Trump Says He Didn’t Watch Full Videos of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska Murders: ‘Just Horrific’

Screenshot via Fox News.

President Donald Trump told the Fox & Friends audience Friday that he had chosen not to watch the full videos of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska being killed, calling them “just horrific.”

Kirk, 31, was the founder of Turning Point USA and a staunch Trump supporter. He was speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday when he was fatally shot. On Friday, Utah authorities announced that the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, 22, had confessed to his father and was convinced to allow himself to be taken into custody. Robinson is currently being held without bail in a Utah jail on initial charges that include aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice.

Iryna Zarutska, 23, a Ukrainian refugee, was stabbed to death on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22. Her accused attacker, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., was arrested and has been charged with a state charge of first-degree murder and a federal charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

Trump has strongly denounced both crimes and spoke about them on Friday’s episode of Fox & Friends.

Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump if he thought it was “important for people to see how [Kirk] died,” calling the video “horrific.”

“I didn’t want to watch it. I would have never made a good doctor, let me put it that way,” Trump replied, suggesting the violent images might make him queasy. “No, I mean, I heard, I heard enough. I didn’t want to watch it. I didn’t want to watch — I didn’t wanna remember Charlie that way.”

The president agreed with Kilmeade that the video “is horrific, is what I hear, just horrific,” saying that he had friends who were there in Utah and they described to him the “physical emotion” of witnessing something like that, “even watching it on television” was tough to take.

“Mr. President, what do you say to families watching, the moms, dads?” Ainsley Earhardt asked Trump.

“We’ve heard so much negative news with the lady being killed on the train — ” she continued.

“Oh, that was terrible,” Trump replied.

“Right? And then we have Charlie Kirk, we had a school shooting the other day, those are just three big events that happened in the last few days or we learned about –” Earhardt said.

“And the attempts on your life,” added Kilmeade.

“Yes,” said Earhardt.

Trump commented that the “maniac” charged with Zarutska’s killing was “going through a trial right now.” He described how Zarutska was “young” and “beautiful,” and “was afraid” and “felt very unsafe, ok, we can’t have that.”

He continued, noting that he had not wanted to watch the entire video.

“And then this maniac gets up from behind — that’s another one I didn’t want to watch, I didn’t watch it, ” he said. “I knew what happened, but I didn’t want to watch. What he did to her was unbelievable and he walks through and the knife dripping blood and everything else.”

The president’s inclination to not watch the disturbing videos showing Kirk and Zarutska being killed follows advice given by numerous mental health professionals about the impact of such violent videos blanketing social media feeds and and their advice for people to turn off video autoplay functions. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and others have called on the social media platforms to take a stronger stance on such content and specifically asked for the video of Kirk to be taken down.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.