The killing of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and preeminent leader of the young MAGA right, has stirred an outpouring of sorrow and condemnations of political violence from members of both major parties.
Mr. Kirk died on Wednesday after he was shot while speaking to roughly 3,000 people at Utah Valley University. He was at the Orem, Utah, campus launching his “American Comeback Tour,” in which he engaged college students across the country in provocative, sometimes fiery political debates. Officials at a news conference said they believed the shooting was “a targeted attack towards one individual.”
While the motive for the shooting remains unknown, Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox called it “a political assassination” and urged all Americans to engage in self-reflection.
Why We Wrote This
While the motive behind the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk remains unknown, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called it “a political assassination.” Some experts say concerted leadership is needed to stem such violence.
“We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be,” he said. “To ask ourselves, is this, is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? I pray that that’s not the case.”
Mr. Kirk’s fatal shooting comes at a time of heightened political violence in America against Republicans and Democrats alike – including last year’s assassination attempts against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump; an arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro; and the slaying of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, also a Democrat, and her husband in June.
Leaders from both parties strongly condemned Mr. Kirk’s shooting. “Utterly devastating,” wrote Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on X, adding: “Every political leader must loudly and clearly decry this violence.” “Political violence is NEVER acceptable,” posted House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. President Trump ordered the nation’s flags lowered to half-staff.
Violence and threats against elected officials and public figures have spiked in recent years, as political rhetoric has darkened and grown more existential. Officials from the two major parties have repeatedly decried the violence and urged restraint, but polarizing and dehumanizing speech has also become far more commonplace. And though some data suggests that recent political violence has actually decreased voters’ hostility toward the opposing party, incidents like what happened on Wednesday afternoon remain far too common.
To many, America feels like a tinderbox. And it might require a sustained effort – and bipartisan political will – to get back to a more civilized place.
“The last era of political violence, at least at the scale we’re witnessing now, was in the 1960s and 1970s – and it took a long time to come out of that era,” says Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “I imagine that the country will come out of this era at some point, but it’s hard to see how that happens. It’s hard to see how institutions, individual leaders, civic society, really the culture, pushes back effectively to begin to curb its frequency and its allure and its impact.”
Many on the left saw Mr. Kirk as a reckless provocateur. He once called transgender people an “abomination” and on Wednesday was answering a question regarding transgender mass shooters when the shot rang out. His supporters saw the young Republican as a fearless defender of conservative beliefs and Christian values, willing to hold political arguments in unfriendly territory such as overwhelmingly liberal college campuses. Americans on both sides have noted that Mr. Kirk was killed while engaging his opponents openly through ideas and speech.
“Charlie believed in the power of free speech and debate to shape ideas and to persuade people,” said Governor Cox. “Historically, our university campuses … have been the place where truth and ideas are formulated and debated. And that’s what he does. He comes on college campuses and he debates.”
Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Reuters
Some politicians were quick to blame one another for the escalation in rhetoric that led to Mr. Kirk’s shooting. After a moment of silence in Congress on Wednesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida who was close with Mr. Kirk and credited him with getting her into politics, yelled across the aisle to Democrats that they “caused this.” Others on the left have pointed to Mr. Kirk’s own comments after Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in the couple’s California home, calling for a “hero” to bail the attacker out of jail.
President Trump released a video statement from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening in which he called on “all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequences of demonizing those with whom you disagree.” But he pointedly accused one side of doing the demonizing, saying: “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.”
Others say Mr. Trump himself bears more responsibility for the current combustible climate than anyone else.
“For the last 10 years, the most important political figure in the world has made a pattern of promoting and endorsing political violence,” says Peter Simi, a sociologist at Chapman University who studies extremist violence. As examples, he points to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 and the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“One of the things we know absolutely is necessary is for there to be leadership on this at the top.,” Dr. Simi says. “If that’s not there, other efforts are going to be minimally effective at best.”
Roughly three-fourths of all Americans said politically motivated violence was a “major” problem for America in an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted in June. But polling also shows that many Americans see political violence as a “legitimate method” to achieve political goals, says Brian Levin, founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino. Mr. Levin points in particular to the impact of an unfiltered and extreme information environment, with many people now getting their news and having their opinions shaped by social media.
“We’ve always balanced free-wheeling politics with civic norms, but the problem is now there are no guardrails – because the exposure to all kinds of social and political discourse is not managed or edited by the local newspaper editor or the head of the Kiwanis club or the soccer coach or the Sunday school teacher,” says Mr. Levin. “It’s an unmoderated tsunami of jetsam, coupled with accessibility to firearms.”
Mr. Kirk had been a leading Republican voice since his founding of Turning Point USA in 2012 when he was 18 years old. The organization says it has chapters on more than 3,500 high school and college campuses across the country, helping register young voters, bringing right-wing figures to speak on campus, and offering camaraderie for fellow conservatives. By 2024, Turning Point USA had grown to an almost $85 million organization. Mr. Kirk also oversaw Turning Point Action, the political action group that branched off from his original organization.
His “American Comeback Tour” was scheduled to include 14 additional events during September and October at colleges and universities across the country.
Mr. Kirk, who married in 2021 and has two small children, was arguably one of the most influential figures in the MAGA movement, becoming a close friend of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., as well as then-Sen. JD Vance, whom he promoted for the vice-presidential slot. He hosted a popular conservative radio show, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which released episodes daily.
But Mr. Kirk might have been best known for his social media activities, in which he would criticize Democrats and their policies to millions of followers on X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Mr. Kirk spoke at the last three Republican national conventions. Despite never holding elected office or an official position within the White House, Mr. Kirk has long been one of Mr. Trump’s trusted confidants.
The president has credited Mr. Kirk and his “army of young people” for helping him improve his margins among young people during the 2024 election.
“I want to thank Charlie,” said Mr. Trump at an event in January before his inauguration. “Charlie is fantastic. I mean, this guy. Don’t believe the stuff when you hear the kids are liberal. They’re not liberal. Maybe they used to be, but they’re not anymore.”
Mr. Kirk has spoken publicly about the threats he faced while growing Turning Point USA. When asked by someone in 2023 why he was filming their interaction, Mr. Kirk said that cameras were the “greatest protection” he had in a video posted on YouTube.
“We record all of it so we can put it on the internet, so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity,” said Mr. Kirk. “I think what makes this country on the verge of going to a place we don’t want it to go right now, is we’re afraid to go to places like this and have these conversations. I’m not.”
