Preacher Howard-John Wesley:
“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated, but I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land.
Now that the shock of his brutal assassination - enabled by those very Americans who applaud when innocent people (Melissa Hortman) from the other side are killed, who incite their militias to attack the Capitol and hang their own VP Mike Pence, who encourage gun ownership and raise their children on worshipping violence and using it against those who don't look like them - now that the assassination has been processed, it is time to speak the truth.
Like Trump, Kirk believed that African-American women are by definition stupid and have low IQ. Which is very racist. Hence, I'll take a dive in their racism pool and say that I believe that white American imbeciles like Kirk, Trump and their MAGA ilk, are by far the more stupid and moronic people to walk the earth. The reputation of Americans around the world is that they are dumb and ugly specifically because of the white race Americans whom they encounter and deal with. White nativist Americans have long been parasites that preyed for centuries on the hard labor of their African slaves and on smart and entrepreneuring immigrants who make the discoveries and the inventions, who build the businesses, push technology forward and make America great. It is not the one-toothed moonshining drunkards (think Hegseth) hailing from a cesspool of white inbred genetic mongrels from Appalachia or the flat-brained bible-and gun worshipping English-Spanish bastards from places like Texas and Louisiana that made America what it is.
With his vitriolic and poisonous language, Kirk promoted the dehumanization of millions of Americans. He did not deserve to die, but he deserves - now - to be exposed for the racist extremist he really was.
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Pastor Blasts Efforts To Whitewash Charlie Kirk's Legacy In The Wake Of His Killing
Marita Vlachou
Tue, September 16, 2025
Slumbering Don
The Rev. Howard-John Wesley on Sunday spoke out against efforts to whitewash the legacy of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination on a Utah college campus last week, declaring that “how you die does not redeem how you live.”
In a powerful sermon at Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, that has been widely circulated on social media, Wesley condemned Kirk’s murder but called out the double standard between the response to the conservative’s death and that to the deadly shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband inside their home earlier this year.
“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated, but I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land, and hearing people with selective rage who are mad about Charlie Kirk but didn’t give a damn about Melissa Hortman and her husband when they were shot down in their home,” Wesley said.
“Tell me I ought to have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life,” Wesley added.
Over the years, Kirk, a controversial figure and prominent ally of President Donald Trump and his administration, frequently devolved into making racist statements.
While discussing affirmative action on his show in 2023, Kirk mentioned former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, former first lady Michelle Obama, late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — all Black women: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said. “You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
Separately, following the deadly collision between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk Army helicopter in January, Kirk said: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified,’” before hedging, “that’s not who I am, that’s not what I believe.”
Wesley said he can’t ignore Kirk’s divisive rhetoric despite the ugly manner in which he was killed.
“I am sorry, but there’s nowhere in Bible where we are taught to honor evil,” Wesley said. “And how you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death, when you are a weapon of the enemy in your life. I can abhor the violence that took your life, but I don’t have to celebrate how you chose to live.”
The Trump administration has taken steps to honor Kirk following his death. Trump announced he plans to posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Past recipients have included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa. The president also plans to speak at Kirk’s upcoming memorial service in Arizona.
Wesley also used his sermon to forcefully rebuke some of the Trump administration’s policies, including its mass deportation agenda and its targeting of diversity and inclusion programs.
“I’m overwhelmed with the culture of division and violence that this administration fuels and fertilizes with an inability to show compassion for those who are in need,” he said.
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We corrected after Nixon, Clinton, and Bush lies, and once for Trump, but won't after Charlie Kirk. Why?
Richard Nixon resigns from presidency on national TV Bill Clinton denies affair with Monica Lewinsky Donald Trump January 6th rally
I’ve written before about how I abhor political violence. It stills free speech, silences dissent, and corrodes civic life. But the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination has left me reeling, not just because of the violence itself but because of the outsized reaction to his death and the wildly knee-jerk reaction to anyone who says anything negative about him.
The silence demanded of critics. The threat of being branded “cruel” if you dare to tell the truth about him. The jobs lost by those who spoke honestly. This lionization of Kirk needs to stop. He was human, with faults, like the rest of us, but his were more pronounced and very public..
I’m afraid that there is no turning back from those faults. The last week has mortifyingly left many with the impression that he was to be revered.
It’s been gobsmacking to watch a man who never held public office, never served his country in the military, never lifted a hand for peace, be memorialized as though he were an American hero. I’m sickened not only by the hoopla but by the willful amnesia.
Kirk’s words caused pain that is impossible to ignore. He lied about women, people of color, and, with particular venom, the LGBTQ+ community. He fed the next generation a steady diet of hate disguised as truth. He lied, repeatedly, on purpose, vilifying those who never did anything to him. He did it under the false guise of being a Christian.
