Jay Leno Calls Charlie Kirk’s Murder ‘The Death of Free Speech’

Jay Leno said the murder of Charlie Kirk is “the death of free speech.”

Leno, the former host of “The Tonight Show,” called into Tim Conway Jr.’s radio show Wednesday, the day of Kirk’s death.

“It’s not a random shooting,” Leno told Conway. “It’s a death of free speech. And to think that you are so illiterate and so stupid that you can’t answer verbally, that you have to shoot somebody with a gun to quote win the argument.”

He said he remembers when he was in school, political debates were “lively,” adding that school shootings are “stupid.”

“But this is a political assassination of a man I didn’t necessarily agree with, but I certainly enjoyed listening to because, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ I don’t have to agree on everything,” Leno said. “We’re in a point in this country where if you don’t agree with everybody and everything, you take out a gun and you shoot them, and especially on a college campus?”

Kirk — the founder of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit aimed at spreading conservative beliefs among college students — was known for his podcast “The Charlie Kirk Show,” where he often spouted his right-wing beliefs, like advocating for gun rights, condemning abortion and other Christian nationalist views. Kirk also hosted debates on college campuses, which is what he was doing at Utah Valley University when he was shot and killed while answering a question about gun violence.

Leno said the last time a shooting “got” him in the same way was in 1970, when members of the National Guard killed four unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State.

There have been at least 100 incidents of gunfire on school grounds this year, according to Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.

Leno said he isn’t “defending or knocking anything” Kirk has said, and argued Kirk is “way more intelligent” than him. Leno said that from what he understands, Kirk wasn’t a bully or someone “who berated people.”

“I enjoy listening to the other side because that’s how I get smarter,” Leno said.

He continued: “It’s very unsettling. This one really struck me. Every time someone’s assassinated, but it’s really the death of free speech.”

Conway said the shooting is a “black eye” for Utah, and people will remember this campus because of it, noting many recognize Ford’s Theatre as the place where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, as well as Dallas, where President John F. Kennedy was killed.

In July, Leno said that putting politics that are too far left or right in comedy has put comedians in “not a very good situation.”

“I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from things, you know, the pressures of life or whatever it may be,” he said during an interview with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute. “And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but what happens is people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”