Vice President JD Vance lashed out at former President Barack Obama during a Fox News interview with Jesse Watters over his comments following the assassination of right-wing youth activist Charlie Kirk in Utah.
"Barack Obama says your White House is dividing the country, and you're exploiting Charlie Kirk's death to attack Democrats," said Watters.
"We're not exploiting Charlie Kirk's death to do anything except for achieve justice," said Vance. "And I think if Barack Obama — I haven't seen that comment, Jesse, but if he said that, that's absolutely disgusting. What we're trying to do is understand how young people are being radicalized and who is funding all these efforts of radicalization."
"We saw this in the summer of 2020," Vance continued. "Now, thank god that wasn't primarily, actually 20 people, over 20 people died in the riots in the summer of 2020. That is political terrorism. But it's not just the people who were killing the cops. It's not just the people who were engaging in throwing the Molotov cocktails in the riots. Where was the money coming from? Who was organizing this violent activity?"
"That is not going after Democrats, unless, by implication, you're saying every single Democrat is involved in planning political violence. If that's true ... then we're going to get to the bottom of the truth, and we're going to stop the political violence," he added. "And we're going to do it however we have to do it, of course, within the constitutional limits that Charlie loved so much."
Obama outlined in his speech about the Kirk assassination that President Donald Trump used the tragedy to seek to "identify an enemy," and that the horror the nation feels over political violence should not be exploited to stifle honest debate about the ideas Kirk pushed — which include the idea of abolishing the Civil Rights Act.
"When it happens to some, even if the person is on the other side, it happens to all of us, and we have to be clear and forthright in condemning it," said Obama. "That doesn't mean that we can't have a debate about the ideas that people who were victims of political violence were promoting."