The Daily Signal - Selective Outrage and Political Spin: The Charlie Kirk Vigil Fallout

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

There seems to be an ironic discordance among folks that, let’s just say, didn’t share Charlie Kirk’s points of view. They claim that ‘it’s time to move on’ even when faced with a vigil being held by co-workers. Such was the case of the US House of Representatives minority party leader Hakeem Jeffries who, when asked why he didn’t attend a Congressional vigil quipped; “I had a meeting.” Or take combative positions like Virginia Speaker Don Scott who responded to Governor Youngkin who echoed a question we asked on these pages. “Is Abigail Spanberger going to denounce the ‘Nazi’ comment made by one of her supports, Chesterfield School Board Member ‘Dot’ Heffron. Scott’s social media response has since been edited but the original still exists and reads: “Spare us the sanctimonious selective outrage — you should be ashamed of yourself. You said nothing when a sitting GOP member of the Va House of Delegates said ‘Democrats killed [Charlie] Kirk’ — a blatant lie that was never corrected even after learning a Trump supporter actually killed him. Thank God, this Governor and his hateful politics will be gone in 120 days.” The edited version now reads; “…. a blatant lie that was never corrected even after learning he was shot by a man from a family of Trump supporters.” Certainly much better. The member of the House he was referring to was Delegate Nick Freitas who posted “the other side murdered him” Delegate Freitas joins us to take us much further into this and what needs to happen next. Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:    The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2284199939⁠ The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠     Follow The Daily Signal:    X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal, brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. And I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take a

moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast. You can find additional content at DailySignal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this. He was quoted by means of the modern American screen cap, which is not a bird, but it is, well, maybe it is. In our recent column regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and it's this wonderful screen cap because I have captions on it's a picture of Nick Freitas in his backyard with the phrase, he was effective right underneath it. And I think that should be a T-shirt, sort of like the opposite of the Che Guevara ones out there. And he joins us on the newsmaker line, still, especially with a special session, perhaps coming soon to the Virginia

General Assembly, a member of that esteemed body of General Assembly members. Nick Freitas, Good morning, Nick, and of course, the host of the Making the Argument podcast. How are you doing this morning, sir? I'm hanging in there, Joe. How are you? Well, you know, hanging in there is a great way to put it. I feel like that there is a battle royale going on for people who are taking too much time to associate themselves with the Charlie Kirk assassination and other ones who are trying to run screaming from it as quickly as. they can, like Delegate Scott, a Speaker of the House in Virginia, who has seemingly found that, you know, three, four days, that's enough. I'm done with this. Time to get the rhetorical knives

back out there. Gosh, it seemed like George Floyd and Congressman Lewis got a whole lot more grieving time than Charlie Kirk did on the public stage, Nick. Well, yeah, of course, because grieving over Charlie Kirk is not useful to them. I guess not. And so it's not time for us to get over it and move on because as we saw demonstrated on social media and not just among you know again some weirdo in their mom's basement we saw it demonstrated among prominent members of the media prominent politicians they all either overtly said charlie got what he deserved or they kind of subtly go along and try to create arguments why someone could think that and so yeah this is but i mean part of what it is is they never quite understand what time it is they never

quite understand why we would grieve because after all, don't we realize they're the ones that are actually the victims, right? So even when an avowed leftist gets up and murders a husband and father in front of his children, even when hundreds of thousands of people rush to social media because they cannot contain their glee to talk about how happy they are about it. The real victims are the Democrats. The real victims are the left, always, and at all times. Why? Well, because of the oppressor a pest dynamic. Yeah. They're the oppressed.

And so anything they do, anything they say, anything they act out, all of it, all of it is ultimately morally justified. And any problem we have against anything they do is never morally justified. And so it doesn't surprise me at all. Isn't this the ultimate in gaslighting where, you know, the abusive spouse tells their other, or the significant other, that it's their own fault, that they're, that they're they do this to them? I think it is, I think it's absolutely the pinnacle of gaslighting, but they think it's perfectly justified. This is the part where, like, Don Scott got upset with me,

because I said that what's going on here is not a civil debate among fellow countrymen. It's a war between diametrically opposed worldviews that can't peacefully coexist. So, oh, that can't, that can't be true. Really? Have you looked wrong? That's the problem. Yeah. That must not be true. Okay, well, I got it. Okay, well, I just want to offer something out here.

