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<\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n Former President Barack Obama commented on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during remarks Tuesday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, saying that \u201cregardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cLook, obviously I didn\u2019t know Charlie Kirk,\u201d Obama said, according to a transcript his office released to CNN. \u201cI was generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong, but that doesn\u2019t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Obama went on, \u201cHe\u2019s a young man with two small children and a wife who obviously \u2013 and a huge number of friends and supporters who cared about him. And so, we have to extend grace to people during their period of mourning and shock.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Obama was the featured speaker at an event for the Jefferson Educational Society, an Erie-based nonprofit organization, and he spoke at length about concerns over escalating political violence in recent years, saying the country is at an \u201cinflection point.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat happened, as you mentioned, to the state legislators in Minnesota, that is horrific. It is a tragedy,\u201d Obama said, referencing the killing<\/a> of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in June in a series that also severely wounded a state senator. \u201cAnd there are no ifs, ands or buts about it, the central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resort to violence.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n During his remarks, Obama also praised Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox for his response to Kirk\u2019s death<\/a> and the ensuing manhunt, saying he was \u201cvery impressed\u201d with \u201chow he\u2019s approached some of these issues.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe is a Republican, self-professed conservative Republican, but in his response to this tragedy, as well as his history of how he engages with people who are political adversaries, he has shown, I think, that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate,\u201d Obama said, remarking that Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> \u201chas done the same thing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Throughout the opening months of the second Trump administration, the former Democratic president has used a series of public appearances at colleges and community organizations to comment on President Donald Trump\u2019s actions.\n <\/p>\n \n The remarks have frequently included pointed criticism of his successor, a marked departure from Obama\u2019s more reserved stance during the beginning of the first Trump administration.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents vermin, enemies, who need to be \u2018targeted,\u2019 that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we\u2019re going to have to grapple with, all of us,\u201d Obama said Tuesday night.\n <\/p>\n \n Speaking at Hamilton College earlier<\/a> this year, Obama chided his Trump for threatening universities and law firms, calling it \u201cunimaginable\u201d and \u201ccontrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.\u201d And over the summer at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford, he suggested<\/a> that the US was \u201cdangerously close\u201d to a more autocratic government.\n <\/p>\n \n And on Tuesday night in Erie, Obama spoke out against the administration\u2019s aggressive crackdown on crime and immigration in major cities, deploying federal resources and in some cases the National Guard.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn Washington, DC, right now, you have National Guard folks deployed who are setting up checkpoints. And they\u2019re working with ICE, and you have ICE agents who are checking people\u2019s IDs and stopping traffic. That\u2019s not something that we\u2019ve seen before in a non-emergency situation,\u201d Obama said, calling it a \u201cdangerous moment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Former President Barack Obama commented on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-21220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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