Comedian and former Comedy Central host Trevor Noah joked about Charlie Kirk’s assassination during a recent stand-up routine, in which he suggested there is “something funny” about the Turning Point USA founder being murdered due to his stance on the Second Amendment, and falsely stated that Kirk was fatally shot “while defending guns.”
“Comedians are shitting themselves: ‘Don’t say anything about Charlie Kirk.’ I wasn’t going to say anything about him. ‘Yeah, but don’t say anything about Charlie — there’s nothing funny about it.’ Oh, now you’ve tested me,” Noah said.
“I mean, there’s nothing funny about it? You can’t say there’s nothing funny about it… because as a comedian, I’m sure there’s something funny about it,” the comedian continued.
Noah went on to falsely declare, “The guy was shot while defending guns.”
“You have to admit, that is an incongruous funny thing that happened. You are there, on stage, and you’re like, ‘Let me tell you why people should have guns,’ wa-pahhh,” the former The Daily Show host added.
“It is pretty crazy that America’s response to the guy getting shot was to limit speech instead of limiting the thing that ended his life,” he declared, getting a round of applause.
Noah’s statement, however, is false.
Kirk was assassinated during an event at Utah Valley University on September 10, while speaking with a student about the issue of violence in the United States, and after telling the attendee that there have been “too many” mass shootings carried out by transgender individuals.
The transcript of the Turning Point USA founder’s final conversation before being fatally shot is as follows:
Attendee: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?
Kirk: Too many.
Attendee: In America, it’s five. Now, five is a lot, right, I’m going to give you — I’m going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?
Kirk: Counting or not counting gang violence?
[Gunshot]
When taking the last conversation Kirk had before his assassination into context, it serves as more of an ominously prophetic and harrowing series of remarks — rather than “something funny,” as Noah so ghoulishly put it.
The suspected assassin, Tyler Robinson, reportedly had a transgender boyfriend, and bullet casings in the murder weapon were etched with a variety of messages, including, “Hey fascist! Catch!” as well as “Bella Ciao,” a clear reference to a song idolized in Antifa circles.
Kirk’s murder rattled the world, sparking an outpouring of grief for the Turning Point USA founder, who had become a martyr for free speech after he was assassinated while trying to have an open and respectful dialogue with a student on a college campus.
Reactions from leftists, meanwhile, sent a second shockwave throughout the globe, as people were able to witness firsthand the shocking depravity and degradation of society via what was also a major mask-off and watershed moment: the left celebrating and justifying the assassination of a free speech martyr — simply because his views had differed from their own.
Of the seemingly countless hours of footage of Kirk sharing his views online, leftists managed to cherry-pick two to three quotes from him — all grossly taken out of context — and then circulated the remarks on social media in an attempt to justify murder.
One out-of-context quote shared en masse by leftists championing Kirk’s assassination featured his comments on gun rights at an event in 2023, in which the TPUSA founder expressed that the “cost” of having “the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights” is, “unfortunately,” some “gun deaths every single year.”
Assassin apologists, however, only share a small snippet of Kirk’s monologue from the 2023 event, preventing the public from being able to zoom out for more context, at which point they would find that the Turning Point USA founder was not dismissing gun deaths via his remarks.
Elsewhere in his monologue, Kirk — who was known for laying out hard truths in an attempt to make his audiences see issues more clearly and objectively — urged his audience not to fantasize about an unrealistic “utopian” society but, rather, to “have an honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence.”
He pointed out that society as a whole appears to have decided that the number of auto fatalities each year is worth it so that people can travel from one place to another at a faster rate.
“Driving comes with a price — 50,000 die on the road every year,” Kirk said in 2023, during the same monologue. “That’s a price. You get rid of driving, you’d have 50,000 less auto fatalities.”
Given that the annual number of auto fatalities is significantly higher than gun homicides, it is reasonable for one to wonder why the public never seems to criticize those who support the freedom to drive, unlike the scrutiny faced by those who defend gun rights.
Notably, leftists often misrepresent a pro-Second Amendment stance as support for gun violence in an effort to advance their political agenda.
But Kirk had articulated a principled point, that the right to bear arms is a fundamental check against tyranny and protects against greater threats, such as government overreach and the loss of personal autonomy through the eroding of other unalienable rights.
Kirk’s tough but honest view, that no right comes without unfortunate trade-offs, was meant to provoke thought about the cost of freedom, not to trivialize the loss of life — as leftists are so quick to do.