Those lies and destructive comments? That will be his legacy, not some invented sainthood.
And yet his name is everywhere. His face was being splashed across NFL stadium scoreboards this past weekend. His death was observed with vigils in locales all over the country. How did this happen? How did America become somehow complicit in changing Kirk’s image from a provocateur to a prophet?
I would venture that most Americans had never heard of him before he was brutally assassinated. Now, seeing his name lit up in lights, many Americans will assume he was some kind of mythical figure, never knowing the cruelty, the lies, the terror he placed in the hearts of queer Americans.
A few months ago, I had the trans daughter of a friend of mine reach out. She was scared to death of Charlie Kirk. “Why does he hate me so much?” she asked. “Do you know why?”
I, like many in the queer community, are outraged over a Pride flag flown at half-mast in West Hollywood, a mecca of acceptance. This is such a grotesque example of how the reaction to Kirk’s death has gone wildly out of control.
For those of us who live in the very dark shadow of his words, to see him honored in this way is nothing short of traumatic.
I fear his words will live on even more powerfully in death than they did in life. That’s what keeps me up at night. And that’s appalling to me because who was he in the grand scheme of things? And now look at this undeservedly enormous impact his death has had on American society.
And all that makes me wonder, Will America ever course correct from this inexplicable moment, as it has in the past?
I was 10 when Watergate was reaching its pinnacle, and I recall how there was a palatable worry that democracy itself seemed to teeter, especially when Richard Nixon resigned. That had never happened before. Could we survive such a tumultuous episode?
President Ford led us away from our “long national nightmare.” I was glued to the TV when Ronald Reagan was shot. It summoned fears of a return to the assassinations of the 1960s, but the country somehow survived.
I was working on Capitol Hill when the fall of the Berlin Wall took place. There was such an amazing sense of optimism that soared. I think we all felt that the lie that was communism was destroyed and that freedom had triumphed for good.
In January of 1998, we were all stunned that Bill Clinton, who famously said he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” only to learn later that he lied. It had the effect of shattering trust and faith in the presidency.
Then came 9/11, and I watched my fellow New York City residents and people all across the country come together in a moment of comity. That was short-lived. Next came the disastrous war in Iraq, built on lies about weapons of mass destruction.
Finally, in 2008, we elected Barack Obama, and hope felt real and history seemed to bend toward justice. The euphoria we felt at the time was shared across party lines. President Bush came out the day after the election and hailed the historic victory. It seemed everyone felt a sense that the worst had passed, and maybe, just maybe, we course corrected for good.
We didn’t. Far from it. Donald Trump became the most destructive liar ever to run for the presidency and win it. He left us reeling through a pandemic, an insurrection, and a near-total collapse of truth itself. Yet even then, in 2020, it felt possible to course correct. And we did, briefly, when Joe Biden took office.
But that correction was short-lived too. The lies flooded back with Trump’s return in 2024. And now here we are, watching the death of a podcast host and hate merchant treated like the loss of royalty. Instead of course correcting, America is spiraling even deeper into delusion.
What has changed? Before, we had presidents with enough integrity to steer us back, even if imperfectly. Before, we had a media that, for all its flaws, reported facts to a broad public. Before, we weren’t suffocated by social media silos and rage-driven podcasts, far-right networks, sycophants as “reporters.” All feeding lies to an audience that only wants its own reality reinforced.
Now those lies are winning. Now truth is an anomaly. Now calling out a man like Kirk for who he really was is branded as unpatriotic.
I am old enough to have lived through Watergate, Reagan’s shooting, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Clinton’s impeachment, 9/11, Iraq, Obama’s rise, Trump’s first reign, and Trump’s return. After each crisis I thought, Surely it cannot get worse than this. After each collapse, I thought, Surely America will bounce back. And usually it did, if not fully, then in part, enough to restore some faith.
But this feels different. This feels like a breaking point. The worship of Charlie Kirk, scrubbed of his lies, suggests that we may not course correct this time. That instead, his poisonous words will be embalmed in national memory as though they were noble.
And to see how Trump, as president, is reacting by calling some Americans “scum” and unleashing his anger rather than urging a sense of calm. Our presidents have always led in course corrections. This one isn’t, and it’s why things will get far worse than perhaps anything we’ve seen in the past.
I have lived through six decades of American history, and I have seen us falter, then rebound, falter, then rebound, falter, then rebound. But today, as Trump pushes hate more aggressively than ever, as Trump’s henchmen scream revenge, as our country fractures into isolated realities, I see no rebound ahead.
Under Trump, with Kirk’s death, there is no course correction possible from this tragedy, I cannot see it. Can you?
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