Political discourse in America is now pockmarked by the President’s own violent language
WASHINGTON DC – Charlie Kirk was in the middle of answering a question about gun violence in America when he became its latest victim on Wednesday.
At the launch of his “Prove Me Wrong” national tour, he was inviting members of the 3,000-strong crowd to try to shift his faith in the core positions that animate President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Twenty minutes into the event, a member of the audience was challenging Kirk’s view that “instead of banning assault rifles, we should ban gender-affirming care for kids”. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the questioner asked.
“Too many”, Kirk answered, eliciting loud cheers from the crowd.
“The answer is five,” the questioner continued. “Now, five is a lot, I’ll give you credit, but do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” he added.
Kirk sought to clarify the question: “Counting or not counting gang violence?” he asked. At that very moment, a single shot rang out across the crowd, delivering a wound to Kirk’s neck that would prove fatal.
In many ways, Kirk went to his grave at the age of 31 in exactly the way that he lived: unshakeable in his determination that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is leading the country towards a great moment of national revival.
The canopy under which he was sitting bore the slogan “American Comeback”. He died wearing a white T-shirt with the word “FREEDOM” emblazoned in block capitals.
At the White House, there was shock as news of the shooting spread. One staffer gasped after seeing the first newsflash on her phone, and raced into the building, in her haste alerting members of the press corps to the attack.
Trump took to social media, first to call for prayers for Kirk, then – less than two hours later – to announce his death. The President knows that he may not have won the keys to the Oval Office in 2016, much less returned to the seat of American power last January, had it not been for Kirk’s “Turning Point USA” movement and its mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of young voters.
Even so, having seen one of the leading lights of the American right cut down by a bullet, and having himself been the victim of two attempted assassinations during last year’s election campaign, Trump still has no answers to offer those in America wondering how the country’s epidemic of political violence can be brought under control.
Worse than that, he can also be accused of orchestrating and fuelling a febrile political atmosphere across the country in which political discourse is now pockmarked by the President’s own violent language, his loathing of his opponents, and – in January 2021 – his support for a mob that engaged in a deadly rampage on Capitol Hill.
In an Oval Office address posted on Truth Social on Wednesday evening, Trump calling Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom”, and said rhetoric from the “radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”.
Today, it’s conservative right-wingers who are in mourning, but just three months ago it was Democrats who were grieving after a lone gunman assassinated a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and injured another lawmaker and his wife. Authorities said the suspect had a hit-list of elected officials, all of whom were Democrats.
Afterwards, Trump said that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated”. But he failed to attend the lawmakers’ funerals, and refused to call Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, calling Kamala Harris’s former running mate “whacked out… a mess… I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
In April, a man also broke into the official residence of Pennsylvania’s governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro. He set fire to the building, forcing the governor and his family to evacuate the compound at around 2am.
It took a week before Trump telephoned Shapiro to express concern, and at a cabinet meeting dismissed the alleged assailant as “probably just a whack job”.
Kirk himself saw gun violence as a necessary evil, which underpinned his determination to protect gun rights in America.
“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal,” he told attendees at an event in April 2023, voicing full support for the constitutional amendment that guarantees the right of Americans to “keep and bear arms”.
Today, the Maga movement is in mourning because of that tragic bargain.
America awaits news of the motives for Kirk’s assassination, and the capture of the person responsible. But politicians and activists can only wonder who among them might be next.
