Firings over callous remarks on Kirk’s killing spark debate on limits of free speech

Amna Nawaz:

In the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk's death, President Trump's administration and his allies have promised consequences for people who speak callously about his killing.

Inside and outside of Trump's government, it's led to people being fired, suspended or reprimanded. And it sparked an open debate about the limits of free speech.

J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States: Hey, everybody. J.D. Vance here.

Amna Nawaz:

Five days after he was killed, Charlie Kirk's podcast was back on the air, this time with Vice President J.D. Vance in the host chair paying tribute to his late friend.

J.D. Vance:

Charlie was a visionary. He was a luminary.

Amna Nawaz:

The 31-year-old conservative activist was shot and killed at a university event in Utah last week, his death sparking a polarized response. During a weekend of vigils, including last night at the Kennedy Center in the nation's capital, administration officials hailed Kirk's political prowess and his fight for free speech.

Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Director of National Intelligence: Charlie lived by the principle that no matter how horrible another person's speech may be, their ideas must be defeated by better ideas, not by resorting to violence.

(Applause)

Woman:

He died. Damn, B. Life comes at you fast.

Amna Nawaz:

But some, especially online, used their right to free speech to speak out against Kirk and his message.

Man:

I won't let anybody distort reality and try to paint this picture that Charlie Kirk was this God-fearing family man who just wanted to go to college campuses and debate.

Amna Nawaz:

Comments the vice president and president say should and will have consequences.

J.D. Vance:

So, when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.

Donald Trump, President of the United States: You know, they're already under major investigation.

Question:

Which people?

Donald Trump:

A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left.

Question:

They're already under investigation?

Donald Trump:

Already under investigation.

Amna Nawaz:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk's death, calling that domestic terrorism.

Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff: We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom.

Amna Nawaz:

Already, there have been repercussions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended an Army colonel for a post-criticizing Kirk after his death and said the Pentagon was — quote — "very closely tracking responses celebrating or mocking Kirk's death,' adding they — quote — "will address immediately."

The number two official at the State Department promised to punish foreigners who mocked the killing, calling them — quote — "not welcome visitors to our country." Right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk's death.

Multiple media professionals both in news and in sports have already been ousted for comments about Kirk. Conservative pundit and former Bush staffer Matthew Dowd was fired as an MSNBC analyst after these comments:

Matthew Dowd, Former MSNBC Senior Political Analyst:

Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.

Amna Nawaz:

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said she was fired for her posts about Charlie Kirk, gun violence, and race.

Across the country, numerous professionals, from government employees to teachers and college professors, have reportedly lost their jobs for posting comments critical of Kirk, as a new battle over free speech unfurls in a fraught political climate.

For insight into the rights and limits of Americans' free speech, we turn now to Will Creeley. He's legal director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy and legal firm, and Jamelle Bouie, an opinion columnist with The New York Times whose latest piece looks at this very issue.

Gentlemen, welcome, and thank you for joining us.

I want to say off the bat here for the conversation there's obviously no justification for violence, certainly not for the killing of another human being, but we need to look more deeply at this issue of free speech.

So I just want to start to both with a Question about how you view the very polarized response to the killing of Charlie Kirk, the fact that we have two very different responses here.

Will, to you first.

Will Creeley, Legal Director, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: Thank you so much for having me.

It feels inevitable. You could have seen this one coming down the tracks about a mile away. Every time we go through some kind of cultural national tragedy, where somebody is killed, whether that's George Floyd, Barbara Bush, Queen Elizabeth, whenever we lose a public figure, there are folks who will say, good, I'm glad they're gone.

And this outrage cycle begins. And folks get fired. They get suspended. They get investigated. They get terminated. Right now, my organization is fielding requests from help from across the country. We're tracking all the firing and suspensions. We're going to be busy. It's a lamentable and sad and, again, deeply depressing time.

Amna Nawaz:

Jamelle, what about you?

Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times:

I agree that you can see these sort of things coming from a mile away.

I will say that part of me wonders what people expect in a free society, right? There's nothing — it's not polite to speak ill of the dead, of course. But we live in a country where people are used to speaking their minds on all sorts of Questions and issues and people.

And it should only be natural that, when a public figure, a controversial public figure, at that, loses their life, that people are going to have different responses to that. And some of them are going to be very, very negative about the figure themselves. It seems to me just be part of what living in a free society means.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Jamelle, let me pick up where you left off there. What about the response to some of the responses, as we reported, from the president, from administration officials, saying they're going to go after people who mock or who celebrate even Kirk's death?

