The episode also highlights the American Center for Law and Justice’s (ACLJ) recent legal victories, showcasing their unwavering commitment to defending freedoms. Tune in to hear about the organization’s achievements in defunding Planned Parenthood and supporting free speech. Additionally, the episode presents a heartfelt tribute through Matt Hammett’s new song, encouraging listeners to cherish life’s moments amidst turbulent times.
SPEAKER 03 :
we got breaking news the suspected assassin has been arrested 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
SPEAKER 01 :
And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. Jordan Sekulow is in the studio. This is Logan Sekulow hosting. And we also have Will Haines in the studio. We have a packed show today. Of course, we wanted to start with an update on, still, the horrific tragedy. We’ve seen now J.D. Vance escorting charlie kirk and his casket and all the horrible imagery that came from that but at least there’s you know you don’t want to say there’s good news because not good news but at least there is an update in the right direction and that is that the suspected assassin has been detained and arrested uh this was tyler robinson uh again age 22 from utah uh Turned himself in after being recognized, I believe, by his family members who recognized that it was him. And just a horrible situation once again. But at least maybe people can rest a little easier knowing that this isn’t a open manhunt at this moment. I’m sure more information will come out on this. But again, very politically motivated. It’s becoming very clear that it was politically motivated. And that’s where we are.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right, Logan. And the governor of Utah was the one who broke down the information in this press conference this morning. Kash Patel was there.
SPEAKER 01 :
After being announced by President Trump. On Fox and Friends.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. So what we learned is that this is a 22 year old from Utah did not attend Utah Valley University where the shooting occurred. Apparently had no party affiliation and did not vote in the most two most recent elections. However, family members told law enforcement he had become increasingly political over the past few years. And recently he talked with family members at a dinner about Charlie Kirk coming to Utah Valley University and discussed why he didn’t like him and his viewpoints. And they quoted the family member saying that he said Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate. The roommate of this individual has given investigators messages that were sent to the roommate on Discord showing things talking about like retrieving a rifle. They didn’t go into the specifics of what those said, but the roommate shared them with law enforcement and it helped build their case against this individual. As well as the father of this son, it’s reported, was recognized his son from the photographs that were distributed by the FBI. The father told his son he needs to turn himself in. The father apparently called a youth pastor to assist with that and encouraging the son to turn himself in. The pastor called and informed U.S. Marshals, and it’s reported that the father delivered the son, drove the son to turn himself in to authorities. This is one of those where you normally, after one of these horrific events happens,
SPEAKER 01 :
don’t end up getting to see someone in custody and there being a trial and justice coming for it because of their cowardly acts i mean and of course jordan i think that the assumption will be based on the writings and everything that’s come out that this from someone who will plead some form of mental insanity or illness but the problem is is if you’re willing to take the life of somebody uh that should probably be a lesson enough of course you’re mentally unstable
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, but also not some sort of obsessive with anti-fascism. So not someone who wasn’t able to educate themselves kind of deeply actually did deep dives into the anti-fascist movement against the Nazis and then use the rhetoric that’s been used to identify so many of us on the right. in the MAGA world as fascist and took then the anti-fascist, even like the 1940s we’re talking about, language like that was written on these bullet cases. You should really have to know.
SPEAKER 01 :
You have to be a deep diver.
SPEAKER 02 :
So are you insane or are you crazy but also highly educated? Obviously competent enough to carry out.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s just become such a blurry line at this point of what that all means.
SPEAKER 02 :
What is different is usually these people are not caught alive. No. So that could be very different. Now, will he ever talk in a trial? We don’t know. Probably not. But you never know what you’re going to get in these kind of murder trials when the Utah governor is saying they’re going to seek the death penalty.
SPEAKER 01 :
A lot of you are watching right now. Phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on air today. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow again. We’ve got to reset what’s going on. Logan Sekulow here. Jordan is well in studio and Will Haynes. We will be discussing this further, but of course the big update today is that the alleged assassin has been detained and arrested after turning himself in. Family members are urging him to turn himself in. His father drove him there. His father was a long-time law enforcement officer. Another sad moment, but of course at least we can rest a little easier knowing that this person likely who perpetrated this is off the streets, so at least there can be some form of closure. It was Tyler Robinson, age 22, from Utah. Again, has been speaking out against Charlie Kirk to his friends and family. Maybe not to this level. We don’t know, of course, what happened there. I don’t think anyone really expects their family members are capable of doing something like this. But who knows? We’ll find out more information as it goes on. As Jordan said, you rarely see one of these assassins captured. and detained lately. I mean, yes, you could go back to previous decades and eras.
