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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Obama says Charlie Kirk assassination was ‘horrific’ and praises
Utah Gov. Cox’s response
By David Wright, CNN
Updated:
11:36 PM EDT, Tue September 16, 2025
Source: CNN
Former President Barack Obama commented on the assassination of
conservative activist Charlie Kirk during remarks Tuesday night in
Erie, Pennsylvania, saying that “regardless of where you are on the
political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a
tragedy.”
“Look, obviously I didn’t know Charlie Kirk,” Obama said,
according to a transcript his office released to CNN. “I was
generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong,
but that doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and
that I mourn for him and his family.”
Obama went on, “He’s a young man with two small children and a wife
who obviously – and a huge number of friends and supporters who cared
about him. And so, we have to extend grace to people during their
period of mourning and shock.”
Obama was the featured speaker at an event for the Jefferson
Educational Society, an Erie-based nonprofit organization, and he spoke
at length about concerns over escalating political violence in recent
years, saying the country is at an “inflection point.”
“What happened, as you mentioned, to the state legislators in
Minnesota, that is horrific. It is a tragedy,” Obama said, of
Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in June in a
series that also severely wounded a state senator. “And there are no
ifs, ands or buts about it, the central premise of our democratic
system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really
contentious debates without resort to violence.”
During his remarks, Obama also praised and the ensuing manhunt, saying
he was “very impressed” with “how he’s approached some of these
issues.”
“He is a Republican, self-professed conservative Republican, but in
his response to this tragedy, as well as his history of how he engages
with people who are political adversaries, he has shown, I think, that
it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how
we should engage in public debate,” Obama said, remarking that
Democratic “has done the same thing.”
Throughout the opening months of the second Trump administration, the
former Democratic president has used a series of public appearances at
colleges and community organizations to comment on President Donald
Trump’s actions.
The remarks have frequently included pointed criticism of his
successor, a marked departure from Obama’s more reserved stance
during the beginning of the first Trump administration.
“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have
a history of calling political opponents vermin, enemies, who need to
be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right
now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of
us,” Obama said Tuesday night.
Speaking at Hamilton College this year, Obama chided his Trump for
threatening universities and law firms, calling it “unimaginable”
and “contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.” And over
the summer at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford, he that the US was
“dangerously close” to a more autocratic government.
And on Tuesday night in Erie, Obama spoke out against the
administration’s aggressive crackdown on crime and immigration in
major cities, deploying federal resources and in some cases the
National Guard.
“In Washington, DC, right now, you have National Guard folks deployed
who are setting up checkpoints. And they’re working with ICE, and you
have ICE agents who are checking people’s IDs and stopping traffic.
That’s not something that we’ve seen before in a non-emergency
situation,” Obama said, calling it a “dangerous moment.”
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