Charlie Kirk slammed for ‘ableist’ complaint about LA sign language interpreters

With devastating wildfires in Los Angeles leaving at least five people dead and forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate, we’d like to think most people would agree that making emergency information accessible to everyone – such as through American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation – is of paramount importance.

Yet, Turning Point USA founder and right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk has, for some reason, complained about the access provision at press briefings from the emergency services, branding it a “distraction” and a “joke”.

In a post on Twitter/X on Wednesday, Kirk wrote: “Okay, seriously, can we stop giving half the screen during these crisis briefings to sign language interpreters? Closed captioning exists.

“I have nothing against the hearing impaired of course, but this is a joke.”

He went further on The Charlie Kirk Show, telling viewers press conferences had to “get back to basics”.

“Can we please just go away with half the screen during these emergency briefings to the sign language interpreters? I have nothing against, obviously, people that cannot hear, but there’s closed captioning.

“I mean, this is just over the top, we can’t do this. We gotta get back to how it used to be.

“It’s just too much. It’s a distraction, is what it is. The reason is they do these emergency briefings for fires or terrorist attacks, and you’re looking at this and you’re not listening. I don’t like it.

“Closed captioning’s perfectly fine,” he claimed.

According to a 2006 paper published by Gallaudet University Press, approximately half a million people in the US are American Sign Language (ASL) signers.

As for the term “hearing impaired”, America’s National Association of the Deaf says it is “no longer accepted by most in the community” because it is “viewed as negative”.

“The term focuses on what people can’t do. It establishes the standard as ‘hearing’ and anything different as ‘impaired’, or substandard, hindered, or damaged.

“It implies that something is not as it should be and ought to be fixed if possible,” the non-profit writes.

And deaf and hard of hearing Twitter/X users have been quick to point out that closed captions and ASL are very much not the same thing and cannot replace one another – captions use written English and grammar whereas ASL has a different sentence structure (syntax):

Indeed, as mentioned in a reply by an ASL interpreter, English is not the first language of ASL signers:

As for suggesting live captions as an alternative, one hard of hearing account explained that these “often misspell words”:

Others made the pretty morally sound point - already mentioned above - that making sure everyone can access emergency information is kind of a good thing:

This has led to Kirk being branded “ignorant” for not grasping the distinction:

And “ableist”, too:

An estimated 2,000 buildings have been scorched in the wildfires, with 330,000 people without power in the region (according to PowerOutage.us) and California governor Gavin Newsom confirming that 7,500 firefighters have been deployed across Southern California.

Meanwhile Kirk's tweet shared a TikTok clip of a press conference held on Wednesday, in which LA County fire chief Anthony Marrone said: "We have four large fires burning in LA County at this time.

"We have well over 5,000 acres that have burned [in the Palisades fire], and the fire is growing. We have no percentage of containment.

"We have over 2,000 acres burning at this time [in the Eaton fire], and the fire continues to grow, with zero per cent containment."

Important information, we'd say.

Kirk has not yet responded to the criticism.

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