Megyn Kelly Rips Ta-Nehisi Coates For Attacking Charlie Kirk: “Now Would Be A Good Time For You To Shut The F*ck Up”
Megyn Kelly reacts to an interview where “New York Times” scribe Ta-Nehisi Coates told his NYT colleague Ezra Klein that Charlie Kirk’s “hate” was a “powerful, uniting force” on the right.
MEGYN KELLY: Ta-Nehisi Coates went on with Ezra Klein of the New York Times and he had an issue with Ezra who had written a very nice piece after Charlie died complimenting and crediting Charlie for being willing to debate and to talk to the other side and Ezra said that he admired that. So here it started, I’m going to play a couple soundbites actually, it started with Ta-Nehisi Coates trying to shame Ezra Klein for having done that. EZRA KLEIN, NEW YORK TIMES: One thing I wrote about in that piece that I do worry about is I worry we are already in a cycle of political violence, of mimetic violence. I think about Pelosi, I think about Shapiro, I think about the near assassination on Trump. I think about when after that happened, I thought about me, I thought about you, I thought about all kinds of people I know, right? So I do think there’s just something about when violence takes hold that you like that there’s something about it that it begins to breach all lines. That was part of my reaction too. TA-NEHISI COATES, NEW YORK TIMES:You know, I think all of that is understandable but I guess, was silence not an option? EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, silence to me was not grieving with people. Like I felt it was important as someone who is liberal, as someone who’s a voice, that there are moments like that. MEGYN KELLY: And there Ezra Klein was totally right and Ta-Nehisi Coates is disgusting. After Ezra Klein says, and he’s not even talking about us, Stu. It’s us, it’s our people who are getting shot like Trump, like Corey Comptori, like the other two people who are at the Butler rally who got shot. Charlie, dead now at age 31. It’s our people who are getting shot and killed, okay? It’s actually not Ezra Klein. I don’t want anything to happen to him or any leftist. But let’s be real about who’s facing the risk right now. But he’s thinking about himself, okay, we’ll take what we can get. He’s thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates getting shot. That’s obviously what he’s saying. So therefore he had to say something against political assassination. I mean, I guess we’ll take what we can get, crumbs from the left. But even the crumbs are a problem for Coates. Was silence not an option? I mean, they don’t care. They don’t care that we’re getting killed. You heard it right there. Why would you say anything, anything at all, anything kind about this hateful man? And I’ll get to the specific comments on Charlie. He objected to the mild praise Ezra Klein offered in that article as a means of preserving life. STU BURGUIERE, PODCASTER: Very true. And I cannot wait for your deep dive on this. I thought what Ezra Klein wrote after Charlie’s death was great. I thought it was awesome. And it was very rare that I feel that way reading something from someone on the left. I mean, it was, you know, again, you’re right. In some ways it’s crumbs. I mean, you kind of wish it was more from some of these people, but I thought it was important that it was noted from someone on the left that this guy tried to do politics the right way. And I think the left has a real struggle on their hands because, you know, you have someone like Ezra Klein who’s talked about this, you know, this abundance idea on the left, a way to kind of reform the left and do a vision that maybe the middle of the country won’t absolutely hate. And when I look at that politically, I’m like, gosh, you know, there’s something to that potentially. Like, I’d be worried about that as a conservative who wants, you know, conservative ideas to win. It’s much more threatening politically than what we see on the left from someone like Coates, like someone from like Ibram Kendi. But what we see on the left over and over and over again is the incentives are all there for you to go farther and farther to vilify Charlie Kirk, to celebrate him, his death even. And that is, I think, I don’t think there’s a chance that the quote unquote sane left can win that battle over on that side. And that’s a scary thing for our country. I mean, I think it’s probably easier to defeat in elections, but it’s a scarier thing for our country. And the more hopeless that side of the of the world becomes, we see it. We see the results. We saw it in Charlie’s case. We’ve seen it in cases like Minneapolis burning down cities through the George Floyd era. We’ve seen a lot of political violence. Even these left wing databases are starting to admit that now left wing political violence is more prominent than right. MEGYN KELLY: And even the ones that are admitting that now, Stu, are removing from their calculations, which are acknowledging it’s left wing violence these days. They’re removing from their calculations, the BLM violence, the protests that we saw against Tesla trying to burn down Tesla dealerships. So many of the left wing causes actually get eliminated. And then things like the murder of Melissa Hortman, House Speaker in Minnesota, get blamed on the right wing, even though that guy was saying he did it under imaginary orders from Tim Walz, for whom he worked at one point. Okay, here he doubles down. And here’s why he really wanted as recline to just remain silent. TA-NEHISI COATES: I don’t take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes soothe ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance, warmth, that these are powerful forces. I believe they are. I also believe hate is a powerful force. I believe it’s a powerful, powerful, unifying force. And I think Charlie Kirk was a hate monger. You know, I really need to say this over and over again. I have a politic that rejects violence, that rejects political violence. I take no joy in the killing of anyone, no matter what they said. But if you ask me what the truth of his life was, you know, the truth of his public life, I would have to tell you it’s hate. I would tell you, I’d have to tell you it is the usage of hate and the harnessing of hate towards political ends. MEGYN KELLY: I got a question for you, Ta-Nehisi. Was silence an option? Maybe silence was a better option for you as his family still grieving him and he’s barely in the ground. Maybe now would be a time for you to shut the f*ck up and stop talking about somebody you didn’t know at all in hateful terms and driving up the hate meter on right wing thinking, which is what Charlie was guilty of, as many of us are still making public appearances and trying to live. OK, maybe that’s something you could think about in the future. I can’t say it better than Mark Halpern said it when he reacted on After Party with Emily Jaschinski. MARK HALPERIN: That guy was not speaking on teleprompter. He was speaking off the top of his head. So maybe he regrets saying what he said. But f*ck him, because this man was not a hater, just not just manifestly not. And there’s so much evidence on the public record. You didn’t have to know him personally to know that he wasn’t a disagree with him. He said Charlie said some things I didn’t disagree with. He said some things I didn’t particularly fancy, but he was not a hater. And and and he’s got a widow and two young kids and so many friends who loved him. And this guy’s on the National Town Square talking bullshit about someone he didn’t know. This is what’s wrong with the desire for people to make money and get a claim off of saying false negative things about people they don’t know. It’s a real fundamental problem that’s existed throughout human history. But now in the digital age, you can do it and you can you can reach millions of people. So f*ck him. MEGYN KELLY: Perfectly put.