President Abraham Lincoln often receives credit for conducting the presidential election of 1864 in the middle of the Civil War. One forgets, however, that the Confederates who refused to honor the 1860 election’s results had already left the Union.
In like manner, some well-meaning Americans have desperately sought a peaceful way forward in the wake of conservative icon Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week in Utah. But the vile leftists whose slanderous rhetoric inspired Kirk’s alleged assassin remain unrepentant. How, then, does one share a country with such people?
Friday in the House of Representatives, unrepentant Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, commonly known as AOC, slandered Kirk’s memory by repeating several ubiquitous lies about him and using those lies as an excuse for her vote against a resolution honoring Kirk’s life and legacy.
AOC began by insisting that the House should have issued a generic condemnation of Kirk’s murder and political violence.
“Instead,” she said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, “the majority proceeded with a resolution that brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of bigotry today.”
“We should be clear,” she continued, “about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake, who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that ‘some amazing patriot’ should bail out his brutal assailant.”
Never mind that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not grant anyone the right to vote. The 15th and 19th Amendments did that. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 put some teeth behind the 15th Amendment, which southern states had largely ignored for a century. But let us not tax AOC’s feeble mind with actual history.
Moments later, she added to the slander.
“His rhetoric and beliefs,” she said, “were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans, far from the ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ asserted by the majority in this resolution.”
.@RepAOC @AOC on House-passed resolution honoring the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk: “Instead of uniting Congress in this tragedy with one of the many bipartisan options to condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder, as we did with the late Melissa Hortman, instead the… pic.twitter.com/lkx3JGO1gN
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 19, 2025
Meanwhile, X users have produced multiple videos debunking the reckless slanders perpetuated by AOC and others. Readers may view those videos below.
Charlie Kirk was not a racist. Please watch this video to understand Charlie Kirk’s true stance on the Civil Rights Act.
Instead of relying on half-truths from others, watch videos of Charlie Kirk and pay close attention to his words.
Do you agree with Charlie? pic.twitter.com/T7slolaYrX
— ❥❥❥ᗰoᒪᒪie❥❥❥ (@mollie_don) September 18, 2025
This is another widespread, totally taken out of context Charlie Kirk clip. The video is cut from Charlie’s live stream video on October 31, 2022. The clip is from 53:30–53:52, only 22 seconds long. It was used to accuse Charlie of mocking the attack on Paul Pelosi (Nancy… pic.twitter.com/RU1RX5JPSr
— Michelle🇨🇦 (@MichelleChenCa) September 14, 2025
Conservative X users’ reactions to AOC’s speech have come fast, furious, and without exaggeration.
For instance, Gunther Eagleman, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump and an influencer with more than 1.5 million followers, rightly declared that the speech will “make your blood boil.”
BREAKING: AOC just took to the House floor to defend her No vote on the Resolution honoring the life of Charlie Kirk.
This is going to make your blood boil.
AOC: “We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was… His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to… pic.twitter.com/MMjecCmyk5
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) September 19, 2025
Likewise, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote that we have “no way forward with these people.”
AOC is trashing Charlie Kirk right now on the House floor.
She is lying about him and again repeating the same vile garbage at the same time claiming to pray for his family and denouncing his assassination.
There is no way forward with these people.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 19, 2025
Did Greene have it right? Do we really have “no way forward with these people”?
Well, consider that 58 Democrats voted against the resolution. Those Democrats remain our fellow citizens.
Consider, too, that the thousands of leftists who celebrated Kirk’s murder online and elsewhere also remain our fellow citizens.
Should Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be censured?
AOC herself remains a fellow citizen, as does former President Barack Obama, former late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and other leftists who have slandered Kirk and his supporters.
Kirk tried to talk to “these people,” to have conversations with them. But their collective reaction to his murder suggests that they have no interest in talking, only in lying about him.
In other words, “these people,” much like the Confederates, have spiritually left the Union. The question now is how to coexist with them while they physically remain. After all, they have abandoned the honest discourse that makes politics possible.
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