SPEAKER 02 :
In New York, the insurance company executive, he’s alive and he’ll be facing trial. And then you had one of the Boston Bombers. Joe Carson. Yes, yes. But most of the time, Now, a lot of times we’re talking about the school incidents that police get involved. Yes. Police get involved. It’s an active fire situation. They neutralize the threat. And the threat is either neutralized or the person neutralizes themselves. And honestly… That’s what I was expecting when they started finding things in the woods that they were eventually going to find a body. What is unbelievable almost about this story is that the father convinced the son to drive in and turn himself in.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and of course, that is the news coming out this morning.
SPEAKER 02 :
There wasn’t more loss of life. There wasn’t some police raid. We didn’t have to have more blood spilled.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, this was from, again, President Trump announced this this morning. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Unprecedentedly. I mean, you don’t really see that that often. I was a person. early to get the kids ready for school and he’s on Fox and Prince on set.
SPEAKER 01 :
I thought this was going to be a call in situation. He’s on sex. He was there. He’s the Yankees game last night. Yes. And he says, Hey, we have him detained. And then shortly after that, all the details emerged. That’s right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. And once again, what we’ve also seen is kind of the ideology that was this because we had learned yesterday had found shell casings with with engravings on them. And what one of these other lessons that needs to be taken from this is I think the. The amount of disinformation that has spread so quickly with this one is way more than normal in a situation like this. And there was even people trying to say there were no markings. It was just the manufacturer of the ammunition and things of that. We actually learned what those were. Two of them I don’t know that are necessary to even read on air. One seemed almost like an online gaming troll to whoever may have found it. But the two that were curious was one said, hey, fascist, catch. as if catch the bullet effectively. And the other was the lyrics Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao, which comes from a resistance song from the communist Italian resistance in World War II that would sing this as a folk song against the Nazis and the fascists in Italy. So when you’re looking at motive here, One of the biggest prevailing motives here is that he was hearing that People that are of the MAGA movement, Charlie Kirk, President Trump, all of that rhetoric that they are Nazis, they are fascist, they are a threat to democracy is what was resonating with this individual that they had said had become increasingly political over the last few years. That’s from the family that he hadn’t before that he hadn’t voted in the last two elections, was not registered as a partisan in the state of Utah. It’s very interesting when you’re starting to see this and you’re also seeing that many on the left have not given up that line. They are still continuing to push that this is very fascist. Even in the recent weeks, the Trump administration are fascist. They are Nazis. And we’re hearing that over and over. That is what seems to be, at least from the little information we know, that was a motivating factor of this assassins.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, well, we always know that rhetoric is a motivating factor. I mean, when you demonize an opponent politically to the point of name-calling them maybe one of the worst, most disgusting, evil leaders in modern history, like if you’re Hitler… If you’re going to compare someone to Hitler, you’re basically giving people a green light. How many movies have been made where the positive part of the story are the people that are trying to kill Hitler? And they’re never the bad guys. Sometimes, fictionally, they succeed. If you try to make your fellow Americans who have a different political view than you… and are part of one of the two major, not fringe political parties, but are part of one of the two major political parties, if you demonized to that point, does everyone take that action that this individual did? No. But does it open the door to individuals who are already on the line and say, you know what, I’m going to save my country. And this is going to be some kind of patriotic act. That is how I’m sure they interpret it. And they are, again, using…
SPEAKER 01 :
they they’re using language it’s very dangerous very very very dangerous you would have learned by now that that is something that you shouldn’t be doing because this happens now this happened over and over again this is just the first time this has happened in a successful way if you say from the assassin’s point of view a lot of times these are thwarted or stopped or are you know in the president trump situation uh just slightly off these moments happen though where you do have to rethink it but i look at my I mean, everyone said this is kind of the great purge for a lot of people’s social media accounts because you look at your social media and you see sort of where people stand. Not necessarily where they all stand on… I saw some gross stuff. Saw some gross stuff. I saw gross stuff this morning.
SPEAKER 02 :
My friends I knew who were definitely on the more left side of politics, these were like lifelong friends.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, same.
SPEAKER 02 :
Who wrote things, I was, you know, I was…
SPEAKER 01 :
you should have just been quiet yeah no one’s asking you for your opinion i think that’s one of the weirdest things about all this is everyone expects on social media that you have to make a statement i for a while didn’t even say anything because i said i don’t know if people are coming to me at this point they can we can all uh you know you know this is an odd quote brandon lake said you got to go to god before you go to the gram and i felt like that was a good good way of putting it uh because that’s where a lot of people immediately jump to making some sort of big bold statement and whether it A lot of them. I mean, I saw one today that was like, I’m still not going to be mad for someone. It’s like, what if this was, I mean, his parents can’t be that old. He was raised in a moderate household. You know, this is not a guy who was, you know, what if your son becomes, you know, if you’re a leftist right now and you’re raising your children, you know, what if your son becomes the Alex B. Keaton, becomes the radical Republican? Do you think then there’s some sort of justification? No, of course not. But that is not what’s being taught now. It was being taught in the 80s, but certainly not what’s being taught now.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, and what’s also interesting, you talk about what has gone on on social media. President Trump said this morning he has not seen the assassination video. of charlie kirk because he did not want that to be the last image of charlie kirk that he has and i think that is powerful that’s important obviously he knew the details that was one of the uh the great tragedies i think of this entire thing is that uh normally the american people are shielded from seeing the worst of these tragedies when it was the outdoor event that was uh successful by the assassin uh and you were at an event that is very social media friendly something that people are constantly filming on their iphones that have incredible 4k cameras with great chips and sensors like something we’ve never seen before and they’re right up close then unfortunately this is the bruder film One of the worst things you’ve ever seen. Exactly. There’s a Bruder film. It’s not that. Which is still horrifying, by the way.
