Kirk assassination is a national tragedy in a polarized America

The killing of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy for all Americans, even those who disdained the charismatic clarion of young MAGA conservatives.

That’s because the single bullet that assassinated the 31-year-old father of two at a Utah college campus Wednesday was also a chilling assault on free speech and democracy — the only bulwarks against a quickening descent into self-perpetuating political violence.

And the risk is that America’s latest murder of a political figure will unleash unknown consequences in a nation that is angry and already confronting a fractured political era.

Kirk’s final act was a public meeting like many he’d held at colleges nationwide, inspiring young conservatives who sometimes felt marginalized on often-liberal campuses and debating young progressives who showed up to challenge him.

The Turning Point USA founder, who played a vital role in President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, was a controversial figure whose rhetoric had the capacity to insult many of his fellow citizens, especially on the left.

But he died seeking to persuade other Americans to join his political cause, using the very First Amendment to the Constitution that shields the freedom of peaceful assembly and speech even — and especially — if it is offensive to others.

“When someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened,” Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, said after Kirk’s passing.

Former President George W. Bush, in a rare statement, encapsulated the perils facing the nation after Kirk was shot by an unknown assailant who was still at large on Wednesday night.

“Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views,” Bush wrote. “It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square.”

 

The latest horror in a fast-worsening cycle of violence

There is no word on a motive for the murder, and a manhunt for the killer was still underway on Wednesday night.

Kirk’s assassination marks the latest horror in an era when political disagreements have solidified into bitter enmity that divides the country.

Only a year ago, Trump escaped assassination by inches while campaigning in Pennsylvania. A jury was seated this week in the trial of a man accused of trying to kill him in a later incident in Florida.

In June, Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband, were murdered in their home in what the FBI called a “horrific act of targeted violence” perpetrated because the victims were elected officials. Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot but survived. Another Democrat, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro escaped, with his family, an alleged arson attack on the governor’s mansion in April.

American politics is notoriously prone to assassinations, shootings and violence. But there’s a horrible feeling things are getting worse.

“Political violence has been unleashed. We can talk about this attempt or that attempt or that assassination. It’s happening both on the left and right and rational people know that, they know what the data shows,” Juliette Kayyem, a senior CNN national security analyst, said on “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday. “The commonality we need as a nation is to understand that a free society only exists when people feel they can enter the political arena as Charlie Kirk did, and say things that people like, that they dislike, and not get killed for it. This is an attack on the United States as well as Charlie Kirk.”

One fear now is that Kirk’s killing will seed more violence, reprisals and a deepening cycle of political bloodshed.

National leaders, from Trump down, must now do their utmost to keep grief and anger from sparking such a reaction.

“This is a dark moment for America,” the president said in a statement from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, calling Kirk a “a martyr for truth and freedom.”

 

Bitter fury breaks out on social media

In the hours after Kirk’s death was confirmed, politicians of both parties offered condolences, warning against more violence and calling for calm. This always happens after such tragedies. But within moments, the political rhetoric that can cause susceptible people to contemplate wicked acts fired up again.

On Capitol Hill Wednesday evening, tensions flared when Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna shouted at Democrats on the House floor that they “f**king caused this.”

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Manu Raju that Republicans needed to support gun safety measures to stop such violence. “Like enough of this. This is horrific. This is awful, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk risks an uncorking of political chaos and violence that we cannot risk in America. We cannot risk it.”

Cox found eloquence to match a moment of trauma, calling on everyone “to stop hating our fellow Americans.” He went on, “Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken … we desperately need leaders in our country, but more than the leaders we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be and to ask ourselves, is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us?”

Cox’s prayer is unlikely to be answered, judging by the vile outbursts on social media following the shooting. Some on the left posted celebratory responses to social media posts mourning Kirk, or made taunting references to the “thoughts and prayers” Republicans habitually offer following mass shootings. And some conservative social media users openly accused Democrats who offered condolences of being to blame for Kirk’s death and called for revenge.

 

Americans have always been divided, and political violence has raged for the entire life of a republic that lost half a million souls in a civil war. But Kirk’s death showed how social media is now a gathering place for those who express fringe political views with impunity. The public square that Bush mentioned is now far bigger and more easily infected by extremism.

It’s often said at moments like this that political violence and assassinations are a quintessentially American problem. After all, four presidents have been assassinated. Several more survived shootings, including Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both murdered in the terrible year of 1968.

More recently, Democratic then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Republican Rep. Steve Scalise suffered grievous injuries in shootings. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul suffered a serious head injury in an attack at his home.

In a new form of allegedly political violence, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in Midtown Manhattan. Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with his murder, was celebrated as a hero by some left-wing people on social media. He has pleaded not guilty.

But other Western nations have seen bloodshed too.

In 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. In 2002, anti-immigration Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was killed. In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated. Two British members of parliament, Jo Cox and David Amess, were killed in the course of their duties in last decade. And Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 at a rally celebrating his leadership in the Oslo peace accords.

But if political murder is not an exclusively American trait, this country seems especially susceptible to political differences turning violent, partly owing to seething differences over the very nature of the nation and the easy availability of firearms.

Whether Kirk’s murder bequeaths a new pattern of violence may depend on how his fellow MAGA Republicans react. Much will depend on Trump, a president not known for cooling tempers. The president has traded in extreme rhetoric himself. Just last weekend he shared a social media meme that implied he was about to invade Chicago, following his use of federal troops in crime crackdowns. And the president incited the most notorious outbreak of mass political violence in decades when his supporters invaded the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to reverse the result of a democratic presidential election that he lost.

 

Trump — who was close to Kirk — could bring down temperatures with rhetoric calling for calm. One option might be for senior Republican and Democratic leaders to appear together in solidarity. But in an age when each side blames the other for fomenting violence, that’s impossible to imagine.

In a troubling turn to his eulogy to Kirk, Trump on Wednesday implied that his response would be an intensifying of his law-and-order crackdown and his own authoritarian tendencies. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country,” he said. Trump specifically mentioned only political violence committed against Republicans.

In April 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, then campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, had the painful task of announcing Rev. King’s assassination to a mostly African American crowd in Indianapolis. Kennedy said, “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”

Kennedy went on, “The vast majority of White people and the vast majority of Black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.” Kennedy’s words might also apply to the political divisions of today. His speech is more poignant in retrospect since he was himself assassinated two months later.

But in the aftermath of another horrific assassination that struck directly at the foundation of America’s promise, it’s hard to be hopeful.

“We can’t solve our problems if we can’t talk to each other,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor and cardiologist who treats many members of Congress, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday. “And we can’t solve our problems if we are going to kill each other.”