On Sept. 10, during a public speaking event on the campus of Utah Valley University, an assassin shot and killed Charlie Kirk, a prominent right-wing activist. He was 31.
Kirk, who founded the youth-oriented, conservative organization Turning Point USA when he was just 18, was mourned by those aligned with his political viewpoints — and also by some liberals, who curiously praised his approach to politics, which were squarely of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) brand.
A few days after the assassination, the New York Times reported: “President Trump and his top advisers are escalating their attacks on their opponents in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, placing the blame for political violence on Democrats alone and signaling a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning institutions.”
The article continued: “Mr. Trump blamed the ‘radical left’ almost immediately after Mr. Kirk was shot, before the authorities had identified a suspect. He promised to find those responsible for political violence, as well as the ‘organizations that fund it and support it.’”
Trump, a vulgar and stupid person, is ready to pour gasoline on any conflagration. Again, he singled out the “radical left” as the guilty party “before the authorities had identified a suspect,” as the Times noted. Over recent weeks, the tendentious blame game escalated. Officials in the Trump administration spoke out, vowing to punish anyone who dared to criticize Kirk.
“The First Amendment protects a lot of very ugly speech but if you celebrate … Charlie Kirk’s death, you should not be protected from being fired for being a disgusting person,” Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News, as per a CNN report. “If you are a university professor who benefits from American tax dollars, you should not be celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death and if you are, maybe you should lose your job or your university should, should face a loss of funding.”
As a person too much on social media and fairly addicted to political news, I can’t recall specific posts or articles “celebrating” the assassination of Kirk. I’m not denying that such sentiments exist; perhaps, I’ve seen such intemperate remarks and just moved on. In any case, the Trumpites are rounding up legitimate criticism of Kirk’s often pernicious political opinions as a celebration of his assassination. It’s another symptom of politics in the U.S. becoming a blood sport.
The irony here is that Kirk is being remembered as a champion of free speech, and his political bedfellows are using his death — which is being cast as a martyrdom — to muzzle those who pointed out that Kirk routinely spewed vile racist, bigoted and antisemitic remarks.
Like Tucker Carlson and other right-wing pundits, Kirk propounded the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that those on the political left, Democrats and most Jews in this country, are trying to replace white voters with immigrants that tend to have swarthy complexions. This is the bogus conspiracy theory that motivated Robert Bowers to enter the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn., on Oct. 27, 2018, and murder 11 congregants during Shabbat services.
The Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on Turning Point USA points out that “Kirk promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and Covid-19 vaccines and promoted Christian nationalism. According to an article by Political Research Associates, starting sometime in 2019, Kirk spent ‘two years of discipleship under a California megachurch pastor’ Rob McCoy and ‘now says the church should accept its rightful role as counselor to and moral authority of the government.’ He created TPUSA Faith, a division of TPUSA, in 2021, which is dedicated to empowering Christians to put their faith into action. Kirk also had a radio show on the Christian Salem Radio Network.”
The ADL report also notes that at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2020, “Kirk promoted the ‘seven mountains,’ an idea associated with the dominionism movement, an ideology that argues that Christians should be involved in seven spheres of influence: government, media, education, business, arts and entertainment, church and family.” Kirk also expressed the view that Pres. Trump was on board with his Christian supremacist ideology.
In the aftermath of the Kirk assassination, the MAGA faction is engaging in a kind of McCarthyism in its efforts to exploit this recent political violence for political advantage.
The previously quoted New York Times story also mentioned that Trump “renewed his call on [Sept. 12] for prosecutors to file racketeering charges against George Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors. Mr. Trump and his allies have long claimed without evidence that Mr. Soros foments violent protests.”
The Times article continued, “‘We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people because this is more than protests,’ [Trump] said on Fox News. ‘This is real agitation; this is riots on the street — and we’re going to look into that.’”
And Trump, a creature of reality TV with a notoriously thin skin, has a particular animus for the late-night talk show hosts who mock him. He has filed meritless lawsuits against TV networks, such as CBS (Paramount) and ABC (Disney), and decried the antics of comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.
In the case of Kimmel, who night after night has directed his hilarious comedy shtick at Trump and dared comment on the Kirk assassination, the television conglomerates Sinclair and Nexstar fell in line with the president and preempted Jimmy Kimmel Live! on the ABC-affiliated stations that they own — about 23 percent of the market. Then ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be indefinitely suspended. The suspension lasted one week. Kimmel returned to the airwaves on Sept. 23; on Sept. 26, local stations owned by Nexstar and Sinclair resumed broadcasting the show.
Many people weren’t familiar with Charlie Kirk prior to his assassination. I knew about him and TPUSA over recent years. I occasionally commented on his Twitter posts; and sometimes I refrained from commenting, realizing that doing so only boosted Kirk’s status in the “attention economy.” His provocative posts engendered clicks and cash. He was pulling down more than $300,000 per year as executive director of Turning Point USA.
This is a violent country with a sad history of political assassinations. My baby boomer cohort has lived through the violent events of the 1960s. The surprise in the recent spate of political violence relates to the targets of the killers, including Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk. In any case, the Trump administration and their ilk are not helping to lower the temperature of our enflamed political culture.
Mordecai Speckor / editor [at] ajwnews [dot] com
(American Jewish World, October 2025)
