weather Underground, Bill Ayers, launched Barack Obama’s campaign in his living room. Bernadette Dorn. So, yeah, there’s a big history there. You had the Black Liberation Army. They murdered dozens of police officers, assassinated. You had a bunch of other Hispanic separatists. You’ve had I mean, it goes on and on and on. I mean, there’s a. I think there’s like a book on it, like Days of Rage or something like that. I mean, we’re not even getting into some of this other stuff. It’s just, it’s insane. The history of leftist violence. You had SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. That’s where, they came out of, the Weathermen came out of that group. And then you got to go all the way up to modern era and go to Occupy Wall Street and look at Black Lives Matter and look at the Chaz Chop neighborhoods. Look at the guy who tried to assassinate a bunch of congressional members. Steve Scalise barely escaped with his life. The armed guy who tried to go and assassinate Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Interestingly, right after Chuck Schumer, I’m going to play this again. Right after Chuck Schumer, what audio soundbite is this? Thank you. After he said this, listen.
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You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.
SPEAKER 05 :
See, that was after Roe v. Wade. And boy, oh boy, did he really. And then the guy was caught trying to get to Kavanaugh’s house. I mean, there’s been so many. You had Antifa. We’ve all seen Antifa. There have been so many far, so many leftist, violent leftist groups. And then don’t forget the two Jewish staffers that were embassy staffers that were killed in front of the Capitol Jewish Museum in D.C. And then the targets to just regular average everyday conservatives that go out to college campuses and speak or that go on television or that have podcasts or whatever. It’s really unbelievable. And it’s always one way. It’s always one way. Someone said, oh, well, you know, George Floyd, you know, I guess you guys don’t care about his kids. He had kids, too. Well, to be fair, George Floyd didn’t care about his kids. So you’re not comparing those two. Spare us this whataboutism because there isn’t any. It’s actually a hell of a lot worse than the history of leftist violence. And people kind of realize. Democrats want so badly to go back to 1960s radicalism. They really do. And, of course, then you’ve got the violent attacks on ICE. Don’t forget that. Goodness. The attacks on ICE, the attacks on law enforcement. how police were being attacked. I mean, we could go on and on. You guys know this because you’ve been living it for the better part of 10 plus years. This is who they are. And all of their… later calls for unity have always been lies. They’ve always been false. I don’t believe them. I don’t believe them when they say they want unity. I don’t believe them when they condemn yesterday’s assassination. I don’t believe a single one of them. They’re all liars. Not a single one of them will turn to their party and say, stop looting foot lockers every time someone tries to commit suicide by cop. Or they turn around and say, stop writing simply because a conservative went to your college campus. When is the last time you saw Gavin Newsom say that or Elizabeth Warren say that or J.B. Pritzker or any of these Democrat lawmakers? They never have. It’s always, well, Trump should watch his tone. Trump should watch his tone. It’s unbelievable. I wanted to play this. This is Audio Sunbite 33. This is probably one of my favorite video excerpts of Kirk. Listen to this.
SPEAKER 07 :
I go around universities and have challenging conversations because that’s what is so important to our country is to find our disagreements respectfully because when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’ve never seen someone do this.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, it’s a growing trend because people like me are facing violence, assaults. the left yes the campus antifa i’ve been stormed out of restaurants i’ve been assaulted publicly multiple death threats okay so what’s your goal there’s more people that agree with me than some people would actually believe and they come out of the woodwork when i do stuff like this we record all of it so that we put on the internet so people can see these ideas collide when people stop talking that’s when you get violence that’s when civil war happens because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity
SPEAKER 05 :
And that’s what it is. It’s about dehumanizing one side to the point where it’s easy to commit violence because you’ve stripped them of their humanity. I wrote about this in one of my previous books, Grace Canceled. Because when you can reduce your opponent down to nothing but just a mere representation of some sort of vague evil, it is really easy to commit horrible acts against them because you’ve removed their humanity. Is it really violating a moral code if you are taking action against something so supremely evil that it can’t even claim humanity anymore because of the level of immorality? That’s their whole MO. That’s their whole point. He was… Charlie was always a very happy warrior. He and I debated things like social contracts before. And I will say, even when I thought he was wrong, he was never nasty. I can’t say that. He was never mean. He was never nasty. He was very consistent. It is… I can’t underscore how unusual it is to have someone that consistent. And he’s 31 years old. And to have that level of wisdom at that age, it is very unusual. Never nasty. And all he wanted was open, good faith to me.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
