Please note: The posts we had scheduled for today have been rescheduled for tomorrow. Today, we will only focus on our late Salem colleague Charlie Kirk.
As everyone is now aware, an assassin killed our colleague Charlie Kirk earlier today while he met and engaged with young men and women to exchange and debate ideas and issues. The assassin’s bullet ended the life of a 31-year-old husband, father, and radio host whose entire life was oriented toward communication and shrinking the separation between fellow Americans.
At the moment, we still don’t know the identity and specific motive of the assassin. That hasn’t stopped some from using his murder to beat their own drums and exploit the tragedy for their own ends. That’s not true of all those who opposed Charlie’s politics, of course. For instance, Gavin Newsom — who had Charlie on one of his first podcasts –put out a clear, firm statement that Newsom’s colleagues probably should have just copied and pasted:
The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 10, 2025
Kudos to Newsom. That’s all that needs to be said today.
Unfortunately, we also have this statement from fellow Democrat J.B. Pritzker. The governor of Illinois doesn’t know Charlie, doesn’t know the shooter, doesn’t know the motive, but he’s pretty certain he can blame … Donald Trump:
JB Pritzker just blamed Charlie Kirk being shot in Utah on President Trump and January 6th.
Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/7MDmvPq66q
— David Santa Carla 🦇 (@TheOnlyDSC) September 10, 2025
F*** right off with that, pal. Yes, the January 6, 2021 riot was awful, and it shouldn’t have happened. However, Pritzker seems to forget the entire summer of political violence that swept the nation in 2020, in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Portland, New York City, and so on. The Minneapolis shooting last month that he references was not motivated by conservative activism, and its victims were children in a church that the radical trans perp hated.
This is especially absurd considering the victim, but also the event. Charlie was engaging people, opening conversations, not just delivering stemwinders from the dais. And even if he was, Charlie offered words, not bullets or knives. Charlie was welcoming words in response so that engagement could occur, and so that we could get to know each other better and put aside hatred and violence. Pritzker is so far up his own backside that he couldn’t have even a moment of grace to recognize that.
To the extent one can be gracious about politicos who engage in this exploitation, perhaps Pritzker just felt the impulse to stuff his face with words rather than engage his brain, or more accurately, his heart. What might help with that? Perhaps taking a moment to pray, as Dan McLaughlin wrote today at NRO:
It’s become fashionable on the political left to mock people who turn first to prayer in the instant aftermath of such things. But as people are calling on social media now for prayers for Charlie Kirk and his family after he appears to have been shot in an assassination attempt, we’re reminded of two perfectly sound and related reasons why we pray first, even above and beyond the reasons why prayer in general is both virtuous and comforting. One is that, of course, our second instinct in these situations — second only to ending an ongoing threat — is to think of the victims who are suffering. In Kirk’s case, as is often the case, that includes the fact that people seeing this event don’t immediately know if he’s going to make it or, if so, in what condition. First things first.
The related reason is that Do something should not be our very first response before we even know all the facts.
There’s another reason we pray first. It forms us to the Lord, and connects our hearts to Him and to others. It recognizes our limitations in moments of crisis, perhaps most especially our humility and lack of omnipotence. Taking a moment to pray — or for those without religion, to meditate and reflect — puts us back in our humanity and prevents us from attempting to manipulate reality for our own selfish purposes, even if just for a short while.
I’ll have more on prayer later tonight, I think. In the meantime, perhaps Pritzker should be reminded that it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
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