SPEAKER 01 :
That was shot on film.
SPEAKER 04 :
And the fact that now that is in the American collective consciousness. That’s another tragedy of this whole thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
It really is. And I think a lot of people, even before there was announced, we’re seeing that footage even unknowingly. I’ve tried to tell my children, if you start seeing any imagery like this, get off of it as soon as you can, because this is something that was going to stick with you. And he said, you do have that feeling, you know, a lot of these tragedies when people die very young or have this, you have that, that image of the president Trump’s right. You have the image of a, of thinking about a lot of the celebrities who die in their twenties and thirties, and they’re kind of stuck in your head in that moment. And, and, It’s just horrible. We’re going to take some calls coming up. I do want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, we’re going to continue this conversation. There is some updates, though, in the world of the ACLJ. We’re going to get to that as well. I can’t let these days all go by without telling you some of the great work that we’re doing here because this is obviously on the top of everyone’s mind. Our legal team is still jumping in action right now. So right now, I’m going to encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. I want you to just play around in there. Just see what’s on there. Great free resources. If you’re looking for things to share, obviously this show. We do each and every day. There’s a lot of great blogs, stories, petitions, great ways to get involved and to take action in a safe way, in a way that is an American way. And do that today. Go take a look at what we’re doing there. Again, phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. That is at 1-800-684-3110. We are monitoring any other news that may be coming in. But as we said, I know a lot of you are just joining us right now. At least one moment right now we can at least say is that the shooter, the suspected shooter, has been detained, has been arrested. And at least we can have that sigh of relief for a moment to know this isn’t an act of manhunt on the streets right now. So still say a prayer, obviously, for everyone involved and everyone’s families. And I’ve heard from a lot of you. I’ve tried to get back to as many of you as I can personally and professionally and know that we are all grieving this. We are all thinking about this. It’s obviously what we’re talking about the most. And we’ll continue to broadcast here. We’ll be back in just a minute. Welcome back to Secular. We are going to take your phone calls. We’ve got four or five lines now opened up at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, reporting on the breaking news that the alleged assassin has been detained and arrested in the Charlie Kirk assassination. Just horrible. We’ve talked about how horrible it is, but at least this is a move in the right direction. This person, presumably, is the person that’s off the streets, and it’s something we can at least know. have that part of this all settled. Uh, I did want to address some work of the ACLJ and what we’re doing, uh, well, because there is some big updates and I, I don’t want to make sure that, you know, as we, we spend this time in morning and we, we, we share our thoughts about this, that we know that the ACLJ team as much as they are as well, uh, the courts are still open. Things keep going and we have some, uh, big updates.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. Yesterday we mentioned that right before air, we got a victory for those, uh, street preachers in Chicago that we were defending in a criminal case, uh, that was supposed to be going to trial yesterday. But then later last night, uh, We were alerted by our legal team that there was a victory out of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, this is obviously an ongoing thing. This isn’t the end of it, but this is a major first step victory in the Planned Parenthood defunding fight. And if you’ll remember, there were several different cases that started all based in the First Circuit. But there was the Massachusetts case where Planned Parenthood filed. And then there was the case in Maine. This is dealing with the Planned Parenthood case specifically. And they had secured two preliminary injunctions from the district court, Jordan. One, excuse me. One was for the… I’ll take it.
