David French on Not Commenting Kirk’s Death: I Don’t Want To Be in This World Where Speech He Engaged in in Any Way Overshadows Horror of What Occurred

EXCERPT:

FRENCH: “I mean, you can do the chapter and verse of, you know, the way in which he interacted and some of the things that he said, but, you know, I have not really done that since the assassination because — and the reason why I’ve not really done that and really explained at length sort of the problems I had with some of what he said and how he said it is because, compared to — I don’t wanna be in this world where the speech that he engaged in in any way overshadows the horror of what occurred. And so I have not been spending my time amplifying, over these last few days, amplifying and repeating my disagreements with Charlie Kirk. There are a lot of people in the larger political cultural world who have done and said things very similar to Charlie Kirk. I can argue with them. I can argue with them going forward, but I don’t want to spend too much time on all of the disagreements I had with Charlie or the way he interacted with people, because I don’t want to put — I don’t want to put the conversation about his speech on the same plane as the conversation about his death, if that makes sense. So that’s not acquiescing to the way he communicated or acquiescing to all of the points that he made, etc. It’s just saying, the man’s life and the loss to his wife and children and the loss to his friends and the people who loved him dwarfs in significance the beef that I might have, or did have a with a lot of the things that he said and did. And I think that it’s so important that that — the gravity of the difference between an assassination and my distaste or dislike or even sometimes anger at the things that he said, those are not the same, they’re not in the same universe, right?”