Why is Charlie Kirk now being hailed a "martyr"?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast. We're going to play you the last conversation that Charlie Kirk ever had. It was on the campus of Utah Valley University, seconds before he was shot dead. He was talking about gun crime, specifically what he called transgender mass shooters. We're not going to play you the moment it happened. So do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years? Too many.

0:35There is five. Now five is a lot, right? I'm going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years? Counting or not counting gang violence. Charlie Kirk was one of the most important figures in MAGA world. His murder has enraged President Trump and many of his followers, some of whom are even now talking about civil war. How dangerous a moment is this for American politics and what happens to MAGA now? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:11The News Agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And we're going to start by setting out exactly what happened last night and telling you a little bit about Charlie Kirk. If you don't know him or are only just familiar with the name, that may not be a surprise because he hasn't hit these shores in the same way that he has dominated the airwaves in America. but he was essentially an evangelist. He was a right-wing activist with some hugely provocative views but he took his message to huge crowds, huge campuses and in many ways he's credited with bringing the youth voters to Trump. His show, his daily podcast gets around half a million daily downloads and he started this group, this sort of wing called Turning Point USA.

1:58It is the preeminent conservative youth organization. And he basically went around America, went around colleges. He got 850 colleges to register students to vote, which is why the message from Trump today acknowledges just how important he probably was to putting Trump in the White House. and last night he came to the campus of Utah Valley and he was speaking to around 3 ,000 students. I say last night, UK time, it was in the afternoon, in America. It was outdoors and he had his own security team around him but from the reports we were getting, there were no police, there were no checks, there were no bag checks at all and he was sitting in a kind of open gazebo tent having this chat surrounded by students who wanted to come and hear him and his whole shtick is debating.

2:54He has a sort of tagline, which is prove me wrong. In other words, he's very open to debate. He's pretty well informed. He sits there and he wants to debate with students, with people. He wants to change your mind. That's why I say there's something of the sort of, you know, the new age evangelist in what he does. And seconds after that question he asked the crowd about transgender mass shootings, there was a pop and it killed him. It was one bullet that went straight to what we understand was the artery in his neck. And people in the crowd described the moment where they actually couldn't believe what they were seeing because it all seemed to happen so quickly from nowhere.

3:37There has been a hunt for the shooter. They arrested somebody but let them go. And the shooter, we think, was positioned on a roof, possibly some 200 yards away. I mean, it's not yet clear. There is basically a manhunt on for the person who killed Charlie Kirk now. We can't say for certain exactly why Kirk was murdered. Of course, given his profile, given how famous he was among, particularly among a sort of hyper-politicised part of the United States and to a lesser extent the UK and Europe as well. You'd have to probably guess or suppose that there were some political motive to it. We'll find that out.

4:15What hasn't stopped the fact that we can't know yet is there being a lot of speculation from a lot of politicians and political figures from President Trump down as to what the motives likely were. And this murder sent shockwaves through American politics, especially through the kind of MAGA universe ecosystem, as we've been saying. Kirk is a key, key figure in all of that. And President Trump went to the Oval Office yesterday to address the murder and give his view as to why he thinks Kirk has been killed. This is a dark moment for America. Charlie Kirk traveled the nation, joyfully engaging with everyone interested in good faith debate.

4:58His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense. On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace. It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

5:49This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today. And it must stop right now. I mean, we have to say that I don't think I've ever seen Trump so visibly upset. He looks in actual grief there. And that's a pretty good reason, which is that he saw Charlie almost as an extra son, you know, one of his own. And he felt not just that he was aligned politically with Charlie Kirk, but that he had been an enormous help to him to getting the youth vote to swing towards him. But what is fascinating about that speech, and we should say that there have been other speeches from former presidents, there have been tweets, I should say, from former presidents, which talk about the need to lower the tone, talk about the need to pull back from this very violent political rhetoric, talk about the tragedy of any death, any gun death and any young life lost.