Has the other side of the aisle been regularly engaged in demonizing the other side of the aisle for practically any disagreement we have? Yes. Okay. Do they perpetually call us racist, bigots, sexist, threats to democracy, fascist? Yes. Do they also say that it's really, really important for us to. for you to combat them, otherwise we're an existential threat to the country. Yes.

Do you also allow for this worldview, which essentially says that you can do anything you want to oppressors because they're oppressors? And if you're the oppressed, you have to do anything you can do in order to achieve liberation, decolonization, whatever other buzzword they happen to be using this week. Right? Yes. Oh, okay. Well, I guess I'm not the crazy person for noticing that you don't like this very much.

and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do, sort of abandoning everything we believe and adopting your worldview that will save us from your animosity. Okay, you tell me, Don, how are we supposed to peacefully coexist if I'm not willing to be trampled on, right? But we still got to live in the same country. Well, isn't that, Nick, you lived through 2017 in much of the same way, did, and you in the General Assembly, you know, trying to work with people who were, you know,

riding like a bull from hell, the racial discord when David Duke held his little reunion party in Charlottesville, that in the aftermath, I was told by everyone and their grandmother that I needed to be open-minded. I needed to listen to the other people, that that was our problem is that we weren't listening to one another. And here was the guy who was the patron saint almost. And I don't want to start that one because there's already people asking Pope Leo if he might consider Charlie's miracle of turning all these college kids around. But he was quote unquote, the patron saint of listening to people. He was inviting people to come and say, okay, tell me what you think we should do. And I will tell you why I don't agree with you. And it was work.

I guess as your podcast said earlier in the week, it was effective. And that must be why they can't stand him so much. Yeah, because the question was, is that if you wanted to go after somebody on the right that was more incendiary, you could have fixed. And I'm even saying there's some people that there's some people to claim the title of the right that say things or believe things that I completely disagree with. There's other people on the right whom I may agree with who say things, you know, in a more force. manner. But here's my question. If you look at the entire spectrum of speakers on the right, you have to go past dozens of them, like prominent speakers on the right. You have to go past dozens of them, maybe hundreds of them, to get to Charlie Kerr when it comes to saying

things that might be considered controversial. Charlie was the guy that, Charlie was the guy that, as he said, wanted to sit down and have a conversation. And there's a number, there's just a number, every time he went to a college campus, you can find demonstrations of this where somebody comes up and is either very, very angry or disagrees with Charlie, but is willing to have an honest conversation with him. And you see Charlie kind of explain his position. You see him talking to somebody that he disagrees with and saying, you know, what I want for you is, you know, for you to be happy. And, you know, none of this was insightful. So why she'd him? Right. Why killed him? Well, and the answer to that is because he was affected. Because it was worth.

And here's what this tells you. Here's what this should inform us. This idea that, oh, no, no, no, they killed Charlie because he was hateful, because he was insightful, because, okay, if you wanted to do that, right? If you wanted to claim that, there was a whole lot of people they could have targeted. This guy could have targeted. That would have been a lot closer to some of those accusations than he make against Charlie. But no, you chose Charlie. Why?

Probably because you were able to recognize that the his experience. what he was doing, how he was doing it, was so effective, so impactful that that's what you wanted to shut down. And what it demonstrates is for all the people, and by the way, it's not just about the shooter, it's how every, it's how so many people on the left reacted to it. Right? Oh, yeah. What that tells me is, what that tells me is, it doesn't matter how nice we say it. It doesn't matter how nice we say it with them. Right. Because they've immediately diagnosed this as evil bigoted hateful fascists, and what do you do to evil, bigoted hateful fascists, right? This is the part I want to say to the Don Scots of the world, the guys that are trying to straddle

the fence on this, or at least made some vague attempt to do it, right? You guys were part of the people calling him a racist, vaguenated, sexist fascist. So if you really believe that about him, why are you so upset? Right. Why are you saying that, well, we should never resort to this sort of thing really you call everyone literally hitler well would we have all felt that if somebody had literally killed literally hitler right if the answer is no well then you're full crap you know what you're saying you know why you're saying it and you have a generation you have a younger generation that has been fed this garbage sometimes since elementary school and then when they act out on it either by committing the act itself or praising it all over tic-tok you want to sit back here and like oh my goodness

