President Donald Trump is facing intense backlash over a video he released hours after Wednesday’s murder of prominent conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk, pointing to rhetoric from the “radical left.” Kirk’s killer remains unidentified and at large.
“For years,” Trump said in his address from the Oval Office, “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.”
Trump denounced “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible,” which numerous critics noted has been a regular feature of his rhetoric.
And the President vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that funded and supported, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
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Critics also noted that Trump listed several acts of violence largely attributable to left-wing extremists, but omitted those committed by right-wing extremists.
“Trump doesn’t know who killed Kirk,” noted Mother Jones’ Dan Friedman. “So when he blames the left, we know he is lying, attempting to use tragedy to silence critics. That’s not honoring Kirk, it’s exploiting his death.”
“Why did the President of the United States only decry ‘radical left political violence’ and list killings by Democrats in this address tonight?” asked retired award-winning political reporter Doug Sovern. “What about the assassinations & murders by Republicans? That is shameful, divisive, and inciting—exactly what fuels political violence.”
Some critics warned that Trump may be using the assassination to target his opponents.
California Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener said that “using the Kirk assassination to brand as ‘terrorists’ those who don’t support him or who criticized Kirk & threatening to ‘find’ them. This from the guy who pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists. It’s straight out of the fascist playbook.”
“The president,” warned CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere, “is laying a pretext for investigations and other actions against a currently undefined group of people and organizations in the wake of Kirk’s murder, in ways he has not for other murders.”
Critics accused the President of inflaming tensions instead of working to ease them.
The New Republic’s Alex Shephard said that Trump was “pouring gasoline on a raging fire as usual. utterly despicable, entirely in character.”
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Former Republican Capitol Hill communications director Tara Setmayer served up a simple four-word critique: “Divisive. Disgraceful. Deplorable. Dangerous.”
Former Republican U.S. Congressman Denver Riggleman characterized Trump’s remarks as “insane hyperbole.”
“The very thing he says he’s dismissing is what he’s propagating,” Riggleman, now an independent, wrote. “Hate. