Leno said the days of “lively” debates between conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley and liberal cultural icons like James Baldwin “are gone.”

“But this is a political assassination of a man I didn’t necessarily agree with, but I certainly enjoyed listening to because, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ I don’t have to agree on everything,” Leno said. “We’re in a point in this country where if you don’t agree with everybody and everything, you take out a gun and you shoot them, and especially on a college campus?”

“I enjoy listening to the other side because that’s how I get smarter,” Leno said, adding that Charlie Kirk was smarter than him and wasn’t someone “who berated people” he disagreed with.