I can't believe this happened. Screw you, dude. Nick Freitas is visiting with us and a follow-up to our pieces on this assassination, but also now here we are in the future. We're living the future as it comes out where you have a gubernatorial race full of endorsers that have said like Dot Heffron, the Chesterfield School Board member, who, by the way, when did quitting get to be like, well, in six months I'm going to leave? No, what was that? Four months? She said, all right, I resign, but I'm going to stick around until December 31st and vote on a bunch of key stuff. And then I'll leave in December. Because she said, I thought we shot national. I thought we used to be okay with shooting nationalist socialists. I say it that way. She said Nazi, but I always like to remind people what a Nazi actually was. And then Don Scott, as you said, who's sparring with you and the governor over his,

the governor's simple point of saying this is this is not what we need in the commonwealth. And Don Scots, you know, spare us the sanctimonious selective outrage from this guy when he's out there saying that it was a Trump supporter that killed Charlie Kirk when it wasn't at all. Well, I mean, did we second to be honest? I would hope. But here's the problem, right? Here's the problem. When you believe that the truth is subjective.

And I don't mean we can't have different perspective on the perspectives on the truth. I mean, when you believe the truth itself is nothing but different perspectives, then, of course, you're going to pick whatever perspective works better for whatever your political objective is. And that's what he's doing. It works better for Don Scott to believe and to project that this was some sort of praised MAGA person. That's right. That's right. He was a MAGA person who was living with his trans boyfriend. Yes, that sounds like nagat to a T, Don Scott.

That's an incredible analysis you've conducted there. I'm very impressed. No, that's just a narrative that is useful. And when it's no longer about truth, it's about useful narratives. Well, then, of course, you picked a useful narrative. And that's part of the problem that we have right now, is the super of the House of the Commonwealth of Virginia is more than happy to spread. What he knows is false, because I will say this about Don Scott.

He's a smart guy. He knows this is garbage, but the truth isn't useful. If the truth is not useful, but what they consider to be their moral in-state, well, then you get rid of the truth. You don't change the way you think about the insate. You don't change the way you think about the events. You change the way you think about the truth. So with the early voting beginning, and the key races, the House hanging in a potential balance,

maybe the Republicans can overcome the massive bags of money that the Democratic Party have sent into 13 different House races, I think, is not the only way to change their idea on this narrative and using narrative like this in the future is to show them that it doesn't work, that it doesn't win them elections. Because if, and I agree with you, that's exactly what Don Scott was doing. He's trying to win elections by saying that. the things that he thinks will win him in an election. The only way to really punish that is to prove him wrong and to overwhelmingly defeat that ideology at the ballot box.

No, you were 100% correct. There's so many people asking, well, what do we do now? Okay. Well, firstly, you have to understand the nature of what just took place. So Charlie was killed in part because this particular worldview has been allowed to run rampant. This particular rhetoric has been successful. The reason why it's been a lot of are using this rhetoric and the reason why they have for so long now is because it wins them elections. So the question is, what can you do right now? Well, there's a lot of things. But first and foremost, if you live in Virginia, the rhetoric is on the ballot. Yep. So if that rhetoric keeps the House of Delhi, it's already going to have the Senate. It's not going to have the Senate for at least another two years.

If that rhetoric keeps the House, wins the Governor's Mansion, wins the Lieutenant Governor's Office, when does the Attorney General's office? Well, then that rhetoric is what you will get more of. The policies that you get will be fueled around that rhetoric. That rhetoric will manifest itself not just in political speeches. It will manifest itself in law. And those laws will do everything from confiscation, or at least, I'm sorry, not confiscation. They'll just make you a felon for ordering and for owning certain things.

That rhetoric, that law will manifest itself in what your children are taught. in K through 12, it will manifest itself in the way that they treat you as a business owner. It will manifest itself in the way they treat you as a property owner. It will manifest itself in how you make decisions with respect to what kind of car you will drive. It will manifest itself in pushing a particular narrative on energy that will cause your bills to go up significantly, is already causing your bills to go up significantly. Like all of these things will be impacted. Some of them will be enshrined in the constitution.

And so it's important to understand that the rhetoric's on the ballot. And if you don't keep the rhetoric from getting complete control of the Virginia General Assembly and the executive branch of the Virginia government, well, then that rhetoric will now turn into the force of law. And now when they call you those things, there will be legal justification behind it. I noticed that. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So it's up to you. Like all you got to do.

