\n<\/p>\n
Late-night hosts reacted to the assassination of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk and decried the rising tide of political violence in the US.<\/p>\n
Seth Meyers opened Thursday\u2019s Late Night with a separate segment on the Kirk assassination. \u201cWe are horrified by this grotesque tragedy and our condolences go out to his family and loved ones,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should never be a matter of political ideology to mourn and to extend our fullest and deepest empathy to those who are suffering.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitical violence is abhorrent and anathema to the highest ideals of this country,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt corrodes us and threatens the very foundations of our democracy. The great promise of our democratic experiment is that we can engage with one another and resolve our differences through dialogue, not violence. We must hold true to that promise and strive toward it with our fullest effort even when it feels furthest away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyers also mentioned another school shooting in Colorado on Wednesday that injured several students, just two weeks after a school shooting in Minnesota killed two children and injured 21 more. \u201cThere have been over 300 mass shootings and 47 school shootings this year alone,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve said this many times on this program and we\u2019ll say it again: gun violence is a plague in this country. We desperately need reasonable gun safety laws to stop this epidemic of tragedy and pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter the identity or ideology of these perpetrators, one thing is always constant: the guns,\u201d he added. \u201cWe must make it possible for children to go to school and for everyone to engage in public debate without the threat of gun violence looming over them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyers also noted the trend of political violence in recent years, including the murder of the Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband at home in June; the attack on Nancy Pelosi\u2019s husband, Paul; an attempt to bomb the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro; the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville in 2017; and the mob that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Meyers said: \u201cThis rising tide of political violence will only lead to a darker and more dangerous place, and it must end.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike the rest of the country, we\u2019re still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday, whose death has amplified our anger, our differences,\u201d said Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this, from both sides of the political spectrum,\u201d he continued, a day after a perpetrator shot and killed Kirk, a close ally of Donald Trump, during an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. \u201cSome people are cheering this, which is something I won\u2019t ever understand. And we had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president would at least make an attempt to bring us together,\u201d Kimmel added. \u201cBut he didn\u2019t.\u201d Instead, Trump blamed the shooting on Democrats\u2019 \u201crhetoric\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA man who told a crowd of supporters that \u2018secondment amendment people\u2019 should \u2018do something\u2019 about Hillary Clinton, the man who said he wouldn\u2019t mind if someone shot through the fake news media, the man who unleashed a mob on the Capitol and said Liz Cheney should face nine barrels shooting at her for supporting his opponent, blames the \u2018radical left\u2019 for their rhetoric,\u201d said a disgusted Kimmel.<\/p>\n
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert expanded upon his message of peace and free speech from the night prior. \u201cHowever you feel about his politics, he was a young father of two small children and an American who had the constitutional right to express his opinion in safety,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should go without saying that violence is never the answer to political disagreement, but I think these days, it should be said as often as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in these troubling moments, I am grateful to any leader who, instead of dividing us, points to our common humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colbert then played a clip of the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who called for \u201ceveryone with a platform to say loudly and clearly: we can settle disagreements and disputes in a civil manner, and political violence must be called out. It has to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree with that sentiment,\u201d said Colbert. \u201cWe should be able to settle our disagreements civilly, in the end as Americans, we are all brothers and sisters. Or at least, Mike Johnson and I look like we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
And on the Daily Show, Michael Kosta made one point clear. \u201cThis probably goes without saying, but I feel like I have to say it: I believe killing people is wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of now, we don\u2019t know who did it,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut Kash Patel\u2019s FBI is on the case. So we will never know who did it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is as good a time as any to say that political violence is never acceptable and should be condemned,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd thankfully, many political leaders think the same. All four living past presidents issued messages of unity and tolerance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was comforting to see our living past presidents, and Joe Biden, attempting to lower the country\u2019s temperature yesterday,\u201d said Kosta. \u201cBut none of those people are running this place right now.\u201d That would be Trump who wasted no time blaming the \u2018rhetoric\u2019 of the \u2018radical left\u2019, despite the fact that nothing was known about the perpetrator or his motives.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s Oval Office address basically amounted to, as Kosta mimicked, \u201cMy fellow Americans, we must come together to destroy each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be real: did we expect anything different?\u201d Kosta wondered. \u201cThis is what this guy does. The last time Trump delivered a thoughtful message was apparently when he sent a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kosta also grew frustrated with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers blaming the other side. \u201cHere we go again \u2013 \u2018It\u2019s Democrats\u2019 rhetoric.\u2019 \u2018No, it\u2019s Republicans.\u2019 Has anyone considered that the problem of political violence in America might not just be the rhetoric, but instead something extraordinarily complex? The problem might be a toxic mix of our gun laws, lack of mental health, collapsed social connection, probably a bunch of other things I hadn\u2019t even thought of yet. I\u2019m sure Labubus are somewhere in there to blame.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I just don\u2019t think rhetoric is the root cause of this thing,\u201d he concluded. \u201cPolitical violence isn\u2019t going to go away if the people on the other side say exactly the right words from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late-night hosts reacted to the assassination of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk and decried the rising tide of political violence in the US. Seth Meyers Seth Meyers opened Thursday\u2019s Late Night with a separate segment on the Kirk assassination. \u201cWe are horrified by this grotesque tragedy and our condolences go out to his family and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[12805,7176,1973,3190,3797,12560,447,6014,1913,448,2914,4527,1388],"class_list":{"0":"post-20854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-abhorrent","9":"tag-charlie","10":"tag-country","11":"tag-highest","12":"tag-ideals","13":"tag-kirk","14":"tag-latenight","15":"tag-meyers","16":"tag-political","17":"tag-roundup","18":"tag-seth","19":"tag-shooting","20":"tag-violence"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}