Inflaming Tensions, Trump Threatens Political Left With Retribution Over Killing of Charlie Kirk

Despite the fact that the murderer of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk remained unidentified and still at large, President Donald Trump declared the "radical left" as "directly responsible" for the assassination in remarks from the White House on Wednesday night—comments that critics say shows Trump is more than willing to exploit the killing for his own purposes while sowing more, not less, political violence in the future.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump said that criticism of Kirk from the left was "directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."

The president didn't specify which opponents of Kirk he believed contributed to his killing; over the years the influencer, who frequently visited college campuses to debate students, clashed with and was criticized by supporters of abortion rights, gun control, and immigrants' rights. But Trump said his administration would "find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it."

Trump did not detail how the White House would determine what groups "contributed" to Kirk's killing.

"Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives," he asserted, though he did not mention any of the political violence—which is statistically more pervasive—on the political right.

The president was echoing sentiments expressed by far-right influencer Laura Loomer who has played a key role in shaping the Trump administration, lobbying for the hiring and removal of certain aides.

"It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization," Loomer said Wednesday, even before Kirk was publicly pronounced dead. "We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The left is a national security threat."

In a Thursday op-ed for Common Dreams, author and journalist Christopher D. Cook laments how "Kirk had barely been declared dead when President Trump hideously used his killing to falsely blame and attack the left."

The president, writes Cook, "seized the moment of widespread mourning to spread more hatred and division, in a reckless, angry televised speech that hurled blame at the left despite not a scintilla of evidence about Kirk's assassin or their politics."

Trump named a number of victims of political violence in recent years, including US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was shot in 2017 by a man who opposed the president; and Trump himself, who survived two assassination attempts last year.

The president did not mention the killing earlier this year of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat. The suspect in Hortman's killing was an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) also asserted without any evidence that critics of the far-right agenda that Kirk embraced were to blame for his killing, specifically suggesting that her Democratic colleagues were implicated in the assassination.

"Democrats own what happened today," she told reporters. "Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck."

Mace added that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that by her logic, Republican lawmakers "own" Hortman's assassination.

The comments from Trump and Mace, wrote Cook, only show that these are "not the people who are going to lead us out of this ugly toxic pit" of political violence now pervasive in the United States.

At Zeteo, journalist Mehdi Hasan listed several other recent acts of political violence in which the suspected or confirmed perpetrators held right-wing ideologies, including the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro earlier this year; the assault of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband in 2022; and the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.

"There is no equivalent or even similar list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years," wrote Hasan. "In fact, according to statistics compiled by the ADL's Center on Extremism, 2024 was the third year in a row in which all of the extremist-related killings in the United States were carried out by... right-wingers."

On the social media platform X, Texas Monthly senior writer Robert Downen pointed out that some far-right white supremacists had also "reviled" Kirk.

"I'm not speculating about the shooter," said Downen. "I just have been stunned how quickly people have jumped with certainty to partisan conclusions. Because in extremism spaces, the Charlie Kirk Hater-to-Nazi pipeline is canon. It's how we got a generation of antisemitic extremists."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was quick to rebuke the suggestion that Democrats or left-wing groups are to blame for the rise in politically motivated attacks or the emergence of violence as a commonplace, acceptable occurrence in American culture.

"Oh, please," she said when a reporter asked her whether Democrats should tone down their rhetoric. "Why don't you start with the president of the United States, and every ugly meme he has posted, and every ugly word."

In a podcast put together Wednesday evening in the wake of Kirk's assassination, journalist David Sirota said that "what we desperately need right now in this country are leaders who lower the temperature, leaders who will try to pull us back from the brink."

Instead, Sirota warned, "we have a president right now who seems mostly interested in using the bully pulpit to actually bully people. Inflaming every cultural conflict he can stick his nose into—all for the cause of grabbing more power and money for himself and his family."

In place of more anger, hatred, and calls for political retribution, Sirota told his audience he wanted to offer a different message.

"It's a simple message whether you are a leftist, a liberal, a centrist, a conservative, or a MAGA fan," said Sirota. "Your life has value and your political opponents' lives have value too. You can hate your adversaries' ideas, and you can fight hard for your cause, but the moment we stop seeing each other as human beings and we start concluding that violence is the answer, that's the moment we let the soulless corporations, the ruthless authoritarians, and the sociopathic demagogues win."

The "nihilism" and "greed" of too many, he added, "are creating the conditions for a civil war—one that we must all do our part to stop. Before it becomes unstoppable."