It was the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Ilhan Omar is threaded into both: she framed the 9/11 attacks as an event where ‘some people did something.’ She also called Kirk’s legacy one of white supremacy and bigotry. She said this to Don Lemon some 11 months ago. Lady, you could’ve kept your mouth shut; you should’ve kept your mouth shut, but alas, your side will never master the art of shutting the hell up.
Now, it wasn’t all bad: Omar did acknowledge that Kirk’s assassination was tragic and that she feels for his widow and children, but she refused to honor his legacy. She then devolved into her usual incoherent gobblygook. You could’ve left it at the first part, lady, which would have been appropriate. But alas, you suck, so here we are.
Ilhan Omar on Charlie’s ass*ssination:
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 14, 2026
“There is no legacy to honor. It was filled with bigotry, hatred, and white supremacy."
What a vile POS you are @IlhanMN pic.twitter.com/yS1PjBXfSv
The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, who by no means is a conservative or a Kirk fan, was more insightful about his legacy. And yes, he also got attacked by liberals for zeroing in on the legacy of this man: open discussion and breaking the Left’s stranglehold on academia and college campuses:
You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.
That was not all Kirk’s doing, but he was central in laying the groundwork for it. I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project.
[…]
Political violence is a virus. It is contagious. We have been through periods in this country when it was endemic. In the 1960s there were the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers. In the 1970s, Gov. George Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin but survived, and Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in one month. In 1981 Ronald Reagan survived after John Hinckley Jr.’s bullet ricocheted off his rib and punctured his lung. These assassins and would-be assassins had different motives, different politics and different levels of mental stability. When political violence becomes imaginable, either as a tool of politics or a ladder for fame, it begins to infect hosts heedlessly.
American politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project — we are all, or most of us, anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment. We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election; we can live with losing an argument because we believe that there will be another argument. Political violence imperils that.
Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. The same is true for Shapiro, for Hoffman, for Hortman, for Thompson, for Trump, for Pelosi, for Whitmer. We are all safe, or none of us are.
Don’t like what Kirk said? Fine, engage him, or you could walk away. That’s your right. Many leftists did confront him peacefully on campus. Some of these exchanges got heated, but he waged a one-man war in the Left’s backyard and won. They no longer have intellectual monopolies here. You’re too dense to get that, Omar. Kirk, if he’d lived, could’ve run for the presidency. It wouldn’t have shocked me in the slightest.
Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