SPEAKER 02 :
One is for the nationwide issue of all of the Planned Parenthood affiliates. So any Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country. So they sought one of those nationwide injunctions, but they put in a second injunction request just for Massachusetts. And so they were kind of saying, let’s play both of our cards. And they won both at the district court. But they have lost now at the circuit court. The circuit court has put a stay on those injunctions. So what does that mean? The defunding of Planned Parenthood can begin in the first circuit. And it also can begin in the entire country. That district court is not going to be able to prevent that. Now, could this be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court? Absolutely. And it might be being appealed as we speak. But what this means is that, again, the attempt to stop the big, beautiful bills, defunding of Planned Parenthood and abortion providers through Medicaid for a year now goes into effect, not just in Massachusetts. but in the entire country. It also, in this order from the court, I think this is just something I just wanted to read, is the separate motions by the state of Louisiana and the American Center for Law and Justice for leave to file an amicus brief are also granted and the briefs are accepted for filing as of this date. So right there, it shows you that as an organization, who is at the front and center making sure this defunding of Planned Parenthood that we have talked about really since the beginning of talking about fighting against the abortion industry is that we’ve got to stop the federal money that goes to them, the half a billion dollars a year. You read, the ACLJ is front and center in this two-page order fighting these battles wherever they need to be fought because of your support.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, we need to understand and not just brush aside when these victories happen because it’s easy to go on with your day. We’ve always talked about, okay, once the victory comes in, we move on to the next one, to the next case. But it’s also important to make sure that our team is celebrated, that they know that their work has gone noticed, that people like you understand the victories that are had here before we move on to the next thing we have to do because, look, there always is that next one. That next one is probably already in place right now where there are dozens of cases going on always at one time. So make sure we do spare those little moments here to just say congratulations that these are some successful days.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s right. And I think we also should remind people that the way it was put and the way we got it through in the Big Beautiful Bill, it only being that one year for now, it’s one of those things that you can, once you get it forward… hopefully you can continue on in perpetuity but that was that’s i mean it was a big lift to get it there right now if these preliminary injunctions had stayed in place planned parenthood would continue to get their money as of right now we know that it’s still a fight and we will continue that battle but as of right now by staying those preliminary injunctions they will not be receiving federal dollars that’s right
SPEAKER 02 :
And so that is to the tune of about half a billion dollars a year. Half a billion dollars a year. I just want you to understand the significance here. And they tried to play it both ways here and say, we just wanted Massachusetts, but we also wanted it nationwide because it affects everyone. They got the yes from the district court, but they got no from the circuit court. Will they appeal to the Supreme Court? Likely. But I just want you to understand what Will just said is, as of right now, that money can stop. And it can stop in the entire country, all 50 states. If you’re an abortion provider, you don’t get these Medicaid reimbursements right now. And yes, if we can get this into action and show that it doesn’t destroy women’s health or community health centers, we can then get this into the next spending bill and extend it maybe two years and maybe by five years so that we don’t have to have the battle every single year. But as you said, we had enough pro-life members of Congress in the United States Senate who are worth taking this down to J.D. Vance, the vice president, having to come in and cast the 51st vote. That’s how important this issue is to these elected officials. And it is because they’ve grown up, too, in a pro-life movement that it felt almost like impossible to get these victories. Like, overturning Roe versus Wade and defunding Planned Parenthood. You know what? It’s worth it to go make the trip from the vice president’s office or residence or your office at the White House to the Capitol to cast that 51st vote to defund Planned Parenthood when you have been in those battles your entire political life.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, and that’s the work of the ACLJ in action. We’re always at it. I want you to go to ACLJ.org, spend some time there. Hey, as we head into the second half hour of the broadcast, I want to play you a clip from a brand new song that came out today from our friend Matt Hammett. Matt sent me this song a few weeks ago, actually, and it was supposed to come out today, and I don’t think there could be a more timely moment. for this so i want you to kind of take this song in there’s just gonna be a clip of it share it with your friends go look it up it’s called day’s god gave of course it’s speaking to um really a lot of us right now and i think in this moment when we are filled with a lot of of heaviness that’s going on in this world uh it’s an important one so i wouldn’t share this with you on this kind of day if i didn’t think so and of course i’ll tell you right we’re back how you’re gonna get it and to stay tuned in the next half hour so let’s take a listen to our friend matt hammett’s song day’s god gave
SPEAKER 08 :
Hold on to these moments They’re flying by so fast Take the time with the ones you love Like a chance you can’t get back Make a million memories So when you’re old and gray All the faces in those photographs Smile back at you and say You didn’t let the days guide you Don’t let the bad times own you. Steal down the fears you gotta face. Moments, they’re flying by so fast Take the time with the ones you love Like a chance you can’t get back Make a million memories So when you’re old and gray All the faces in those photographs Smile back at you and say You didn’t let the days guide you