How do you look at that tension between those who hold up Kirk as a free speech defender and at the same time say, you can't say this about him?

Jamelle Bouie:

I mean, it's a tension. It's hypocrisy, I'd say. It doesn't make any logical sense, at the very least, to hold up Kirk or anyone as a defender and advocate of free speech, and then in the next breath threaten people for not speaking the correct way about the person.

Kirk was surely meaningful to many millions of people, but that doesn't necessitate anyone in private or public life to have to respond to him a certain way. And the idea that the state itself has essentially an approved view of the situation and will try to punish people for not agreeing to that official view, not heeding that official view, is, I'd say, a direct attack on Americans' free speech rights in the most classic sense, right?

Like, people often say the First Amendment is about what the government can do about your speech, and this is very much the government threatening to suppress people's speech because they have an opinion that the people in power don't like.

Amna Nawaz:

Will, what do you make of that response?

Will Creeley:

I'm in strong agreement.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to allow us to disagree on basic conceptions of what is good and what is true. We don't need it for photos of kittens on Facebook. We need it for moments like this, where we have deep divisions and we want to talk about them. I mean, it's not lost on me that Kirk spent his last day talking to folks who disagree with him.

Per the reporting from The New York Times, the last Questioner was challenging his views on immigration and trans rights. Those kinds of Questions continue. And I think — I don't know the man, but I imagine that Kirk would be horrified by a state-approved ideological viewpoint that mandated disagreement with his views.

I remember all this happening after the tragic murder of George Floyd. There was a lot of nervousness about — quote, unquote — "cancel culture" or making sure that, if you didn't have the right view about Floyd's death, you couldn't hold a position at a public university or a private employer.

Now we're seeing calls from the vice president for folks to call their employers if somebody, one of their colleagues has the wrong view. That's antithetical to the First Amendment and it erodes the culture of free expression that we need more than ever in this country.

Amna Nawaz:

Will, you say that Kirk might have been horrified by some of this, but we should point out Kirk himself kept a list of academics that he felt should be fired for what they had to say or the views that they expressed.

And there's also, as his critics point out, the fact that some of his messages could have been seen as those that might incite harm against others. He used antisemitic language, anti-immigrant language, anti-Black language. How do you look at that?

Will Creeley:

Well, to be clear, Amna, I said he might be horrified if the state was mandating a view that he did not hold. So I want to be clear about that.

But we criticized his group's professor watch list back in 2016. It's protected by the First Amendment. You have a right to create those kind of watch lists, but we criticized it at the time as deeply illiberal. We know in this country we haven't dark and very tragic history of blacklists, thinking about the McCarthy era.

So we criticized it then and we criticize it now. One does not have to be a supporter of Kirk's views, I should hope, to recognize the real danger of having a state-mandated orthodoxy about what one can say about political opponents. That should trouble all of us. There's no official party line as an American about what we think of Charlie Kirk or anybody else in this country. That's the beauty of American pluralism.

Like we used to say as kids on the playground, it's a free country. And my colleagues and I are going to work hard to make sure it remains that way.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Jamelle, reflect on this moment we are now sitting in. I should point out actually a Republican congressman, Tim Burchett, told our producer Kyle Midura, this is what happens in a public forum. Somebody gets shot. There's this expectation that things that you disagree with could be met with violence.

How worried are you about that sentiment and about the fact that public figures, thought leaders could now self-censor themselves or limit public interaction?

Jamelle Bouie:

When you look throughout American history, what you see are rates of violence against people speaking much higher than they were — than they are today, whether that is mobs destroying abolitionist presses in the 1830s, Southern states forbidding the publication and dissemination of anti-slavery materials in the 1840s and 1850s, whether that is, as was mentioned before, Joseph McCarthy and the blacklist, whether that was the suppression of speech in the Jim Crow South.

And you can speak to any number of private individuals who have been harmed and killed in the course of speaking their minds in American history. So my conclusion here is that, for me, I come at this with a sense of, American history is often quite violent, that the people who engage in public life have always taken on that kind of risk, and that that risk is actually lower than it's ever been.

Amna Nawaz:

That is Jamelle Bouie and Will Creeley joining us tonight.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time.

Jamelle Bouie:

Thank you.

Will Creeley:

Thank you.