So it's up to you. one of the easiest things you can do to push back against that kind of rhetoric is just what you said. If you want to defeat it, stop handing elections and power over to it. If you can start to stop it there, here's another thing I will say about Don Scott. I know that Don Scott believes all this garbage. In fact, in a lot of ways, I think he doesn't, but I think he finds it useful. So stop making it useful.

Right. And the first way that you can do that is making sure it loses at the ballot box. Yep, because then they'll stop doing it because they'll have to go find something new that they think will work at the ballot box. Nick Freitas on with us, current member of the House of Delegates, host of the Making the Argument podcast, Nick. I noticed the national news media is still using almost a two-month-old poll to go out and say that Abigail Spanberger is leading the gubernatorial polls by more than she most recently is. As a matter of fact, the most recent poll has John Reed leading the lieutenant governor's race over Ilhan Omar. No, Gazala Hashmi. I'm sorry, I always mix them up ideologically anyway. So that being said, would it be interesting to see if Roanoke College or Christopher Newport University or, heaven forbid, the Center for Politics at UVA could conduct a poll now in the post-Charlie Kirk?

zeitgeist to see what the what the Virginia voter might be feeling, especially when they start to lean on the scales and say, who's got enthusiasm? I think you need to start seeing the conservative-minded Virginians might be a little bit more energized right now than they were before. I'd like to see those polls, would you? Well, so here's what I would say. I would love to, yes, I think it would be, and if you are any sort of quote unquote respected pollster, these are the sort of, of things that you would want to see. These are the sort of things that you want to analyze because you actually see yourself as a data scientist. The next question would be, okay, how do we, how do we word our questions open and honestly in order to get the proper, in order to get

the proper response. Now, proper response, I mean that which actually reflects reality, and then do an analysis on that. But the problem is, is that the same, in many cases, and there are some good polling institutions out there. But in many cases, the same academic institutions, which have been fomenting this kind of hatred toward Charlie Kirk and anyone that believes anything similar to him are also the people housing the organizations which actually conduct the polling. And once again, when you have institutions of higher education that are not concerned about truth, they're concerned about narrative, I start to wonder what the use of their polls are, what the purpose of their polls are.

Now, that doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that whatever they do, read the questions they ask very careful. in order to elicit the responses they did. Because most people look at the headline, poll shows X. And I would encourage people, whatever comes out next, dig into those numbers,

because you're probably going to see something interesting. And by the way, one of the most interesting things we've been seeing over time lately is that the youngest part of Generation Z, especially with young men, that is actually starting with young women, it's actually now beginning to turn with young women as well.

Our young men are more conservative than they've ever been. Because they've grown up being, they've been told that there's something wrong with them just by nature of being young men. And they're tired of it. They don't buy it anymore. Charlie Kirk was someone that gave him a voice. There's a lot of young women now that are saying, I don't buy into this. I'm looking around and I'm seeing a lot of people miserable having adopted this worldview.

And Charlie Kirk gave them a voice. And the response to them killing Charlie Kirk was not to say, oh, well, I guess I'll just. I guess I'll just pack it up. There's no one to speak for anymore. No, the response to that is, oh, you thought that would stop this? So. Yeah, and I think that that is the best response. Last question for you, Nick Fratus on with us Culpepper Republican, although I really

would like to ask you about the possibility of a special session. I want to ask you about the last part on this Charlie Kirk story. We had the great Horace Cooper from Project 21, Black Conservative Network. jurist who's beaten back things like the Voting Rights Act in front of the Supreme Court. So he knows a little bit about this stuff. And he expressed to me that he was very concerned about these kind of norm busting events. And he pointed to September 11th as another norm busting event where apparatuses were created in the aftermath to calm electorates. But then we saw how those apparatus got used under Barack Obama against Donald Trump. Is there a concern that we overreact

and create new apparatuses? Pam Bondi is taking a lot of flack for suggesting that they start targeting hate speech from the Department of Justice level. We saw what Merritt Garland did from the same office just a year ago. So is there a concern in that? And what should the listener be thinking about there? I don't think the concern is so much, quote, an overreaction, because I know right now I am so tired of certain Republicans that stand up and be like, well, you know, let's just calm down the tone and both shut up. Go sit in the corner.

We're angry and something needs to be done about this and you guys have never given us answers except for compromise. So first and foremost, that's where I'm at with that. I'm tired of hearing it. But the important part of this is to understand something. I remember after 9-11, I was in the 25th Infantry Division. And I remember, I was trying to get out before 9-11 because I thought, like, you know, I'm not going to be in a peacetime arm. I'm going to go be a police officer or something like that.

