Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, told Newsmax Wednesday that the killing of Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk marked a political turning point, saying it had "crossed the Rubicon."
Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed Wednesday at a Utah college event in what the governor called a political assassination carried out from a rooftop.
"It was something that we don't see in the United States. And that is Charlie Kirk wasn't just a brilliant political activist and organizer, but he was also a journalist and media figure," Hanson said during an appearance on "Finnerty."
"We see people take out media figures and journalists in Mexico and Europe, but we've crossed the Rubicon. This was an effort to silence somebody who was a commentator, was a writer, was a podcaster.
"And if you think about all of the various skills that he had in speaking and writing and organizing and registering people to vote, there really was no one under the age of 35 in the United States on the conservative side that are any side that had that ability."
Hanson said Kirk was a "happy warrior" that the left wanted to destroy.
"And they did. And it was quite ironic, because I had just talked to him a few days earlier and I'd been on his podcast and afterwards we talked, and he was a happy warrior," he said.
"He was sort of like William F. Buckley. He wanted to meet and engage in people he didn't agree with. He didn't lose his temper, but he was very effective.
"And that's when he came to campus. I can't think any other conservative young person could get that many people at a campus, whether it's in Utah or anywhere else."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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