President Donald Trump reacted to the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month by calling for a new “war on terror” against left-wing American activist groups – but not everyone in his inner circle was convinced, a new report claims.
Kirk, the influential 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while debating students on the campus of the University of Utah Valley in Orem, Utah, on September 10.
According to Rolling Stone, top Trump administration officials responded to the tragedy by setting to work immediately drafting legal memos, writing blueprints for prospective executive orders, gaming likely scenarios and court challenges and drawing up lists of liberal organizations to clamp down on.
Their efforts, involving pulling all-nighters and moving at an “intense” pace, were overseen by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who reportedly declared that the administration was now “at war” with the left.
Miller brought his message to the national stage when he told Vice President JD Vance, guest host of Kirk’s podcast, on September 15: “The last message that Charlie sent me… was that we needed to have an organized strategy to go after the left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.”
Among the names singled out for targeting, Rolling Stone reports, were Antifa, George Soros, the liberal-donation processor ActBlue, the anti-Trump organizing group Indivisible, the ant-war CodePink group, and a number of pro-immigration and trans rights outfits.
But “something felt off” for several of Trump’s advisers, the magazine writes, with few “if any” believing that Kirk’s shooter was part of an organized radical left-wing domestic terror network and many dismissing the enemies identified as “a laundry list of nonprofits, liberal institutions, donors, and nonviolent groups that Trump apparatchiks like Miller had wanted to obliterate for years.”
Then came Trump’s “accidental” September 20 post on Truth Social demanding his political opponents be prosecuted.
Reports claim the message – calling out former FBI Director James Comey, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James – may have been meant as a private text to Attorney General Pam Bondi and not for public consumption.
Multiple senior officials in the Trump administration told Rolling Stone they were worried posts showing the president’s hand like this were actually making it harder for them to succeed.
Trump subsequently issued a “national security presidential memorandum” on September 25 that accused liberals of “animating… violent conduct” and hiding a terror agenda behind “anti-fascist” rhetoric, also calling for federal prosecutions.
“At the president’s direction, the Trump administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities, and the president’s executive actions to address left-wing violence will put an end to any illegal activities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
“Trump and his ilk would like to see criminal charges, trials, and convictions” resulting from their crackdown, Rolling Stone states.
They also reportedly believe that, even if it does not succeed entirely in its aims, it is highly likely to cause their opponents to be encumbered with heavy legal costs, lose funding or endorsements or revert to a “defensive posture,” inspiring a welcome “chilling effect” in the process.
“Regardless, they need to suffer,” a senior Trump official involved with the planning is quoted as saying.