6:47and Trump starts as if he's going down that route. And before you get two thirds of the way through, he's telling you that is all the fault of the radical left. And it is that extraordinary moment where I think he probably genuinely believes he is trying to find the bridge that covers this moment, you know, as he sees it, a tragedy for America. but he cannot help himself immediately going to one side and assuming it is all the fault of the radical left. And if we play you the Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace in another clip, you'll see that he is not alone. I'm going to say this. Democrats own what happened today.

7:33I am devastated. My kids have called panicking. They probably, all the kids of every conservative in the country call panicking. Just because you speak your mind on an issue doesn't mean you get shot. By that logic, do Republicans own the shooting of the two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota? Isn't this on both sides? Are you kidding me? No, I'm asking a serious question. We don't know what condition Charlie Kirk is in right now. Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck and you want to talk about Republicans right now? No. No, not at all. You said the Democrats have to own it too.

8:08No, this is on, Democrats own this. But isn't there a problem with political violence across the spectrum? Yeah, we're talking about Charlie Cook right now. That's the subject of this that we're talking about right now. Look, we should remind people just once again, Nancy Mace there talking about a leftist lunatic. We don't know who did it. We still don't know who did it. And I think that, I mean, look, Trump himself, I can understand, might have due cause to be angry about political violence. violence he of course himself only narrowly escaped the assassin's bullet during the 2024 presidential election that said what i think is pretty despicable is a lot of the reaction that we have seen from what you might say is the sort of MAGA universe the sort of online right not just in the us but in the uk from senior politicians i think who ought to know better for a start let's say what what trump has said he talks about political violence from the left political violence is not new in America, as we know.

9:01It has got a long standing strain within American politics. But if we're going to talk about political violence, we can see that the scourge of political violence, because it is a scourge, is manifesting itself and increasing in every direction. So for example, what we saw last year with Luigi Manzioni, with the assassination, the killing of the pharmaceutical executive last year, it's way too many people online on the left reveling in his death, suggesting that it was great, that it was some kind of great blow for social democracy? Absolutely. But what about, for example, when we saw Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro's house being broken into by, you could say, a lunatic on the right?

9:38What about when we saw Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, her husband, her husband being nearly killed by a right wing lunatic? We've seen in our own country what happened to Joe Cox. The list goes on and on and on. I don't recall seeing the opprobrium and the invective and the sense of indignation from many of these same voices who were speaking then. The truth of the matter is, is that the temperature keeps going up, keeps going up, keeps going up. And let's be honest, it is often Trump and the people around Trump who have been some of the primary protagonists of that story.

10:10Some of these people around me, look at what Steve Bannon said the last 24 hours. They're not talking about peace and love. Steve Bannon said, we have to have steely resolve. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are. Fox News host Jesse Waters has said that Kirk's death should be avenged. Trump gets hit in the ear Charlie Kirk gets shot dead think about it it's happening you've got trans shooters you've got riots in LA on and on it goes some of these people are like the arsonists who are complaining about the temperature of the building and ultimately there is a choice to be made in our politics about how we want to conduct it and whether or not we want to have a more civil discourse and let's be honest Trump and everyone around him do not want to have a civil discourse it is central to their politics the politics of aggression and division I'm not saying nothing can justify, nothing can justify what's happened to Kirk in any circumstances but this is a symptom of a much bigger malaise that goes way beyond the left.

11:03Maybe we should remind our listeners that Steve Bannon hosts a podcast most days of the week called The War Room. In other words there is something about the demeanour of many in MAGA which is always prepared for war and I think you're speaking to something that has become very apparent, which is they want to make Charlie Kirk a martyr. They want to make him the man who gave his life for his country. This is what Bannon said, you know, on the battlefield of political combat, they cut him down with an assassin's bullet. Again, we don't know who that they is. We don't know that it was somebody who stood against him for his views.

