In the days since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump has ramped up his assaults on “the radical left,” whom he blames for his good friend’s demise and for broader political violence — a pointy distinction from his responses to violence against Democrats.
Speaking to NBC News on Saturday, the president mentioned he desires the nation to “heal,” however added: “We’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did.”
Trump’s Saturday feedback echo remarks he made Wednesday in a video from the Oval Office hours after Kirk was fatally shot. The president mentioned in the video that rhetoric from “the radical left” is “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
“My administration will 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 mentioned in the video. The president went on to checklist different acts of political violence — together with the tried assassination of him final yr in Butler, Pennsylvania — however didn’t point out assaults against Democrats, akin to the killing of a member of the Minnesota House in June or the arson assault of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in April.
On Friday, Trump additional escalated his assaults, telling Fox News that left-wing radicals “are the problem” and implied right-wing radicals aren’t.
“The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime,” the president mentioned on “Fox & Friends.” “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
While the president did subject a quick assertion condemning the killing of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, his response to Kirk’s killing marks a extra forceful strategy in contrast together with his responses to political violence against Democrats. Trump didn’t attend Hortman’s funeral, however has mentioned he plans to attend Kirk’s funeral.
And when campaigning in California in 2023, Trump mocked the 2022 assault on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their house, according to Politico, saying: “We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, anybody know?”
He added, “And she’s against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house — which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
In current days, different Republicans have adopted the president’s lead, vowing to go after anybody who made mild of Kirk’s killing.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth mentioned Thursday that the division is “tracking … very closely” situations of army personnel celebrating or mocking the incident.
Meanwhile, Rep. Clay Higgins, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, mentioned he’ll “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate” lifetime social media bans for anybody who made a remark or put up “that belittled” Kirk’s demise.
“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” the Louisiana Republican added.
Will Creeley, authorized director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, informed NCS that such an effort can be unconstitutional.
“The government does not have the power to dictate to private social media companies what content they can or cannot have on their private platforms,” Creeley mentioned, including: “When government officials put pressure on private companies to do their bidding and censor unpopular views, that violates the First Amendment just as plainly as it would if the government itself was doing the censoring.”
NCS has reported that there’s a web based effort amongst Republicans — together with elected officers like Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and activists akin to Laura Loomer, who has shut ties to the president — to highlight social media posts and messages that make mild of Kirk’s demise and punish the posters behind the message. Dozens of individuals have reportedly been fired because of this of this effort.
In one instance, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy introduced Saturday that American Airlines pilots who had been allegedly celebrating Kirk’s killing “have been immediately grounded and removed from service.”
“Any company responsible for the safety of the traveling public cannot tolerate that behavior,” he mentioned.
Creeley informed NCS that such retribution may have “a chilling effect.”
“You may not like somebody celebrating the death of a political figure, but that is fully protected speech and, unfortunately, given the response from lawmakers, I think too many folks are going to bite their tongue,” Creeley mentioned. “We’re going to see a chilling effect, which, again, is deeply depressing and unconstitutional.”