SPEAKER 01 :
And that, again, was our friend Matt Hammond, who’s been a friend of ours for over 20 years. And he sent me this song a few weeks ago. And then, of course, we’ve been talking today about how important it is to remember that. We never know. You never know what tomorrow may hold. And I’m going to encourage you. That song is available now on all your streaming services. Look up Matt’s song, Days God Gave. Look, we have a second half hour coming up. I want you to join us. It’s at ACLJ.org or on YouTube. We’ll be right back in less than a minute. keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever this is seculo and now your host logan seculo welcome back to seculo jordan seculo and will haynes in studio with me of course we are taking calls and comments at 1-800-684-3110 and reporting on the news that the alleged assailant of charlie kirk has been Um, arrested, detained, and now at least we can hopefully put that piece of this sort of manhunt puzzle, uh, uh, make a complete move on. Um, that’s a Tyler Robinson. I want to keep saying all this information about him, but I think you probably would want to know, uh, age 22 from Utah, uh, someone who had been speaking previously, uh, negatively about Charlie to his friends and family. Of course, I don’t know if it had gotten to this level, they thought. So much so that his father, who was a decades-long law enforcement officer, is the one who drove him in to turn himself in. And again, that is the breaking news coming out this morning. President Trump broke that news this morning on Fox & Friends. Again, kind of an unprecedented moment. We see these kind of things happen very differently with President Trump, but also very differently in this time. Because as we’ve talked about, we talked about yesterday, this is This is the first true successful political assassination of our lifetime for many of us that are in our 40s. And that’s pretty wild. We’ve grown up in an era that has been, of course, there are some that have happened, but politically motivated like this, of this prominent of a figure. And we’ve seen the ripple effects of that nationwide and probably worldwide.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and unfortunately, you know, I was having a conversation, we don’t want this to be the norm in America, because unfortunately, in many countries, this kind of violence, in countries that do have democratic, you know, republic systems of government, Pretty common that politicians get killed and political actors get assassinated. I killed is the wrong word. I mean, they are killed, but assassinated when they are speaking at large groups. And so that to even get in that process, but in most of those places, it’s because they are willing to take on organized crime. They’re willing to take on cartels. It’s not because of their views on abortion. or their views on defining if you’re a man or a woman. That’s not why that kind of violence is happening in those countries. So I think when you can’t have a political, even heated political debate in our country without the fear of violence, you’ve got to correct that very quickly. very, very quickly. Because one, people will always have opinions. You don’t want a numb population that has no opinion that doesn’t hold the government account. There’s always two sides to an issue or more. And You know, as he was 31 years old, you’re working these things out with young people as they are becoming adults, trying to figure out how do we live in this, in their new world. That’s what I was always saying. We all go through these experiences. That’s who he was talking to. It wasn’t talking to… Even though he had a lot of older supporters.
SPEAKER 01 :
I see a lot of times people said that I never even heard of him. These people that watch our show every day. And that would shock me. But if you look at it, that’s probably true. Because again, he was reaching specifically younger people. I went to an event a number of years ago. And actually, I guess probably two or three years ago now with Charlie. And he spoke. And I said, man, I actually look forward to hearing him speak as someone in his 40s. someone who has lived a little bit more life, and to see where his views are. Because, again, he at this point was in his late 20s, very new father, had a lot of points of view, was very loud and passionate, as we know. But as we also know, any of us that have had kids and had that experience, that changes you as well. So what would that have looked like? Sadly, we’ll never get to know. We’ll never get to know what that 30-40-year-old version of Charlie Kirk would look like. And look, a lot of people put him in line as someone who would potentially be making a presidential run in his lifetime. That wasn’t something joked about. That was something… Highly considered because, of course, he was able to rally a large group of people. We were at that event, Will, and I remember it was either right after President Trump announced or he may not have even announced yet that he was running for this last term. And he said, I fully support him. I’m getting behind him. He’s the only person that can win. And here’s why. And I think even us in that room were like, well, there’s going to be a dozen people that are going to be running. We’ll see where we get there. And he was so set on it. And obviously he ended up being correct.
SPEAKER 02 :
He also, he created the largest conservative political movement in our history outside the RNC itself of young people. Yeah. For conservative, for a conservative movement.
SPEAKER 01 :
Inspired by the Tea Party and then created it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And it was just coming into its real full function today.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s adulthood, if you will. Yes. Yeah. All right. Hey, we’ll be right back in just a minute here. We do have four lines open. If you’re on hold, we’re going to get to you. 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. We are going to take some of your phone calls and comments coming up. Will, where do you want to go from here?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, there was one thing I wanted to talk with Jordan about before we even get to these phone calls. But 1-800-684-3110 if you want to be on the air.
