A gunman killed conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, 31, during his Sept. 10 speech at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Hours later, President Trump announced Kirk’s death on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.
“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote. “He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now he is no longer with us.” Kirk, a father of two young girls, was killed when the shooter fired at him at 12:20 p.m. Kirk’s nonprofit, Turning Point USA, is one of the largest conservative advocacy groups in America, aimed particularly at introducing American high-school and college students to political and social conservatism.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, various commentators and politicians called for retribution against the so-called “radical left” after Friday, when a suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was identified and taken into custody. Given that the suspect’s movies had not been discovered, any such assertions were baseless.
But such assertions still flew through media sites and popular personalities.
Fox News host Jesse Waters declared on his eponymous show, “This hits differently because Charlie was one of us. And Trump gets hit in the ear. Charlie gets shot dead. They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle in his neighborhood. They went after Musk’s cars. They just shot two Jews outside the embassy. Think about it. Scalise got shot, barely survived. It’s happening. We got trans shooters. We got riots in LA. They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?”
Waters’ pointed comments named incidents of political violence purportedly perpetrated by left-leaning individuals against conservative figures and paint a picture of an America divided by political preference and with the American right (Waters’ “us”) under attack by the left (“them”).
Additionally, the White House’s official X account released a video of Trump claiming that, “Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”
To be clear, political violence has no place in America, and any loss of life because of said violence is unjust. However, drawing a connection to the political leanings of Kirk’s killer, prior to discovering the suspect’s views, and a greater theme of leftist political violence is unfounded and inflammatory. Such behavior is doubly harmful during a time in American history where political tensions between the right and left are high.
This rhetoric of “retribution” and “war” only serves to spur the consumers of media personalities such as Waters to commit violent acts against their supposed attackers: liberals. Besides the inherent potential for loss of life, reactive violence could worsen trust between people with different political opinions and further divide the country along party lines. In essence, this would exacerbate the preexisting problem of political division and lack of cooperation or coexistence amongst Americans with different political viewpoints.
