As a MAGA martyr, Charlie Kirk is worth more dead than alive

[Thiệu Ngô]

The death of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. Donald Trump and his MAGA base are treating it like an opportunity.

By Lucian K. Truscott IV

The first thing Trump did, before Kirk’s assassin was even identified, was to blame his killing on “the radical left.” He ordered the flag over the White House and all flags on federal buildings and installations to be flown at half-staff. He ordered that Air Force Two, the aircraft that is used by the Vice President, to transport Kirk’s body from Utah to his home in Arizona. A uniformed Air Force color guard carried Kirk’s casket on and off the plane, as if he was a servicemember who had been killed in combat.

The hero treatment Kirk is getting cheapens the honors that are afforded to those who have given their lives for their country. The paeans being delivered for Kirk are embarrassing. Yesterday Ezra Klein in the New York Times published a column titled, “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” celebrating Kirk for debating students on college campuses and being supportive of free speech and open to dialogue with people who did not share his beliefs. Kirk was certainly free in sharing his racist beliefs. He identified Joy Reid, formerly one of the evening hosts on MSNBC, as someone who did “not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” He called Reid and Michelle Obama and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown “affirmative action picks.”

As we would expect, Trump is canonizing Kirk’s garbage. He’s saying in effect, I think so much of Kirk’s beliefs and legacy that I’m going to afford him the same honors as someone such as John R. Lewis, who was beaten nearly to death at the Edmund Pettis Bridge for his belief in civil rights and his fight for equality between the races. Trump wants his followers to think that John Lewis was beaten for his beliefs, Martin Luther King was killed for his, and Charlie Kirk died for his.

Charlie Kirk felt entitled to go around the country telling college students there is something wrong with being gay or lesbian or transgender, that same sex marriage is an abomination, that wives should “submit” to their husbands, that aborted babies are the moral equivalent to Jews killed in the Holocaust. He made millions with a podcast that promoted exactly those beliefs.

Trump and his MAGA minions are certainly welcome to celebrate Kirk and turn him into a martyr to their cause. People paid to listen to his podcast and attend his Turning Point USA speeches on college campuses. Capitalism is perfect in that way. You get what you pay for. Martyrdom is its own reward, and the person now profiting is Trump, not Charlie Kirk.

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