Jonathan Karl Comments On Kirk Murder

By
Mark Stevens
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ABC’s Jonathan Karl could have taken the easy road. He could have said what was plain for everyone to see — Charlie Kirk was assassinated for his political views. Instead, he tried to thread the needle, and in the process, tied himself in knots. What should have been a straightforward acknowledgment of reality turned into a muddled exercise in wordplay, and it blew up in his face.

Karl opened by acknowledging the obvious grief: Kirk’s young family, his colleagues, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans mourning his loss. Fair enough. But then came the hedging. “The murder of Charlie Kirk was not a political act. It was a gruesome crime,” Karl said. That’s when he veered off the rails. Because when a man is targeted, stalked, and shot on stage during a political debate, you can’t pretend it’s apolitical. It’s not just “a crime.” It’s political violence in its purest form.


The “clean-up” only made things worse. Karl insisted he wasn’t denying political motivation, but he still wanted to draw this artificial line between “politics” and “crime.” That’s a dodge. Nobody is justifying the assassin by saying politics makes it okay. But let’s not insult the public’s intelligence: the killer chose Kirk because of what he represented. That’s why this was an assassination, not a random act of violence.

Karl’s waffle reflects a broader problem in corporate media. When violence comes from the left, journalists start reaching for euphemisms. “Unrest.” “Demonstration gone too far.” “A crime, not politics.” But if the political valence were reversed — if Kirk had been a progressive activist gunned down by a right-wing extremist — the coverage would be wall-to-wall, with no hesitation to use the words terrorism and assassination. The motive would be plastered on every chyron. Think pieces would flood the internet about “the rise of right-wing violence.”


Here, though? A nationally recognized conservative is murdered, his assassin openly tied to the political left, and the press ties itself in knots trying to avoid admitting what’s right in front of them.

Kirk’s assassination fits into a disturbing pattern. Polling consistently shows that Democrats are now more likely than Republicans to say political violence can be justified. We’ve seen it on the streets with Antifa riots. We’ve seen it in the halls of Congress, where dozens of Democrats refused to even condemn Kirk’s murder. And now we’ve seen it in the most brutal way possible: an activist killed for what he believed.


Karl’s attempt to soft-pedal this reality didn’t just fail — it insulted the memory of Kirk and the intelligence of his audience. Call it what it is. A political assassination. Anything less is cowardice.

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