SPEAKER 01 :
We teased phone calls.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s on me this time, Pat. It’s not on Logan. Even though Pat did say he really likes your beard the other day. I know, it was well-groomed. It was very nice. But Jordan, one of the interesting things here is Obviously, there’s a lot of questions people still have, and they will continue to have. The governor, I feel like, gave enough information to assure the public they are confident they have the right person. But there are many other questions. Even some of the details lead to more questions. Utah can hold someone for three days until a formal charge has to be submitted. The governor even alluded to that, that They’re going to make sure that charging document is well put together, that it isn’t just a rushed thing so that it doesn’t endanger their case at all. I feel like even the choice of having the governor make the statements as opposed to the law enforcement there was probably some sort of thought process of keeping the law enforcement out of it, knowing they are going to have to build this case against this individual. But even the charging document, I’m sure, will be out there once it is officially filed. But they are doing, I feel like, the right steps to preserve the integrity of this investigation and looking forward to getting a conviction against this individual.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, that’s right, because there’s going to be theories all over the place of, you know, how did the person get this? Did he get access to a place? Did someone give him access to that? Is that person part of it, or is that person just made a bad decision? Or was this someone who actually was able to plan this on their own and was, you know, again, some people are more familiar with firearms than others, and so it can be hard for people who aren’t as familiar with firearms to think about Doing something like this, even with the evil intent, and successfully carrying it out, if you want to use it that way, in that sick way. But again, so there’s got to be all these discussions. I think what the governor of Utah did was that, you know, we’ve got the guy. We now will look for, you know, did anybody help him in an illegal way? Is there, you know, other information? How did he get the access to the roof? Things like that that will have to come about. He also said we’re going to seek the death penalty. I mean, so he was very clear. Yes, the governor said that. And so that was very clear, too. So I think, again, having the state’s top executive leader, it’s kind of like having President Trump, our top executive, be on Fox and Friends this morning announcing it. Because this was not just a, of course, it was affecting this community in Utah that there was this person on the run. in their community, but it’s affecting the entire nation. I mean, I’ll even tell you, I have to kind of pump myself up to talk through this show right now. I think all of us, you can hear our voice. This is… Well, thankful it’s Friday at this point that we can… It’s tough to get through this without… You see these kids in the music video that we play. I mean, you think about Charlie’s kids who are three and one. Yes, you get those – you can’t even comprehend it. You can’t explain it into words. And you look to his faith. We know he was a person of strong faith, even was starting to talk about that a lot more. There was a faith aspect of Turning Point that was launched. And, again, I just think for Utah – I think the governor’s done a great job so far, and the fact that this isn’t going into the weekend with someone on the loose also allows people to remember Charlie instead of we’ve got a gunman on the loose.
SPEAKER 04 :
One other angle to this as well is obviously it appears, at least at this stage of it, that this will be the state’s investigation in case, that this will be handled within Utah’s court system. It does look like that.
SPEAKER 02 :
The FBI was obviously involved. Kash Patel was there. He did not speak in a lot of these. He was letting the state kind of take the lead. Oftentimes, there could be federal charges that would apply, but with a state that’s got the death penalty, you weigh whether or not that’s necessary or not. So we can see how all that is, like you said, they’ve got three days. I’m not even sure I have to look under their system. The weekend might not count. So the three days might only be today, and the second day might not be until Monday. So we have to look at that. So I think you’ll see charging documents sometime early next week. Monday would be the earliest if they count the weekend dates. A lot of courts don’t, even if you’re being held in prison, incarcerated. So it could be midweek. But I think, again, this allows people after today and this news is out to shift back to remembering the loss. And the rhetoric that we’ve got to change. That doesn’t mean we can’t be tough. I don’t want people to take that. I don’t think Charlie Kirk would say, you know, don’t fight for what you believe in. No we’re not gonna no it’s it’s you don’t you don’t use war language and Nazi language against fellow Americans who are running in the electoral process.
SPEAKER 01 :
I want to take a call let’s start off line one at least Dinah on line one in Colorado go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes thank you I think Charlie would forgive Tyler And Charlie would not want Tyler to spend eternity in hell. We, as Bible Trinity believing Christians, should forgive Tyler and pray that Tyler surrenders his life and declares Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He still needs to die for his crime because that is biblical, Exodus 20. And then as a heart-filled Christian, upon death, Tyler would enter heaven. This would bring Jesus and Charlie together. So much joy to have one more sinner repent and become a Christian and spend eternity in heaven.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, and I think to your point as well, the governor actually used the words of Charlie Kirk during that press conference towards the end of it, which I thought was a really powerful moment. And I think we should play that for folks right now. This is Biden 11. This is Governor Cox from Utah using the words of Charlie Kirk to let people know, hey, remember that This was an individual that did a horrible thing, but don’t take this beyond that. Let justice be served, but not trying to, he was trying to deescalate the rhetoric that we are seeing in many places and the anger that we’re seeing. But let’s play bite 11 from the governor this morning.
SPEAKER 06 :
Charlie said, when people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. He said, the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. Welcome without judgment, love without condition, forgive without limit. He said, always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I think to that point, that’s what you were saying, Jordan. That’s what our caller was saying as well. That faith aspect of Charlie Kirk, he was someone that was polarizing, obviously. He was strong in his views.
