“Daily Wire” host Matt Walsh commented on why he is not participating in the personal conflicts shattering the conservative coalition since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, during an interview with Tucker Carlson:
And the tragic reality is that a lot of the stuff we said right after he was killed turned out not to be true. Stuff that even I said, like, “You killed one Charlie, but you made a million more Charlies.”
I think we said that because we wanted that to be true. And for a brief time, it felt that way. Everybody seemed unified. People were coming together, and went to the memorial, everyone was there. It felt like a revival—almost a religious revival.
But then quickly, reality sets in. What we realized is that when you kill Charlie, now Charlie is gone. That’s what happens when you kill someone in this life. We didn’t go from one Charlie to a million Charlies. We went from one Charlie to zero Charlies. That’s what happens. That’s why assassinations happen—that’s why people do them, because they work.
That’s been the greatest tragedy—aside from the human tragedy, that a man lost his life. His wife lost her husband. His kids lost their father. That’s the great, human tragedy.
But on a national level, the tragedy is that the strategy of assassination has been proven effective again, as it has throughout human history. So now, this guy—who we didn’t fully realize was the glue holding everything together—was holding this whole crazy coalition together. It turns out it was one guy who was doing this, and his organization.
TPUSA is still around, and I respect them greatly. They’re doing the best they can. But he was the leader of the organization. He was a leader of the conservative movement. He was the glue. And now he’s gone.
It feels like everything is coming undone. There’s all this fighting going on. And for me personally, I don’t like talking about myself. I like talking about things I think, my ideas. But I don’t like talking about myself, I’m not the victimm, I can only speak from my own experience.
My experience is I consider myself a personal friend of many people on either side of these various disputes, including a friend of yours. That’s a very complicated position to be in.
What ends up happening is people on all sides shout at me that I need to denounce someone. I need to disavow them. Not just that I disagree, we’ve had disagreements, but the ressur is beyond that. Not just denounce, disavow, but condemn.
My answer has been no, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to denounce a friend. Ever.
Because loyalty is a principle. Loyalty is one of the most important principles for any person—especially for men.
If you’re on the outside, you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. When I say someone is a friend, and I feel personal loyalty to them. It doesn’t mean I just kinda like them, that means I know them personally. I can call them on the phone. I’ve shared meals with them. And often this is someone who has had my back in ways you don’t see.
Once someone does that for me, I feel duty-bound not to turn around and stab them in the back. You have my back, I have yours.
…
I think it’s about integrity, personal integrity. It’s also about having a spine.
If you denounce someone—especially a friend—because a million people are screaming at you tell you to, that’s not a principled stand. You’re doing it to make the yelling stop.
Even if it’s the right thing, doing it because people are yelling at you is the wrong reason. With a friend, it’s worse.
There’s also the basic principle of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.
