“You said that the evidence suggests the shooter had a leftist ideology. I’ve watched the Trump administration in the days since saying that there is a crackdown on what they call the radical left, without defining it. That is now necessary, that we shouldn’t be thinking of this as the act of one man. We should be thinking of it as the outcome of some broader network, culture, ideology, that if this is to be a safe society needs to be repressed, suppressed, destroyed. What have you thought about that?” “So I’ve obviously heard that. I’ve tried to be careful in a couple of ways. One, my political ideology and my faith teaches that every person is responsible for their own actions, that we have agency and that it’s the greatest gift that we’ve been given as human beings. And this person made a very, very, very terrible decision. And as a society, we need to hold that person accountable to, again, to the greatest extent of the law. And I always caution against removing agency from a person, that this person didn’t have a choice, that this person acted because he had been acted upon. I think that’s a big mistake. I think that’s an illiberal ideology. And it’s something that I reject when the left does it and I reject when the right does it. As to the radicalization piece, and again, I know that wasn’t defined as radical left or whatever that is. I think we do need a deeper dive to understand what is radicalization and how does radicalization happen. And are there things we can do to prevent that from happening. And so that is a worthy discussion. But we have to do that within the bonds of our Constitution and within the bounds of the law. Look, I don’t get to speak for Charlie. I don’t and I don’t presume to —— I didn’t have a relationship like Vice President Vance or others. And so I just —— I want to be clear about that. But one of the things I truly appreciated about Charlie was his defense of being willing to show up on campus and engage his defense of the founders’ vision for our country, his defense of free speech.” “I go around universities and have challenging conversations. And I’m —— because that’s what is so important to our country, is to find our disagreements respectfully, because when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.” “His words about if we stop talking to each other, that’s when the violence starts.” “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when Civil War happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity.” “I don’t think that you can remove this, a radical ideology through just pure repression or the means of government enforcement. I think it’s going to take more speech and more sunlight and more disagreement, more words and less violence. Now, again, if there is a way to do that, I’m certainly open to understanding it. But I truly think that the answer to getting rid of what got us into this situation is not more of that, the type of thing that these anarchists or evil people have brewing in their souls.”
