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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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