At a Turning Point USA debate on Wednesday, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly reportedly forcefully rejected claims that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric was to blame for the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, calling the accusation “a blatant lie” and “defamatory.”
The tense exchange began when a student confronted Kelly, asking: “I want to know why you support a president who contributes to the rhetoric that got your friend Charlie killed. You saw his rally recently, he said, ‘I hate my enemies.’ Stephen Miller said similar things. How can you support him when he contributed to what got Charlie killed?”
Kelly immediately pushed back. “What you said is not true,” she responded.
The student grew agitated, shouting: “70% of political violence is committed by Republicans! Look it up! DOJ just pulled it! The DOJ just pulled it from their website!”
Kelly dismissed the premise. “First of all, let me take on the first premise of your question, that it was President Trump’s rhetoric that led to an assassin killing our friend Charlie Kirk. That’s a blatant lie,” she said, adding that the charge was “defamatory” and “inappropriate in this setting.”
The back-and-forth escalated as the student tried to clarify his position, saying he had only accused Trump of “contributing to the political atmosphere, the tension.”
Kelly did not let the point stand. “Well, then you have no point. Then your point is utterly empty,” she countered. “Contributing to the atmosphere? No, let’s just make clear. This guy was motivated by leftist ideology. We know it from the bullet casings, we know it from the Utah governor, we know it from his own mother. Yes, we do! Let’s be really clear on that.”
Even after conceding for argument’s sake that the killer was motivated by the left, the student pressed: “Does that make it okay for the sitting president of the United States to incite violence against liberals?”
Kelly’s response was sharp. “The president of the United States has not incited violence against liberals. The president of the United States made a joke at the Charlie Kirk memorial which was funny and self-deprecating. It was on the heels of Erika Kirk saying she, in an extraordinary moment, forgave her husband’s killer. Let me finish. And then President Trump got up and, making a joke, playing off what Erika said, he said, ‘We disagree. I need to do better, Erika’s going to try to convince me, but I’m in a different place,’ and that’s completely normal for a politician to be thinking about his political fights. And by the way, Trump has every right to loathe his enemies. They tried to put him in jail for the rest of his life.”
The student shot back, “Rightfully so! He’s a criminal!” before abruptly ending the exchange with, “Thanks for your time,” and walking away.
The debate, which featured Kelly alongside Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, came just weeks after Kirk was assassinated during a campus debate at Utah Valley University.
In the aftermath, Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, vowed that her husband’s tour would continue, with conservative leaders filling in for him at colleges nationwide.
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