11:49I mean, it might have been, but we literally don't know. What we do know is that the rhetoric right now feels really uncomfortable. And I think it feels like people are trying to make this into something that has a tail, that actually has a wind behind it. And one of the weirdest things that I think, you know, I've heard from some of the vox pops on campus or from some of the commentators is Americans saying this is not who we are. I'm sorry. This is exactly who you are. You defend the right of Americans to own guns. You have the most toxic political environment in the world. You have big money, huge money, fermenting political unrest on digital platforms.

12:35And then you look surprised when people get shot in cold blood. This is a very personal tragedy for Charlie Kirk, his wife, Erica, their children. We do not know what the cause was. We do not know who was behind this. But we do know, I think, that this feels a really uncomfortable moment for some of those who are sort of salivating to make this into a combat issue. And that is literally calling for civil war, literally calling for civil war. And that is kind of the opposite of the effect that you'd ever want a gun death to have. MAGA Twitter right now is full of the same sort of line, which is a variation of we cannot coexist with the liberals.

13:13That's where the politics is moving to. And what is sort of particularly, I suppose, surprising on days like this, hypocrisy is always there. But it has been especially staggering to hear from. And again, this goes to British political figures as well and media commentators reacting to this. this talk that somehow there is a kind of uniquely toxic attitude towards political violence from the left and that all of these names that the left are attacking the right with nazi far right or whatever are having consequences all right i see so words do have consequences after all so there are limits there should be limits on free speech because the entire center of so much of the kind of new radical right thinking is to say there should be no limits on free speech words can't hurt you.

14:00After all, we've just heard over the last month or so, many of these same people defend Lucy Connolly, who quite literally called for asylum seekers hotels to be burnt down. And people saying that that was her right, that that was her freedom of speech. So again, there has to be, I mean, it's one or the other. Either there needs to be a recalibration overall in every side about the sort of language that we use, the invective that is used, the names that are called, or there is complete free speech. But what you can't do and you can't say is, we have the right to say whatever we want in the way that we want it, with the words that we want, with the insults that we want.

14:34You're a communist, you're far left, whatever it happens to be, Antifa, whatever. But you can shut up. Look, there has never not been hypocrisy on this issue, right? Whether it was Trump first time round. But it's particularly galling on a day like today. It is absolutely galling. But I'm going to remind our listeners of what happened in Charlottesville, in Virginia, when he talked about good people on both sides. The both sides he was talking about included neo-Nazis. I mean, actual new Nazis who were trying to stop demonstrators on the left and a woman got killed. Or when he said we're going to fight like hell.

15:05Right. This was before the insurrection on the Capitol. Now, many people there argued, well, a political fight's a political fight. And he just meant it rhetorically and all the rest of it. But people got killed because they didn't interpret his words metaphorically. They thought he meant go down to the Capitol and show me you are willing to fight. And they were willing and they did fight and people died that day. 179 people were injured. So there has never not been hypocrisy on this issue. I think we should probably talk a little bit about the kind of ideas that Charlie Kirk espoused, because there's also, I mean, from our side of the pond, this strange phrase coming out, which was echoed by Trump in the clip which we played you earlier, which was the idea that Charlie Kirk spoke, in commas, common sense.

15:57In other words, he stopped the woke mind virus and he spoke common sense. Well, if you want to know what common sense looks like in Charlie Kirk's mouth, maybe it's helpful for us to lay out some of those common sense views that Charlie Kirk held. Why does Kirk think that MLK is a bad guy? It's true. Once a week we talk about why the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. This shows they were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad. It was evil. But what happened? Something changed. They committed less crimes. Maybe they were afraid. I mean, 4 ,000 black men, women, and children were killed in violent lynch mods.

