​'Like a son': Ex-GOP lawmaker shares scathing Charlie Kirk essay written before shooting

Former congressman and Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh published a scathing op-ed on right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk Friday, a write up he said was written before Kirk’s killing but chose to share anyway as to not “whitewash” Kirk’s controversial history.

“Many of my readers were surprised this week when I said that I thought of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk like a son,” Walsh wrote on his Substack “The Social Contract,” in a portion of the op-ed written after Kirk’s killing.

“...In spite of our close relationship many years ago, Charlie and I were estranged. Like so many families in America, Donald Trump divided us. Charlie went down one road, and I went down another.”

Walsh went on to cast blame on President Donald Trump for his falling out with Kirk, and made sure to clarify that he felt the right-wing influencer “did not deserve” to be killed. However, he did share his previous write up on how “f------ sick” he was over Kirk and his ilk making money “off dividing us by race,” particularly in the wake of the recent deadly stabbing incident on a North Carolina train.

“You've all heard about this horrible subway stabbing in Charlotte; a beautiful, young, Ukrainian refugee woman was stabbed to death by a madman, a true mental case,” Walsh wrote.

“A Black man stabbed her and walked off the train, and this woman cried and bled to death right there on the subway. Right away, Charlie Kirk, people on Fox News, and so many on right-wing media screamed, ‘it's being ignored because it was a Black killer and a white victim!’”

The stabbing incident, which occurred last week, saw Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, fatally stabbed on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, who is Black, had a long criminal history, making the incident ripe for Republicans to seize upon as part of the Trump administration’s rhetoric on crime.

Trump called the suspect an “animal,” and other conservative figures, Kirk included, seized on the incident as well, with Kirk’s final social media post on X being related to the killing.

“If we want things to change, it's 100% necessary to politicize the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska because it was politics that allowed a savage monster with 14 priors to be free on the streets to kill her,” Kirk wrote, his last post on X before being shot and killed Wednesday.

In his write up on Kirk prior to his death, Walsh accused the right-wing influencer of intentionally stoking racial tensions.

“Let’s be clear about something: Charlie Kirk and all these f------ hustlers and dividers on the right are purposely using race to inflame and divide,” Walsh wrote.

Read the full post here.