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, referencing the killing 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 Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox for his response to Kirk’s death 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 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro “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 earlier 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 suggested 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.”
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