16:34You know, take the pride conversation out because people think it's an identification. Well, it's not. It's just sexual behavior. But it's if you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle? No. Let's get you free from that activity. Like, I'm sorry. If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. You had a daughter and she was 10 and she got raped. Would you want her to go through that and carry her baby? The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered. Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

17:09It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans. I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up New Age term that does a lot of damage. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot. Is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just saying. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year. So just to emphasize, again, his murder is appalling. but the idea that he was murdered for espousing some sort of common sense mainstream set of views that others dared not say is nonsense right i mean you cannot say there is no polling there is no polling i'd love if any of it exists out there please show it to me but there is no polling which would show majority views even in the united states for saying that being gay is an error and comparing it to drug addiction, for not believing in abortion in almost any circumstances, for spreading falsehoods about voter fraud, COVID, other conspiracy theories, opposing birth control, having very traditional views on the role of women and claiming in one tweet that the great replacement theory was actively UK government policy, right?

18:35And given all of that, you would think that beatifying Charlie Kirk might be confined purely to the kind of outer fringes of the MAGA world, but it hasn't been. And I think one of the most striking things about the last 24 hours has been a reminder of the extent to which there is now a common sort of radical right, Anglo-sphere, US-UK shared conversation, which goes up to and includes our former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson tweeting, the murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy and a sign of the utter desperation and cowardice of those who could not defeat him in arguments. Kirk had been killed, not for espousing extremist views, because he didn't.

19:12He's been killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. He's been killed because he had the courage to stand up publicly for reasonable opinions held by millions and millions. OK, I think that's a real window into Boris Johnson's mind, actually, just just as you set that out, because the first part of it makes total sense. If you are a fan of free speech, you say we allow people and, you know, many on both sides, I think, of the political spectrum are we allow people to believe whatever they want and they can say whatever they want. And Charlie Kirk, to give him his due, he wasn't an anonymous keyboard warrior.

19:48He didn't just do it online. He went out there. He went out there. He took his argument. He tried to sell his argument. And he was unafraid of arguing. He was unafraid of arguing and he was happy to debate with people face to face, you know, whether it was Democrats, whether it was Republicans, whoever, he would sit down and have those debates. But he did spread lies. But to then elide that into an idea that he just spoke for the common man, spoke the truth, spoke good sense. When he actually referred to the great replacement theory, as you said, that is suggesting that undocumented immigrants were coming to the US to replace white Americans.

20:25Or, as you say, the spreading of medical misinformation during Covid. You know, he was even banned from Twitter when he talked about the Civil Rights Act being a mistake in the 1960s. He called it permanent bureaucracy. You know, the idea that they've got it wrong because it actually promoted diversity and inclusion. And of course, he talks about MLK, Martin Luther King, not a good man. Now, I think you are allowed to say whatever you want on those subjects. But when our own UK politicians start saying, thank God somebody's got rid of the woke mind virus and is just expressing things we all think.

21:04I want to sit Boris Johnson down. Really? Do you believe that what he's saying about Covid and the misinformation spreading? Do you buy that? Do you buy that civil rights was a mistake? Do you believe that the replacement conspiracy theory was part of a strategic government policy? Do you believe that gay rights are wrong? I mean, stop for a moment and think about what you're saying. You can mourn the death of somebody. You can mourn the political assassination. And we should all do that. It is absolutely horrific. But don't start eliding yourself with some really unpalatable views in the middle of it.

21:39It's part of a wider phenomenon, which is the radical right, the online right's belief that they're deeply extreme views. And they are extreme. The list that we have both just gone through, the montage we heard on any level is extreme in the sense that it cannot be mainstream. Because, as I say, there is no polling to suggest that it is anywhere near any of those propositions or anywhere near a majority view. They are fringe. They are extreme. I want to see the qualifications of every black pilot on Narrowman. But try saying that or getting any of these people with these huge accounts and indeed even some of our own politicians and media figures to actually engage with that reality because they spend so much time online.

22:20The truth is, and that's what's been slightly weird about Boris Johnson and other sort of really senior British political figures reacting to this in this way. Obviously, the horror of assassination is, of course, fine, but the way that they're reacting to it. You know, Charlie Kirk was part of a deeply online world. I would not be surprised if loads of our listeners had never heard of him. The vast majority of people, particularly older people in this country, waking up to the news this morning would have never heard of him. Now, that, again, does not demean or undermine his assassination, his murder, assuming that assassination is what it is.

