Maher Blasts Charlie Kirk Death Cheerleaders AND Charlie Kirk ‘War’ Chatter: ‘I Have No Use For You’
Comedian and pundit Bill Maher torched those cheering the killing of Trump ally and activist Charlie Kirk. as well as those chattering about “war” in the wake of the shooting.
On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the interview guest was Charlie Sheen, actor and subject of the new two-part documentary “aka Charlie Sheen” on Netflix, and author of the new book “The Book of Sheen: A Memoir.”
The panel guests were Tim Alberta, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism”; and Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire and author of “Lions and Scavengers: The True History of America (and Her Critics).”
During the panel segment, Maher condemned the most extreme reactions on both sides, and Shapiro agreed:
BILL MAHER: Alright, so I didn’t realize this was going to be kind of a theme show because we read our editorial before the week starts and so it was all about freedom of speech, then the assassination occurred, so this is turning into a theme-show.
But it is kind of interesting that this guy was shot, and he’s been on our show, been on my podcast, I talk to him, I like to him, and I like everybody, I talked to everybody, and, I’m glad I took that approach.
But he was shot under a banner that said, prove me wrong, because he was a debater. And too many people think the way to do that, to prove you wrong, is to just eliminate you from talking altogether.
So the people who mocked his death or justified it, I think you’re gross, I have no use for you!
The people who are saying now we’re at war, I have use for for you.
So my first question, true or false? I think the real war is not between left to right, it’s for the people, from the, is between the people on both sides who want war and the people who don’t.
BEN SHAPIRO: I mean, I think that’s accurate. I knew Charlie for 13 years before he was a kid. He was an 18-year-old kid when I first met Charlie in The Breakers in Palm Beach and he was fundraising running around and I watched him grow into a man and watch him get married and have a couple of very young kids.
And whatever you thought of Charlie’s views is irrelevant. The fact is that what he made his living doing and what he actually did quite well and made himself really good at this was just going and talking to people on the other side and that’s… You know, what he was killed doing. He was literally in the middle of answering a question and picked up the microphone and was shot in the throat.
And we do have a serious problem in this country with people who believe that violence is the proper response to speech. And that does skew young. I mean, what the polls tend to show is that of Gen Z, only 58% of GenZ believes that there is no excuse for violence in response to the speech, meaning that 42% believe that there are some times that the violence ought to be a response to a speech, which is deeply terrifying.
Watch above via HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.
