Arizona Senator Mark Kelly appears on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’
NEW YORK (KYMA) - Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" Monday night.
During the interview with Colbert, Senator Kelly talked about the consequences of political violence in the United States and his personal experience with the issue.
"In 2011, I got a call. I was in Houston, Texas. Gabby was in Tucson meeting with her constituents, and I got a call from Gabby's chief of staff who just very simply said to me, 'Gabby has been shot.' Didn't have a lot of information. Hung up from that call. Little while later, I get another call from her, and she gave me really devastating news that she had been shot in the head. And, later that day, on an airplane from Houston to Tucson, I found out through the media they pronounced her dead. That lasted for about 30 minutes. I was there with my kids and my mom, and I got up and went into the bathroom. I was just crushed.
About ten days ago, I went right back to that day, thinking about Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk's wife, and the devastating news she received and how this is such a punch in the gut. Now, to some extent, I was able to recover. Gabby was alive. [Erika's] husband died. Their kids will never know their father. They are so young. So, this is, you know, really, really challenging for these people. Nobody deserves this."
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.)
Kelly also said while he didn't agree with Kirk on certain things, he said, "One thing I did agree is that he had freedom of speech rights. And I would go to war to defend that."
He also talked about how disconnecting from social media could reduce division saying in part, "If we go too far, we're not going to be able to get back [to where we were before]...If folks can just put down the social media, try to disconnect and try to have real conversations with real people over these issues, we'd get to a much better place."
Later in the interview, Kelly highlighted how he's pushing to lower healthcare costs for families while saying President Donald Trump would rather shut down the government.
"Let me make this perfectly clear to everybody. This is a fight over the cost of your health care. That's all this is about. The president says no. He says he would prefer a government shutdown," he expressed.
To watch the interview in full, click here.
