Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is pushing back against Republicans who quickly tried to pin the killing of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk on Democrats. Speaking on The Breakfast Club, Crockett said, “I hate that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle immediately came out and they were like, ‘Oh, you know, this is on the Democrats.’ Like, we don’t even know who did what. It’s wild” that Republicans “are presuming that this is somebody that came from our side of the aisle.”
She pointed out that Democrats did not hesitate to condemn the violence. “Obviously the first thing that anybody would say—and you didn’t have any Democrat that went out there and said otherwise—is, ‘We’re denouncing political violence,’” Crockett said. But she stressed that the killing might not have been politically motivated at all. It could have been personal, or it could have even come from the right. “The vast majority of these shootings, whether they are seen as political or not, if we look at the numbers—white supremacy ideology. But we don’t want to do anything about that,” she said.
Crockett also noted that history shows extremists on the right have carried out violent attacks. “We’ve seen writings and manifestos and we’ve seen where it looks like the two people that went after the president, before he was the president, had ties to the Republican Party,” she said. Police have arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in connection with Kirk’s death, but the motive remains unclear.
She also took issue with how quickly some conservatives linked the crime to other groups. “As soon as” Kirk was murdered, Crockett said, “the next thing you know the trans community is under attack again,” referencing comments from figures like Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump Jr. Crockett argued that attention should be focused elsewhere. “When we look at these mass shootings, most of them are linked to neo-Nazism or, you know, Proud Boys or whatever… Every time you say white supremacy, they want to yell, ‘Oh, you’re race baiting.’ No, I am going on facts.”
For Crockett, the issue goes beyond rhetoric. She said the climate has become so charged that she now has to fund her own personal security. “I have to pay for my own security. I have to raise money to keep myself safe,” she said. She urged people to take the conversation about political violence and safety more seriously. “Hopefully we can engage in some real conversations around what it looks like to get us some real safety, but also we need to engage” in conversations about free speech and “what really does cross the line.”
The Breakfast Club host Charlamagne Tha God added his own thoughts about free speech in the wake of Kirk’s death, reminding listeners, “We don’t get to determine the consequences of our free speech.” He referenced Kirk’s own statement that it was “worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Crockett echoed the need for limits. “We do have free speech in this country, but are you free to say just any and everything? There are limits to all of our constitutional protections, as well as what kind of standard are we going to hold ourselves to, when you are sitting, say, in the Oval Office?” She concluded by pointing directly at President Donald Trump. “When you’re literally telling people at rallies, ‘Yeah, beat them up’ and that kind of stuff, you are promoting a culture of violence.”