Mehdi Hasan says political violence is “threat to all of us”

We should all condemn the killing of Charlie Kirk, but we don't need to participate in the whitewashing of his record or the kind of—this suggestion that he is some kind of free speech martyr. He was not a supporter of free speech. You just saw that clip. I said something on MSNBC he did not like—I, an American citizen—he said I should be

deported from the United States. Is that someone who sounds like they support free speech? He was super anti-Muslim. Just a couple of days ago, he was posting about Islam being the sword with which the left slits the throat of America. He called Muslims conquerors, invaders. His rhetoric was horrific. He put targets on people's backs.

But again, I don't measure my own views or my own responses to tragedies by the standards set by Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump or anyone else. The fact that he may have, you know, had a more gleeful response to my death than I do to his is irrelevant. As I say, none of us should celebrate the death of a human being. None of us should celebrate political violence, because it's a threat to all of us and to

this country. And I think it's interesting that so many people are now trying to suggest that this guy—I've seen people saying, oh, he never did anything. guy—I've seen people saying, oh, he never did anything. He just went and had good-faith debates with college students.