The death of far-right activist Charlie Kirk has unleashed a storm of competing narratives, but none more toxic than the partisan spin driven hardest by Donald Trump and his allies. Thankfully, Tucker Carlson has broken ranks to call his own party out on it.
Though a conservative political commentator, Carlson has been a rare voice of reason, sometimes relied on even by people of opposite political affiliations. In the wake of Kirk’s brutal murder and the surge of hate speech, censorship, and partisan rancor that followed, Carlson used his latest YouTube live to deliver a sobering warning about where the nation is headed and who is driving the chaos.
Carlson opened his commentary with a reflection on Kirk’s murder, underscoring his Christian identity before pivoting to a larger point: Christian values, he argued, discourage people from playing god. And this becomes a direct challenge to “our leaders and the most powerful people in our society,” who “ignore the limits on their behavior,” he suggested.
He went on to frame Kirk as “a free speech champion,” someone who traveled the world to engage people across the political spectrum. In stark contrast, Carlson argued, the current administration and far-right groups have been exploiting Kirk’s death to justify silencing critics and stripping Americans of their right to free speech. Criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “there’s free speech, and there’s hate speech” comment, he said,
“You hope that Charlie Kirk’s death won’t be used by a group we now call bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build,” Carlson said.
Landing indirect blows on the unconstitutional censorship being powered by Trump’s administration, Carlson jabbed, “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country.” Calling such a move a threat to the First Amendment, he added:
“And trust me, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that eve,r and there will never be.”
But it was the next part of his monologue that ricocheted across social media. Carlson cautioned: “If they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There’s nothing they can’t do to you, because they don’t consider you human; they don’t believe you have a soul. A human being with a soul, a free man, has a right to say what he believes. Not to hurt people, but to express his views.”
Carlson’s remarks may not absolve his own history of stoking division, but in this moment, he’s saying out loud what too many in his party refuse to: by framing dissent as disloyalty and criticism as “hate speech,” Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork for an America where only the voice that agrees with them is permitted. This is the same mentality that led to the death of Kirk, and now, his “good friend” Trump is doing the same.
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