SPEAKER 02 :
I kind of have not wanted to focus on that in these past few days. And I think… I’m glad the governor read that out that, uh, again, this idea of, listen, it’s tough to talk about forgiveness after what you just saw. And I understand that everyone understands that, but I do understand what the caller said too, which is, um, um, the end of the day, this is what Christians are called to do. It does not mean the person doesn’t face the punishment, uh, that comes with, uh, the wrong and the crime, uh, the horrendous crime that they’ve committed. Uh, but I think that dialogue, This is pretty recent that you can’t have even a heated argument with a friend about politics and then move on to go see a movie together or talk about music or just go hang out. The politics didn’t define your entire relationship with people you know and with people you were going to meet. I will tell you right now, unless someone is totally apolitical, and there are some people that still are, if they are political, it is defined. There are not a lot of new friendships right now of people who are, occasionally, there are some, but most of those predate this political time period.
SPEAKER 01 :
Or it feels that way and then it’ll build to some sort of fracture.
SPEAKER 02 :
it’s unfortunate I mean it shouldn’t be that way and hopefully we can get back to a place like if anything he was trying to show that you could do that on a college campus have those discussions and still all be a united college campus with disagreements that were very strong and with different opinions and with colleges that would bring him and welcome him and it was a different I think it’s important to point out too this was not a student
SPEAKER 01 :
At the college. No, I think they were saying student age, and of course that ended up being really accurate, you know, a 20-year-old.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, but, you know, again, this was not… Someone knew he was coming to town. Right, right. And had been, as his family said, in the last year kind of radicalized politically. And that’s when law enforcement will do its job to see…
SPEAKER 01 :
self-radicalized other people encouraging this i mean you see the rhetoric that gets on social media it’s disgusting yeah i mean the problem is we had about it’s not unlike looking at the israel situation it’s like you’re gonna have 48 hours of people maybe are gonna shut up and listen to what’s actually happening then sadly the political bias is just gonna creep and creep and creep in the cracks hopefully there’s enough good people uh who can go in and stop that but you know It doesn’t feel that way because, again, what we’re seeing. Again, I feel like the celebrities, all your late night talk show hosts, all the people who probably went after Charlie the most are the ones saying, you know, we can’t have this. This is horrible. This is horrendous. But all the people they inspired are the ones who are your probably your friends and family who are out there saying things that are. Just horrific. So let’s keep track on that. All right. With that, we’re going to come back. We have one more segment for today. And I’d like to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Of course, you heard about the good work of the ACLJ. You can find out more at ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back with your calls and comments coming right up. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to take your phone calls now. A lot of you have questions. 1-800-684-3110. Still got two lines open. We’ll do our best to get to as many of these as we can. Let’s kick it off with Kelly in California, who’s got a question. Listen on the radio. So, Kelly, go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, great. I was just curious, under what circumstances would a case like this be moved to the DOJ versus Dane?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, so federal court, so like a superseding. If it involved multiple states, it involved federal officials. That isn’t the case here. And I will say, and Will and I were just discussing this and your question, Kelly, in cases of kind of I don’t want to call this ordinary crime, but the crimes of murder, the crimes that you see on your local news, states are actually and state court systems and state laws are much better set up to try those than the federal court system. The federal system is really when it has that federal element. Now, we don’t know everything here. So remember, I’m talking on just the basics of what we know. And as of right now, I think that’s why you’ve seen the governor and state officials in Utah take the lead in talking about the charging documents. This happened at a state university. It happened against an individual. He was not a federal official. They were not federal. Law enforcement weren’t on this. They were on the scene after the fact, but they weren’t involved in securing Charlie Kirk. And so that, again… Are there federal crimes here? Likely, yes. But will they be as serious as the crimes the state will charge? Not likely. And when you have the charges facing the death penalty…
SPEAKER 04 :
No, no. Well, and to that point as well, many times- Based off what we know now. If it were in a state that had the system may not be as harsh on offenders- Right. Then the federal system- That’s a good point. what federal charges could be brought because the federal government, as we have heard, that they are pursuing the death penalty in Utah. Pam Bondi had reinstated that for the federal government, which is a different discussion. But if there was that kind of conflict and the federal government wanted to pursue something, it could be Utah. Already, the probable cause affidavit has come out. And so this isn’t the charging document, but this is where they’re getting probable cause for an arrest and to be able to maintain the incarceration of this individual while they get that charging document forward. And there’s already three offenses which are listed on that. Now, the state could determine there are more that have been broken when they bring forward an actual charging document. Aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm, obstruction of justice, capital first degree felony conduct. Those are specific state statutes. And the state is going to have a lot more of those that could apply here than would apply to an individual on a federal level.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Usually, again, a federal court system would involve federal officials, individuals, law enforcement, interstate kind of criminal activity. We don’t have any of those facts right now. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t exist. It doesn’t mean the federal government couldn’t bring charges because of gun rights, all those kind of laws. But at the end of the day, the toughest charges here are going to come likely from Utah. And as you just read through, I mean, felony murder is as tough as it gets.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to continue to take some more phone calls. This is probably the last chance to call in for the week. 1-800-684-3110. Can we check to see if we have Jared? Is Jared online? We haven’t cleared him yet, but are we good to go? He’s not clear yet? Okay, all right. We’ll take some calls here in just a minute. We’re still going through some of our lines right now. I do want to encourage you, by the way, as we head into the weekend, to think about, pray about, and look at the work that we’re doing here at the ACLJ. I know we’ve spent a lot of times, as appropriate today, talking about the news of the world and how emotional that can be and how… Everything has been dramatic the last two days. I know you’ve heard probably from a lot of friends and family, but again, the work doesn’t slow down for us, so I encourage you to take a look at that. All right, let’s go to Jared, who’s calling now in Texas on line three. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, guys. I just wanted to talk to you about, you mentioned a comment about the rhetoric that you were hearing about how one side is calling a bunch of people Nazis and fascists. And while I agree that that’s very harsh language that escalates You also have to look at the other side. If we’re going to get to a point where we’re trying to deescalate and come to unified peace, you can’t have one side calling people fascist and racist and the other side saying, well, black people shouldn’t have rights and gay people this and transgender people this. I saw a lot of comments on Twitter the other day when they thought the shooter was a Democrat or a liberal. A lot of people were going, this is war. I don’t trust any Democrats anymore. Meanwhile, you have a whole bunch of liberal Democratic politicians.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m going to jump in here right real quick because he was politically motivated from the left. So that’s not inaccurate to say. He might not be a traditional Democrat because he seems like someone who wasn’t a voter, but definitely a politically motivated assassination from the left. And the rhetoric that you just threw out there, I have not heard Charlie Kirk use about racial rhetoric and things like this. I think, again, you could talk about… improvements in uh in the community he talked about having you know having the importance of a father and a mother and how in the in the african-american community too much in our urban communities that’s not the case and it leads to uh you can do the statistics on it that’s not racist that’s just having discussions about someone shouldn’t have rights right the things that i think a lot of people saw previously i would maybe put myself in that a lot of times
SPEAKER 01 :
were clips and clips that were maybe out of context or in context but were not fully explaining what he was trying to say or what he was doing look he said some things that were going to rile people up when you talk all the time about controversial issues it’s easy to clip out misstatements or things that don’t sound quite great you know standing alone Yeah, right. Out of the 90 minutes. But look, I mean, do I think that we need to calm down rhetoric in general? I think that, yeah, I think that would be a good place to go. Do I think that that’s going to happen anytime soon? Sadly, I don’t because I don’t feel like when there are moments of unification, that seems to change.
SPEAKER 04 :
To that caller’s point, the New York Times had to issue a correction because in their story, they said, Charlie Kirk has used anti-Semitic rhetoric. And then their correction was, We regret that this error happened. We saw a clip. He was reading an anti-Semitic quote that he was condemning.
SPEAKER 01 :
Of any of the people, I will say, look, you can defend or not defend the man for whatever. The guy was about as pro-Israel as anyone else. in the conservative movement. In fact, I saw a clip that again, we’re trying to take out of context saying that just a few days ago, he was saying, you need to question the media’s narrative on Israel. But what was clear, what he was saying was because the media is presenting a version, he goes, you’ve questioned it on all these other things and actually was calling out people on the right who were not, who are now just taking, uh, the point of view of CNN or MSNBC saying you need to do that. So there was probably no one. I think, uh, Benjamin Netanyahu has come out and said that a lot of people saying there was no one stronger on their support of Israel. Um, than Charlie Kirk in that movement so I think that that’s a ridiculous statement uh look we only got a minute left um it’s been a heavy week I think we all can say this I hope you all can can have a weekend to obviously as Jordan said we’re going to remember the legacy here and have a little bit of closure knowing that this gunman this assassin uh has been caught and captured detained and we can at least know that this is not going to be that moment as you move towards what will surely be a momentous week of tributes and funeral services and everything that will probably be going on I do want to encourage you to try to spend time with your family this weekend I played you that song go listen to that song send that to your friends Matt Hammett’s new song Again, we have no skin in that game other than the fact that I believe it’s a beautiful song and it couldn’t have come out at a more appropriate time. That song called Days God Gave. Support the work of the ACLJ if you can. That’s at ACLJ.org. Of course, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the work of the ACLJ. You’ve heard about a segment a day the last few days, which is unusual. But obviously, in certain circumstances, it is what it is. Look at the incredible work we’re doing. Look at the incredible team that we have put in place. None of that happens without you. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org as we try to return to our regular programming next week. It’s going to be still tough. We’re still going to be covering the news of this. But again, we hope you have a great weekend. Pray for your friends. Pray for your family. Pray for Charlie’s family. And we’ll talk to you next week.
