Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Chris Cuomo Goes On ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ And Says What Scared Him Most About Response To Assassination

Screenshot/Rumble/Salem News Channel

NewsNation host Chris Cuomo said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” Thursday that it frightened him how people attempted to justify the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk.

People justified and even celebrated the Sept. 10 assassination, including on social media platform BlueSky, leading to the firings of many individuals. Cuomo told host Andrew Kolvet that the “yeah, but” reaction — condemning murder but then justifying Kirk’s assassination in the next breath — was terrifying.

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“What scared me most after the personal feelings about the loss of such a young man who was followed by so many and what it meant to his wife and his babies — once I could get past that, what scared me the most, Andrew, was the ‘Yeah, but.’ ‘Yeah, but.’ ‘Yeah, but’ is really frightening when it comes to a moral analysis,” Cuomo said. “‘Yeah, look, it’s wrong to kill somebody, but’ — no, no, no, no. No ‘but.’ No ‘but.’ You want to talk about Charlie’s ideas? Fine. Nobody wanted to do that more than Charlie did. And more than most, he did it with decency.”

“And I’m not saying I agreed with everything that he said. Charlie and I were very plain about our disagreements, but not attacking him personally, not attacking how he tried to present himself,” he continued. “And the idea of his murder is an absolute low for us. And that’s all it can ever be seen as. It can never be mitigated. It can never be qualified.”

Then-MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd suggested on “Katy Tur Reports” on Sept. 10 that Kirk’s supposed bigotry inevitably led to him being shot.

“[H]e’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups,” Dowd said. “And I always go back to: hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”

MSNBC announced it had fired Dowd later the same day, calling his remarks “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

SiriusXM’s Stephen A. Smith on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” Sept. 11 excoriated people rejoicing over the assassination.

“I don’t care what his political beliefs were! I don’t care what he felt! I care about the fact that a man was gunned down in front of two of his children who are 5 years of age or less,” Smith said. “That he’s dead at the age of 31. That his wife is a widow. That his children are fatherless because his ideas and his beliefs differed from somebody else, apparently.”

“And then I’m going online and I’m seeing people celebrating it!” he continued. “Shame! Shame on you!”