And then 9-11 happened, and I knew what I was doing. You know, I knew what I was doing. I was going to go to war. And I volunteered for special forces. And I did a couple tours in Iraq. And I look back now on a lot of our response to 9-11, and we had a great deal. of, I think, righteous anger and the necessity, there was a necessity to respond to do something about it. However, I think I look back now at a lot of the responses that we had, we got it wrong.

We could have done it better. That's not to say we didn't accomplish anything, but there was other things that many of those who thought look back and say, we shouldn't have done that, we shouldn't do that, we should do this. Okay, good. So we should use that knowledge. Okay. And one of the things that we have to recognize is what are we trying to preserve? What are we trying to fight?

So let's properly diagnose the problem. And that starts with not buying into these people that want to say, well, it's both sides. No, no. No, there's a real problem here and it needs to be addressed. And then we figure out the proper mechanisms in order to do that. And no, we don't adopt the tactics of the left. We don't return evil with evil. But by the same token, but the same token, no, it has something has to change now.

And we have to recognize what the nature of this fight is because it's not just fairly political. This isn't the same old fight over Republicans and Democrats deciding how transportation funding is spent. This is far more fundamental. And so there are going to be, no, do I, for instance, do I believe that the Department of Justice should be going after people that engage in acts of domestic terrorism, is far more rigor than they have before? Yes. Do I believe that when people like Speaker Don Scott carry bills that allow felons, violent felons to get out of jail early, we should be rebelling against that because it carries with it this idea that when people commit acts of violence against innocent people, well, the real person to blame us society. We failed this person because we didn't have enough government.

No. No, the response should be that guy goes to jail and he stays there as long as he is a threat to innocent people who want to live in peace with one another. So we don't get things that Charlie Kirk. So we don't get things like this girl getting stabbed to death. In Charlotte. And show it. So that's what it is. I don't think we need, I will never buy into this idea that it's like, oh, well, now we're going to come up with our own categories of hate speech.

Look, we already have laws on the books that decipher between saying popular things and same things that are, and the things that are illegal, slandered, libel, etc. If you want to enforce that appropriately, fine. Enforce it appropriately. But that's what we should be careful about. We should be careful to understand that part of what the left tries to do is they try to go to us in. They try to encourage us into a particular direction what they will come back and then condemn us for. And so that's what I would say is we need to be careful. As Sol Olinsky, the author of the, you know, the agitator's manual to destroying a country rules for us.

medicals, a book he dedicated to Lucifer, as he stated, their action is our reaction. They brought us, they choke us, they hit us. And then the moment we respond, oh my gosh, I can't believe you did that. Well, look, we have to respond, but we should respond in such a way that makes it very, very clear what we want and what they want, what the truth is and what their narrative is. And that's what's going to be so important going forward because I planned it. I don't want to make the same mistakes we did last time. I want to be able to respect Charlie's legacy.

And I want us to be able to carry on in such a way that ensures long-term generational change. And that does include defeating what I believe has manifested itself as not just an incorrect ideology, but a truly wicked and evil one. And ultimately my fight, ultimately my fight is not against flesh and blood. I'm a Christian like Charlie, and I believe what the Bible says is true about this, but by the same token, the same chapter in Romans that commands me to not return evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good also commands me to abhor evil. And we've gotten a little too cozy with evil in this country. Right.

We've misunderstood what it means to battle evil, is not to just accept it and say, well, you know, eventually it'll die out because it just foments like Kudzu. And, Nick, I appreciate it as always the host of the Making the Argument podcast. And for now, the Republican delegate from the Culpeper area in the Virginia House of Delegates, I appreciate your time for so much of it. And, you know, you stay safe, you and Tina and all the kids stay safe. I know my wife worries about me when I go out. But I think we need to try and strive to be just as effective as Charlie Kirk was, even if it puts us at our own peril.

Oh, thank you, Joe. I appreciate it. Stay safe. That'll do it for today's show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new episodes from The Daily Signal. Every weekday you can catch top news in 10 to keep. up with the day's top headlines in just 10 minutes and every weekday afternoon catch Victor Davis Hanson's thoughtful analysis for the Daily Signal. If you like what you hear on this show, would you take a minute and leave us comment we love hearing your feedback. Thanks again for being with us today.