Kane Brown Faces Backlash After Honoring Charlie Kirk

After a tribute to the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, country music star Kane Brown faced heated criticism from all sides of the political aisle. The backlash was so aggressive that Brown says he will be taking a break from social media for a while.

The criticism began after Brown posted tributes to Kirk and to the victims of a high school mass shooting in Colorado that occurred on the same day. He received messages from fans with different political perspectives. One fan, presumably left-leaning, questioned why he didn’t also post about the murders of Democratic representatives in Minnesota. Meanwhile, another fan from the opposite end of the political spectrum was angry that Brown showed empathy for a Democratic perspective at all, urging him to “stand up” and not “bow down to those liberal POS.”

Another comment affected Brown so strongly that he responded. A fan told him that, as a Black man, by paying tribute to Kirk, he had “offended his ancestors” because Kirk was a “racist bigot who didn’t believe in gun regulations.” Brown shot back, “I’ve been called a n****r my whole life. I don’t want those people dead.”

In an Instagram Live video, Brown was visibly upset, saying that he had been “crying for two hours.” He expressed his frustration with the political divide, stating, “I don’t talk about this s–t. I don’t do politics. That’s not for me. I just want y’all to love each other, bro. It’s really not that hard.” He ended the video with a message of love and a call for his followers to be safe and to love one another.