Hi everyone,
Last night in DC, I attended a prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk. The outpouring of support was tremendous, with the line to get in snaking around the block outside the Kennedy Center. The vigil was organized within just 48 hours and still there were 85 members of Congress, dozens from the White House administration, and hundreds of mourners who came together to sing praise, pray, and listen to reminiscences about the man that everyone felt they knew so well, even if they'd never met him. A large memorial will be held in Arizona next weekend.
While there were many speakers, what stood out to me were those from two former liberals, Tulsi Gabbard, who changed her voter registration in 2022—right before I did, and RFK Jr. Gabbard spoke about the need for courage in the face of the attack on Charlie, which she framed as a kind of terrorism. And indeed, in the wake of his killing, there have been additional threats on other prominent people who are heterodox to liberalism.
"We cannot allow ourselves to be terrorized into silence," DNI Tulsi Gabbard said. "We need to live Charlie Kirk's example, the example that he set, that are captured by the words of Reverend Martin Luther King, Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. This was more than a quote from an icon in our past to Charlie. He lived this every day, and he inspired countless people around the world to do the same."
Kennedy spoke about Charlie's commitment to our constitutional, God-given rights. After saying that Charlie was "the primary architect of my unification with President Trump," he said "the overarching mission of Charlie Kirk was Jesus, but also free speech, and he saw them as intertwined."
"He thought conversation was the only way we were going to heal our country," Kennedy said. "We had to learn to talk to each other without vitriol, without poison, without anger, we had to be able to listen to ideas, able to say what we mean without being mean, and to talk to each other across this divide is the only way."
He went on to say that he and Charlie "talked about the fact that our founders put freedom of speech in the First Amendment, because all the other rights are dependent on it, a government that can silence its opponents has license for any kind of atrocity. We were specifically talking about what happened during the pandemic: once the government figured out that we would put up with the censorship, and it went after the entire constitution."
"Charlie more than any figure in our country, led the resistance that has restored freedom of speech for this country," Kennedy said.
There's a great deal that has been learned about Charlie's killer, the 22-year-old leftist from a conservative, Utah family who was living with a roommate/boyfriend who was transitioning from male to female. He was identified from the video by his father who urged him to turn himself in peacefully to the police. He joked about the killing to friends in a Discord group moments after they, too, identified him from the footage the FBI released. The roommate-boyfriend person is reportedly talking to authorities.
Widow Erika Kirk spoke out Friday night and her remarks were all the things: at once devastating, tragic, gut-wrenching, but steadfast, too, courageous, and vowing to press on with her husband's mission.