Former President Barack Obama addressed the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, calling the killing a “tragedy” that poses a “threat to all of us” before scolding President Trump for contributing to a dangerous political climate.
Speaking with journalist Steve Scully at the Jefferson Educational Society in Pennsylvania, Obama cast Kirk’s assassination as part of an escalating trend of political violence.
“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy,” Obama said. “And when it happens to some but even if you think they’re, quote, unquote, ‘on the other side of the argument,’ that’s a threat to all of us. And we have to be clear and forthright in condemning them.”
Obama went on to address some of Kirk’s past criticisms about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and affirmative action.
“We have to extend people grace during a period of mourning and shock,” Obama said. “We can also say at the same time that I disagree with the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake. That’s not me politicizing the issue, it’s making an observation about who are we as a country. I can say that I disagree with the suggestion that my wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain processing power.”
In a July, 2023 episode of his podcast, Kirk mentioned that Michelle Obama and Justice Ketanki Brown Jackson had admitted that affirmative action helped them advance in their careers and argued that those admissions constituted an acknowledgement that they did not succeed on merit alone.
“If we would have said three weeks ago […] that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they’re comin’ out and they’re saying it for us! They’re comin’ out and they’re saying, “I’m only here because of affirmative action,” Kirk said.
“Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
The former president also took it as an opportunity to criticize President Donald Trump and his administration’s handling of the aftermath of the assassination.
“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’, enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of us,” Obama said. “But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.”
Obama also praised Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s handling of the situation.
“I suspect Governor Cox and I disagree on a whole bunch of stuff. He is a Republican, self-professed conservative Republican, but in his response to this tragedy, as well as his history of how he engages with people who are political adversaries, he has shown, I think, that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate.”
The comments come after Obama reacted to the assassination on the day it happened, expressing his condolences for Kirk’s family on social media.
We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 10, 2025
Several high-profile liberal pundits, including Matthew Dowd and Karen Attiah, have been fired over their reaction to Kirk’s assassination. Dowd, broadcasting live on MSNBC in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, before Kirk’s death had been announced, implied that Kirk had brought the attack on himself through his use of “awful” words. MSNBC apologized for Dowd’s remarks and promptly fired him.
Attiah was fired from her columnist position at the Washington Post after misquoting Kirk on social media and blaming “white men” for the gun violence problem in America, which she believes led to Kirk’s death.
Obama, for his part, cautioned Americans against blaming an entire political movement for the actions or words of its fringe members.
“Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, Independents, we have to recognize that on both sides, undoubtedly, there are people who are extremists and who say things that are contrary to what I believe are America’s core values,” Obama said.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article stated that Obama addressed the assassination for the first time on Tuesday. It has been updated to reflect that Obama first commented on the assassination on social media on the day it happened.