Journalist Katie Couric tried her best to get Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) to say negative things about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, but the Pennsylvania senator never took the bait and kept pushing back.
Couric began by asking Fetterman if he thought the various ways the Turning Point founder was honored were too much because of his beliefs.
“Do you think that flags should have been flown at half-staff? Do you think his body should have been flown on Air Force Two? Do you think he should have posthumously been given the Presidential Medal of Freedom?” Couric asked during a podcast interview with the senator. “I think some people felt that that was perhaps over the top in terms of mourning someone like Charlie Kirk. How did you feel about that?”
“I’d say that that was his choice and his prerogative, and that was really entirely up to him,” Fetterman replied.
Couric tried again, asking the senator if he had any “issues” with Kirk’s “rhetoric.” Fetterman said that though he didn’t agree with Kirk on most issues, he also didn’t follow what he was saying very closely.
“I’m sure you learned about them after his death, though,” Couric said.
“No, I haven’t done a deep dive on it,” Fetterman responded, going on to say that political violence was always “unacceptable” and that the video of Kirk’s death was “appalling.”
“And engaging in a debate and views I strongly disagree on, that’s part of the American democracy. And for me, that would never justify what’s happened,” he went on. “And I just chose not to take the opportunity to argue his views after children lost [their] father in the most violent, public way.”
“We have to disagree in better ways … we have to turn the temperature down,” Fetterman added.
“I think some people might say Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric was extreme,” Couric insisted. “You know, I think that’s the conversation that happened. People condemned political violence, but they also felt a great deal of discomfort with his language, suggesting that these kinds of words lead to violence. I don’t know. I’m just kind of sharing my observations as I saw the conversations unfold.”
Fetterman pushed back, asserting that nothing Kirk said meant he deserved to be assassinated.
“Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we agree that we probably didn’t agree with much of what he said. And I’m sure we both agree that you shouldn’t shoot people and you shouldn’t execute them in public,” Fetterman replied. “And I think two things must be true: that free speech … I’m an absolute free speech guy and you have the right to say these things. And you definitely also have the right not to get shot by sharing your views.”
This isn’t the first time Fetterman displayed more common sense than most mainstream Democrats. The senator said on “Jesse Watters Primetime” earlier this month that he doesn’t agree with extreme labels.
“I’m not gonna call you a fascist or a Nazi. I’m not gonna compare anyone to like, Hitler or anything,” he said at the time. “That’s wrong. And if you resort to that thing, you’ve lost the plot.”
During an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire last week, the senator said Democrats don’t even call him anymore because he refuses to blindly follow mainstream party positions on topics like Israel, border control, and the government shutdown.
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