Former President Barack Obama says he finds the murder of Charlie Kirk “horrible” and “a tragedy” and emphasized that Americans must be able to disagree, reject the ideas they do not attribute, while respecting the right of others to maintain those opinions.
In comments during a conversation with the journalist Steve Scully at Jefferson Educational Society in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, Obama also recognized that the shooting of state -owned Democratic legislators of Minnesota, Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, were also a tragedy.
“Regardless of where he is in the political spectrum, which happened to Charlie Kirk was horrible and a tragedy,” he said. “What happened … For state legislators in Minnesota, that is horrible. It is a tragedy. And there is no yes, and it is the central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and sometimes really debates without resorting to violence. And when it happens to some, but even if they think they are, you quote, once, on the other side of the argument of the other arguments, United, and that we have a threat, and submit to everyone else, and we undergo a plea of everyone’s threat, and submit to everyone, and we submit to all, and undergo a threat of others.
He continued: “And so, he looks, obviously he didn’t know Charlie Kirk. In general, he was aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong, but that does not deny the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I cried for him and his family.”
Former President Barack Obama attends the inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington.
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Obama also praised the handling of the Governor of Utah Gop Spencer Cox of the sequels of Kirk’s murder.
“I have been very impressed with Governor Cox in Utah and how some of these problems have been addressed. I suspect that Governor Cox and I do not agree on a lot of things. He is a republican and self -procciated Republican, but in his response to this tragedy, as well as his story of how he commits to people who are the political adversaries, he has shown, I think it is possible to disagree, we Participate in the public, for a basic moment.
Obama also suggested that what he sees as the desire of the Trump administration to attack political enemies is part of a broader problem, and emphasized that when he served as president, “he was not putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist opinions.”
“And so, when I listen not only to our current president, but his assistants, who have a history of calling political opponents, enemies, enemies that need to be” attacked “, who speak of a broader problem that we have at this time and something that we are going to have to deal with, all the Democrats, the Republicans, the independents, we have to recognize that on both sides, we are not going to those who are the ones that are the ones that are the ones. They are the ones who are the two.
“But I will say that these extreme opinions were not in my White House. I was not hugging them. I was not empowering them. I was not putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist opinions. And that … when we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist opinions, we have a problem,” Obama said. “
He said that the president’s role is to unify, instead of Stoke, the division, saying: “But my opinion was that part of the role of the presidency is to constantly remind us of the ties that unite us.”
“And I’m not alone in that belief,” he continued. “I think George W. Bush believed that. I think the people I ran against, I know that John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it. What I am describing. It is not a democratic value or a republican value. It is an American value. And I think that in moments like this, when the tensions are high, then part of the president’s work is to gather people.”
