Former President Barack Obama said conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death was “horrific and a tragedy,” while also taking a veiled shot at President Donald Trump with accusations of sowing political division in the country as the nation faces an unprecedented “political crisis.”
“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy,” Obama said Tuesday night at the Jefferson Educational Society’s 17th annual global summit in Erie, Pennsylvania.
“Obviously I didn’t know Charlie Kirk,” Obama said. “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, who said Tuesday that the nation is facing a “political crisis of the sort that we haven’t seen before,” did not mention Trump by name in his remarks.
Kirk, 31, was killed after suffering a gunshot wound in the neck during his American Comeback Tour at Utah Valley University Sept. 10. The shooting suspect, Tyler Robinson, was charged Monday with aggravated murder, along with other charges.
The assassination comes a year after two attempts to take the president’s life.
While Obama admitted that extremists are present at both ends of the political divide, he distanced himself and his administration from far-left ideologues.
“Those extreme views were not in my White House,” Obama claimed. “I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind them. When we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem.”
Additionally, Obama signaled that the current White House was seeking to “silence discussion” in the aftermath of Kirk’s death, comments that come as Trump and administration officials have vowed to take action against those who have cheered for Kirk’s death on social media and cast blame on the “radical left” for recent political violence.
“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.
In response, the White House said that Obama is the “architect” for creating political division within America.
“Barack Hussein Obama is the architect of modern political division in America — famously demeaning millions of patriotic Americans who opposed his liberal agenda as ‘bitter’ for ‘cling(ing) to guns or religion,’” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a Wednesday statement. “Obama used every opportunity to sow division and pit Americans against each other, and following his presidency more Americans felt Obama divided the country than felt he united it.”
“His division has inspired generations of Democrats to slander their opponents as ‘deplorables,’ or ‘fascists,’ or ‘Nazis,'” Jackson said. “If he cares about unity in America, he would tell his own party to stop their destructive behavior.”
Obama previously weighed in to express his condolences to Kirk’s family immediately after the shooting.
“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” Obama said in an X post Sept. 10. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.”
