Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked for his reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk while speaking at an event at the University of Southern California on Monday.
“I was very, very upset that someone’s life was taken because they have a different opinion. It’s just unbelievable,” the actor and former California governor told USC’s interim president Beong-Soo Kim. “This was a great communicator, a great advocate for the right — for Republican causes. He had such a great way of communicating with the students that agreed or disagreed with him.”
Kirk was shot on Sept. 10 while debating students at Utah Valley University as part of his “Prove Me Wrong” campaign. The conservative pundit and Turning Point USA leader was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead about 90 minutes later. The shooting suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was charged on Tuesday with aggravated murder as prosecutors seek the death penalty.
“It’s a human being. A human life is gone,” Schwarzenegger said of Kirk. “And he was a great father, a great husband. I was thinking about his children. They will only be reading about him now, instead of him reading to them bedtime stories.”
Schwarzenegger said he was “shocked” when he saw the news of Kirk’s death and has paid attention to the debates about how the United States can put an end to political violence.
“We have to acknowledge that the cause of all of this is the social media companies that are dividing us, the mainstream media companies that are dividing us,” he said. “The political parties: the Democrats that are dividing us, the Republicans that are dividing us. We’re getting hit from so many different angles, and we have to be very careful that we don’t get closer to that cliff. Because when you fall down that cliff — down there, there is no democracy.”
Speaking to a room full of university students, Schwarzenegger emphasized the power of individuals taking action and getting together with people on the opposite side of the political aisle. “The people can turn this around,” he said.
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Watch Schwarzenegger’s “Democracy Day Dialogue” conversation in full below.
From Variety US