Comedian Dave Chappelle drew criticism last weekend after leaked footage from his Madison Square Garden shows captured him joking about the murder of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.
“Since Charlie Kirk was murdered, I feel better,” Chappelle told the audience, adding that he probably should not say so publicly. The crowd laughed and applauded.
Two days later, President Donald Trump was asked in a “60 Minutes” interview whether he could forgive political adversaries Nancy Pelosi and James Comey if forgiveness were necessary to enter heaven. Trump said he probably could not. He added that he hates some of his enemies and always would.
Glenn Beck, co-founder of Blaze Media, said the two men had faced a similar question: what to do about one’s enemies. Beck described Trump’s response as honest, while noting that it was not a Christian answer. He also pointed to the legal cases, assassination attempts, and attacks on Trump’s family.
Beck said those experiences did not excuse a refusal to forgive. In his view, forgiveness is required regardless of what others do, but he would rather hear an honest answer than a sermon someone does not believe.
He sees Chappelle’s joke differently. In 2022, a man rushed the stage during Chappelle’s performance at the Hollywood Bowl and tackled him. Beck said Chappelle knows what it is like to perform with a microphone when someone decides a person’s words warrant violence. At the time, Beck said, Kirk publicly defended him.
Beck called the situation painfully ironic: Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking, and, 14 months later, Chappelle joked to a packed arena that Kirk’s murder had improved his mood.
Beck also criticized what he sees as an imbalance in the media’s scrutiny. He asked why interviewers were pressing Trump about forgiveness but not asking Chappelle whether he could stop celebrating a murdered man’s death or what the joke said about the audience members who applauded.
In Beck’s view, the toughest moral questions are being asked of only one side. Demanding grace from someone who was targeted with violence while ignoring a comedian mocking a person who was killed, he argued, is not a consistent moral standard.
