While yesterday there was much invective on the right against the left because the victim of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a well-known MAGA figure. So the left must have done it! That’s their thinking.
Vox, Eric Levitz, 11 Sep 2025: The right’s vicious, ironic response to Charlie Kirk’s death, subtitled “They’re calling him a martyr for free speech as they demand a violent crackdown on progressive dissent.”
And
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 11 Sep 2025: MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer Blames Kirk’s Death on Right Wing Watch, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and ‘Left-Wing Influencers’
And dozens of others, especially on Facebook.
\\
Then today, the suspect was found and arrested, and it turns out he’s a 22 year-old white guy from a MAGA Mormon family living in southwest Utah obsessed with guns.
NY Times, 12 Sept 2025: What We Know About the Suspect in the Charlie Kirk Shooting, subtitled “The suspect, 22, was arrested in southwestern Utah after a friend had contacted the authorities, officials said.”
Has anyone on the right apologized for implicating anyone and everyone on the left? Of course not.
(Some on the right had immediately implicated the trans community because the killer’s bullet casing were engraved with TRN… but that’s the mark of the Turkish bullet manufacturer.)
The suspect isn’t talking, so little is known of his motivations.
\\\
Of course conservatives don’t “believe” in statistics. But Paul Krugman offers this, obviously written before the suspect was found, but the chart is still valid.
Paul Krugman, 12 Sep 2025: Waving the Bloody Shirt, subtitled “We don’t know who killed Charlie Kirk. We do know who’s trying to exploit his death.”
\\\
And Trump is still being Trump.
Robert Reich, 12 Sep 2025: Trump’s cynical use of the Kirk assassination, subtitled “Rather than appeal to the better angels of our nature, he appeals to the worst of our demons”
The reaction by Trump to the horrendous assassination of Charlie Kirk has been as irresponsible as anything Trump has done to date to divide our nation.
When bad things happen, presidents traditionally use the highest office in the land to calm and reassure the public. The best of our presidents appeal to the better angels of our nature, asking that we harbor “malice toward none.”
Trump consistently appeals to the worst of our demons, as he did Wednesday night after the shooting when he said:
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
I don’t know at this writing who was responsible for Kirk’s death, and Trump certainly didn’t know when he made these remarks Wednesday night. But for Trump to blame the “radical left” — a term he often uses to describe the whole Democratic Party — is an unconscionable provocation that further polarizes Americans at a time when we badly need to come together.
Again, who are these “Americans” who support Trump and Kirk, who espouse values completely at odds with those of the Constitution, not to mention the NT?