22:54But nonetheless, it reveals the fact and it averts to the fact that the online right, the emphasis is on the online, and they spend all day long talking to each other. They criticise the left for being in their own bubble. There is no more hermetically sealed bubble than the MAGA online right world. They believe that Charlie Kirk's views and positions are genuinely common and mainstream. There is zero, and I mean zero, evidence for that in the United States, let alone in the United Kingdom. I mean, I guess they would say, well, why is Trump the president then? If people don't believe it, Trump and Kirk are pretty well aligned.

23:28Because of the price of eggs, which is something that the online right is not so interested in. they have little to say about it, unless they blame DEI for it, which they probably do on some level. We'll be back in a moment talking about the sacking of our ambassador in Washington, Peter Mandelson.

23:53The News Agents. In light of additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister has asked the Foreign Secretary to withdraw him as Ambassador to the United States. The emails show, Mr Speaker, that the depth and extent of Lord Madison's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment. In particular, Mr Speaker, Lord Madison's suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. and in light of that Mr Speaker and mindful as we all are of the victims of Epstein's appalling crimes he has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect.

24:41So that was the news that I think everybody felt in their bones was coming that Peter Mandelson has been dismissed as our ambassador to the United States that's coming after the revelations emerging I say revelations I mean much nearly all of it was known but sort of revelations the letters that we saw sent to Jeffrey Epstein, Keir Starmer decided to reverse his decision to appoint Mandelson, which came in December. They said they wanted a big figure in Washington during the Trump administration. Generally speaking, I think by common consent, he was doing a good job in terms of getting close to the Trump administration.

25:13But this issue, this albatross around his neck, as he called it, has cost him for the third time, Peter Mandelson, third time a very big job in public life. And almost certainly, I think it feels will be the end of his time in politics. When we talked about this on the show yesterday, it felt that things were coming to a head. But there were many, even in the party, who thought that he could live this one out, stand this one out, particularly with the state visit coming. I think what really clinched it was that drop of emails that came later in the afternoon, just after we published, from Bloomberg and Sun, in which it was revealed that he had essentially been petitioning for the early release of the man who went on to become the world's worst paedophile.

26:02Advising him that he needed a media strategy. He needed a media strategy. Yeah, hell of a media strategy. He was telling him about Sun Tzu, the art of war, how to stand up. It was one particular email where he said, you've got to fight for this. This would never happen in Britain. And I think at that point, the people that I was talking to within the Labour Party started to realise that it was getting really, really hard to justify. Last night I was at the FT party and I was speaking to some who were quite close to the Prime Minister there. And one person, when I asked if Peter Manderson could stay, just said, I'm absolutely not going to speak about this.

26:42And the fact that they didn't even bother to push back or to try and convince me or to say, well, you know, let's not take this out of context or let's not just go the way that the opposition want us to go with a scalp, I think started to tell me that minds were being made up. Later that night, I was having conversations with people who said the whole Labour Party, the parliamentary Labour Party is of one mind. He has to go. And that same person said that they thought they'd wake up this morning and find that he was already gone. Now, in fact, the whole process was a little bit more complicated because it started with an urgent question that Neil O 'Brien, the Conservatives, called, and it would have been Yvette Cooper, now Foreign Secretary, who had to respond because the ambassadorial roles go through the Foreign Commonwealth Office.

27:32And the indication I got was that Yvette Cooper would not have been prepared to stand up and answer that urgent question until she had had complete confirmation from the Prime Minister that Peter Mandelson would no longer be in the job. I was on a bike at about 10 o 'clock. I got a phone call. I thought, I'm not going to answer this or I will die. But that phone call, coming as it did at that time, told me everything I needed to know, which was that the resignation was imminent. And things happened pretty quickly. It sounds as if it was Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, first thing this morning saying, we actually can't get through the rest of the day, knowing what we now know, that Peter Mandelson tried to call for the early release of a paedophile from prison.