Faith above politics

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: As we close out today, another remembrance from a former colleague, Megan Basham. She’s here now:

Well, Megan, you were on Charlie's podcast just last week, so you've met up with him a few times at meetings and conferences. You knew Charlie. I'm wondering if you have some reflection on Charlie's character and what his mission was.

BASHAM: Well, you know, as I look at the arc of Charlie's career, Mary, what really strikes me is how important his Christian faith became to him over the course of his work. I mean, you saw him as a young, 18 year old with $10,000 sort of a political spitfire come out. He had this great, fiery rhetoric. He could always command a crowd. But over the years, particularly during COVID, I think you saw how he went from politics being the most important thing to really faith and Biblical wisdom being married to his political outlook that became really just incredibly important to him. And you know, that was why he founded TP USA faith. He really wanted to encourage Christians to take those values into the public square. And I was very blessed to be invited to speak at those events several times. And, you know, I just look at Charlie and I go, that is somebody who really believed in the power of persuasion and believed in the power of “Come, let us reason together.”

REICHARD: Exactly. He didn't get mad. He listened so well to people. Well, you were probably one of the last people to talk to him in the professional realm…here’s a bit of that between you and Charlie on his podcast:

CHARLIE KIRK: Why is that pastors are so quick to talk about the drug overdose of George Flyod but they wont’ talk about this?

MEGAN BASHAM: I think it’s pretty obvious that there was a desire to curry favor…

REICHARD: clip of that, I believe, was aired on CNN…with Van Jones saying Charlie Kirk was guilty of race baiting. What was that about?

BASHAM: Yes, so and I'll tell you what's so difficult about that is it feels like we're just compounding violence upon violence. So Charlie and I were talking about what happened here in Charlotte just a couple of weeks ago, a young woman, a Ukrainian refugee being murdered on the light rail. We talked about the factors that played into that, the policies, and unsurprisingly, CNN played a clip of that. I would say they dishonestly framed Charlie's point, which was that these policies that are done in the name of racial identity politics have real victims, and they cause real harm. And so he was once again, courageously unafraid to say these things, even though he knew that it put him in the crosshairs every day, he still said them because he believed these were the right things to say.

REICHARD: Megan, are you afraid for yourself?

BASHAM: Yeah, a little bit. I'm going to be honest with you, Mary, I was in that clip that was on CNN, and you don't know if that clip angered some person, if the rhetoric that surrounded that clip on CNN got into some evil person's mind, and I'm going to have speaking engagements in the future. And you think, will I, will I bow out of those, or will I continue to speak? But then I also go, I entrust myself to the same God that Charlie believed in, to the same Christ that He trusted in, and that that's what I'm going to take and that's what I'm going to do.

REICHARD: Well, we love you. We respect you. You're all over the world right now doing wonderful things. We will be praying for your safety. Megan Basham is a former colleague here on WORLD, and now she's culture reporter for Daily Wire and a best selling author. Thank you, Megan.

BASHAM:  Thank you. Miss you guys. Love you.

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