Monday, during CNN’s “NewsNight” broadcast, host Abby Phillip and CNN contributor Van Jones attacked Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk for likening the fatal Charlotte stabbing of Iryna Zarutska to the 2020 George Floyd incident in Minneapolis.
Phillip offered a clip from Kirk’s program where he made the point, which Jones declared Kirk “should be ashamed of himself.”
Partial transcript as follows:
ABBY PHILLIP: So, certain people have been looking for an opportunity to find a case like this, to make a point like this. I want to play, this is Charlie Kirk, why he says this hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE KIRK, HOST, THE CHARLIE KIRK SHOW: A white Ukrainian refugee was murdered just because she was white. Everybody knows that obviously. If a random white person simply walked up to and stabbed a nice law-abiding black person for no reason, it would be an apocalyptically huge national story used to impose national, sweeping political changes on the whole country. Instead, Meghan Basham, no one seems to care when a white woman gets stabbed to death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KARA SWISHER: Wow. He said white a lot.
ARTHUR AIDALA: Well, we are talking about it here. So, I guess —
SWISHER: It’s true.
AIDALA: I don’t think that’s fair. Look, being in the system, because I have represented people who are mentally ill. And here’s the balance. The balance is taking away people’s freedom versus evaluating their mental illness. In New York City, there are a lot of programs for people who are mentally ill, but they have to want to be there. It’s about forcing to be there.
PHILLIP: When you are mentally ill, you have a hard time knowing that you are mentally ill. But also, I mean, people like Charlie Kirk, Van, they’ve been looking for opportunities to make this some sort of like reciprocal George Floyd situation. And that’s the part that I think he’s almost giving away the game. It’s sad to see a lot of people going along with it.
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, let me just say a couple things. One is, I mean, what happened to that young woman was horrible, and it’s everybody’s nightmare. If you’re in any public space, a subway, whatever, that something bad is going to happen to you or somebody you care about. So, it does strike a chord.
We don’t know why that man did what he did. And for Charlie Kirk to say, we know he did it because she’s white, when there’s no evidence of that, is just pure race mongering, hate mongering. It’s wrong. Then he says that if something like that had happened the other way, there would be sweeping changes imposed on society.
Where is the George Floyd Policing Act? It didn’t pass even when you had a white police officer murder a black man on live television, the whole world saw, there were no sweeping changes. In fact, not one law was passed at the federal level. So, I think that’s an important thing to point out.
The other thing is you mentioned the thing about cashless bail. I think this is a big challenge that we have. Would you have felt better if there had been cash bail and the mom had come and put down a thousand dollars to let him out? It’s not about cashless bail or no cashless bail. It’s about the fact that we don’t know how to deal with people who were hurting in the way this man was hurting. Hurt people, hurt people. What happened was horrible, but it becomes an opportunity for people to jump on bandwagons.
And then for someone like Charlie Kirk, he should be ashamed of himself. No one mentioned the word race, white, black, or anything except him. What people mention is the horror of what happened to this young woman.
BRIAN TODD: Van, I’m going to agree with you, that I don’t care who was white and who was black. And I don’t know how Charlie Kirk got into it. I agree with you on that.
But the reason there were no changes passed after in Congress, after George Floyd, is because the Democrats wouldn’t pass Tim Scott’s bill. That’s the reason. It was a — Chuck Schumer decided he’d rather have the issue in the election than let Tim Scott get credit for it.
I think there is one thing else we haven’t talked about here, though, and that is the magistrate who let him go in January. It’s not a lawyer, it’s not a law enforcement professional, it’s not a judge. She was a magistrate appointed after her — a lot of experience in the addiction and recovery area. And she’s probably really well-motivated and her own family had suffered from that. She probably has had a great reason for being interested in this.
But that doesn’t make her a judge who can put criminals back on the street.
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