Christian nationalist and far-right political activist Charlie Kirk, a top influencer and Trump ally, urged supporters at a faith-based event on Sunday to “fight” if Donald Trump doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election.
“I want to make sure that we all make a commitment that if this election doesn’t go our way, the next day we fight,” Kirk told the audience at “Freedom Night,” hosted by Pastor John Randall.
“It’s a very important thing,” Kirk added before saying, “a lot of people don’t want to hear that. They say, ‘What do you mean it doesn’t go our way? It has to go our way. We have to win.’ I agree.”
Kirk is a member of the highly-secretive Council for National Policy, a purveyor of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” and has repeatedly promoted the false claim that U.S. elections are “rigged.”
Pastor Randall, of California’s Calvary South OC, had told Kirk, “I know on the minds of these freedom loving people tonight is the election. We were talking tonight before about some of the things that are going on and what you were sharing and I was listening, I found encouraging talk about this upcoming election how important this is, how critical this is, and what the church can be doing to make a difference. So well, you know, so that this doesn’t happen again.”
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In Kirk’s response, he reminded the audience, “there were a lot of people by the way that were all on board of the American Revolution as long as it was 73 degrees and sunny, and as soon as they had to march through the winter and fight a smallpox epidemic, they said, ‘Forget this. You know, Liberty sounds nice, but I liked, I liked King George a lot.’ So they kind of got out of the way.”
“I’m a big supporter of President Trump. I think he’s in a great position. I really do,” Kirk added, before issuing a warning.
“Mark my words, put it in your phone, they got something planned for us, and it’s going to be nasty, and it will be asymmetric. And so if only elections aren’t in mid-March, right, you know, if only it wasn’t the Ides of March and we have elections it would be great how to best unpack this.”
He went on to say there’s a “50-50” chance President Joe Bide will be the Democratic nominee. “It looks like he will be the nominee but anything can change. They’re running out of time. If they were going to do it. It probably would have already been done by now.”
“It’s not Trump versus Biden. It’s Trump versus Biden versus RFK versus Cornell West versus Jill Stein.”
The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), commented on Kirk’s remarks: “Yeah, sure, the ‘bloodbath’ comments by Trump were only about cars. Wake up, America. Violent insurrectionists are open about their plans.”
The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery observed, “Prominent right wing voices keep vowing to fight if they lose the 2024 election this November. They are rooting for a failure of the American democratic system.”
Journalist and SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile added, “He’s clearly talking about an insurgency, weapons and war.”
Annika Brockschmidt, a German journalist and author who writes about the Christian right in America, responded to Kirks comments and called it a clear “incitement of violence.”
“Listen to them,” she added. “This is not just talk. They mean it.”
Watch a short clip of Kirk’s remarks below or at this link.
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