Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, young conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a group for campus conservatives, was shot at a rally at Utah Valley University north of Provo. He was declared dead at a local hospital shortly thereafter.
Kirk was 31 with a wife and two children. He gained a national audience by going to college campuses and debating liberals. He had a daily talk show and was very active on social media. He was a strong supporter of Donald Trump, who will no doubt miss his organizing abilities. He ran a major get-out-the-vote operation for Trump in 2024.
Police believe Kirk was shot from inside a building, the Losee Center, about 500 feet from where Kirk was speaking. The suspect escaped and a hunt is now on for him or her. Authorities initially arrested a "person of interest," but most outlets are now reporting that the "person of interest" was actually more like "oops, wrong guy."
The script for this one was a little different, at least in some ways. On the Democratic side, quite a few politicians took this as an(other) opportunity to make the case for gun control. Utah House Minority Leader Angela Romero (D), for example, said that gun violence is horrible and goes both ways. She blamed Utah's lax gun laws. She noted that anyone can legally come to a college campus with a loaded gun. How are students supposed to feel safe? She said that while she didn't agree with Kirk politically, what happened is horrific.
Gabrielle Giffords, a former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head near Tucson in 2011 and miraculously survived, said: "I'm horrified to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah. Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence."
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) who—you may not know—is running for president, got on eX-Twitter and declared: "The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form." An agreeable sentiment, but it feels like he's overselling it a bit. We find Romero and Giffords to be much more genuine here. In any case, these are just three examples; the list of Democratic politicians who said things along these lines yesterday is very long.
Among the Democratic rank and file, the response often took a different tack. Back in 2023, Kirk hosted an event right after a school shooting, and (rather callously) decreed: "I think it's worth to have a cost of—unfortunately—some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment. That is a prudent deal." That remark, and the footage of him making it, were posted and reposted to social media tens of thousands of times yesterday, and read and viewed millions of times. Other folks took notice that literally the last words that Kirk ever uttered were a couple of comments about mass shootings, in which he villainized trans people and (implicitly) Mexican immigrants. Still others observed that Kirk was a full-throated supporter of Donald Trump, who for years has used the threat of violence against his enemies as a tool. The obvious implication here, as regards Kirk, is something along the lines of "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." A not unsubstantial number of lefties (at least, we assume they are lefties) went beyond implication, and were rather more forward about their feelings, declaring that they were glad Kirk is dead, that he got what he deserved, etc.
On the Republican side, the general focus among leadership was about how these acts of violence must stop. That includes Donald Trump, although he expressed it in typical fashion in a video message delivered from the White House:
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.
And just hours before Kirk died, Trump sent this message out on his social media platform:
The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a "Quick" (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY. There can be no other option!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Either Trump doesn't see how his own rhetoric is part of the problem, or he just doesn't care.
To take another example from that side of the aisle, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) jumped straight to the heart of the matter: Political violence must stop, he decreed. People should stop shooting each other. He didn't mention how he would bring this about, however, and certainly didn't mention whether Congress had any role in the matter.
Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT), to give a third example, offered words that seemed heartfelt:
We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. To ask ourselves, is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? I pray that that's not the case. I pray that those that hated what Charlie Kirk stood for will put down their social media and their pens and pray for his family, and that all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans.
We wish he had stopped there, but Cox felt the need to saber-rattle, and so punctuated his remarks by observing that Utah has the death penalty, and he intends to see that punishment imposed on the shooter. Again, does he not see how that undermines his message? Or does he just not care?
The response from many rank-and-file Republicans, particularly on social media, was just... soul-crushing. Blame was heaped upon liberals, libtards, Democrats, and Democrat-fascists in general. Many, many righties said that the blood of Charlie Kirk is on the hands of Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris, or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), or Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), or all of the above. There were many calls from the MAGA rank and file, to the MAGA rank and file, to begin preparing for the war that is coming.
It is abundantly clear that many conservatives are deeply upset by Kirk's death, in a way that we've not seen after other such deadly incidents. Several readers wrote in to note, for example, that there was also a school shooting at a high school in Colorado. That story was the 12th one listed on Fox's website. The 11 stories above it were all about Kirk.
This deep sense of loss was even expressed in the halls of Congress, where several members lost emotional control. The House observed a moment of silence, or at least tried to, but it was broken by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who decreed that "silent prayers get silent results," and demanded that an out-loud prayer take place instead. Before the members could respond to that, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) burst into tears and shouted that the Democrats were responsible for all of this. Several Democrats responded by wondering why the victims of the school shooting in Colorado were being ignored. The sniping, from both sides, continued for several minutes thereafter.
In the end, of course, nothing is going to change. There are a couple of presidential assassinations that produced some meaningful response thereafter (e.g., James Garfield's assassination led to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act), but that's about it. Other assassinations, school shootings, mass shootings, etc. sometimes generated a strong emotional response in the immediate aftermath, but even if they did... the "reform impulse" faded. There will be no new gun laws in response to Kirk's murder. Nobody will tamp down the rhetoric (in fact, there's every chance the rhetoric will get worse).
The really scary thing, however, is this: Republicans are really, really angry and really, really upset about Kirk's passing. And, as we wrote just yesterday, the Trump administration is actively searching for a predicate act to justify making war against Democratic-run cities and states. And please remember again, that term "war" is not our term (we actually used "invasion"). No, it is Trump himself who used that word, in the context of his future plans for Chicago. And on top of all of this, the White House would also love a distraction from Jeffrey Epstein (more below).
What it amounts to is this. If and when the assassin is found, let us hope that he is a straight, white, Christian man. It's odd, and somewhat perverse, that such a thing should matter so very much, but it does. If the assassin turns out to be gay, or trans, or Black, or a Democratic socialist, or just a Democrat, or an immigrant, or Mexican, then god help us all. (Z & V)