The Left has gone from “I will die to defend your right to state your opinion opposite mine” to “I will kill you if you have an opinion opposite of mine.” Those were the dismayed words of author Peter Schweizer to the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Utah university on Wednesday.
Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a campus organization for conservative students, was assassinated while speaking at one of his popular question-and-answer sessions on the campus of Utah Valley University when a sniper apparently shot Kirk through the neck from long range. Kirk was rushed to a nearby hospital but died of his injuries.
Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and host of The Drill Down podcast, said simply, “I’m still numb… where is this going to end?”
Speaking with fellow podcaster Dinesh D’Souza, Schweizer recalled that Kirk “always talked about first principles. He didn’t get into the weeds. It was about where our rights come from, and the importance of God in America’s history. He always wanted to debate and discuss and dialog. He was very effective I think at persuading people – particularly young people. I think that’s why he was targeted in this way,” Schweizer said.
D’Souza, himself an author and a frequent speaker on college campuses several years ago, sees a dangerous shift in campus culture. “Not once did I get into a physical fight with anybody or fear that someone was going to put a bullet in my neck. I think it’s a measure of shift in the culture that we have to worry about that now. What’s behind that shift?” he asks Schweizer.
“A lot of it has to do with demise of the traditional liberal, moderate liberals like Walter Mondale or Nadine Strossen, the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union. You debated with her. These were liberals who preached tolerance, in the real sense of that word,” Schweizer recalled. “They have gone silent. I don’t know if they’re extinct or just been intimidated by the progressives and the harder left, but they were the adults who would restrain the worst impulses of the left.”
While he does see some rising civility on figures on the cultural Left, notably from celebrities like Bill Maher, “the silence of those (moderate) liberals has allowed the hard left to go unrestrained,” Schweizer added.
“We need to encourage them. My hope still is that sense of decency among people on the political left. The real question is whether they will say it publicly.”
D’Souza raises the element of transgender ideology, that evidence suggests may have been at work in this murder, as it was in previous shootings in Minneapolis and Nashville by trans-identifying or trans “allies.”
“People don’t get shot over tariffs or taxes,” D’Souza said. But there are emotional issues like abortion and the Palestine/Israel conflict that can breed this kind of hate. “The ATF is now saying they recovered bullets that had trans and anti-fascist slogans on them,” D’Souza noted.
He asks Schweizer about this, and the evidence Schweizer and GAI have uncovered of foreign influence in stoking this issue.
“We found the two largest funders of trans issues are billionaires who live in China. Neville ‘Roy’ Singham and his wife Jodie Evans who was the founder of CodePink are both really heavy in trans support. Singham is an American citizen but lives in Beijing and is close to the CCP.”
“The second big funder is Joe Tsai, the co-founder of Alibaba, who has poured hundreds of millions into the trans movement in the United States,” Schweizer said.
“The stunning thing is that neither of them is pushing for trans rights in China,” he noted.
Schweizer did not suggest either Singham or Tsai has any ties to Charlie Kirk’s shooter, but there is no question they are key funders to this movement.
“They know this is a divisive issue… a revolutionary issue. That’s something Singham’s groups have talked about. They believe this is a divisive wedge issue to divide America, and I think it’s working.”
While neither speaks up about this in China, they will both press the issue here in America.
Tsai, Schweizer noted, is the owner of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, and its WNBA sister team. In that capacity, Tsai has pushed in the United States for the possibility of trans players being allowed to play in the WNBA.
Why is there this radical inconsistency?
“They see it as a decisive tool. And I think as far as stirring division in the United States, it’s hard to beat the bang for the buck that you get on any other issue in the United States than the trans issue.”
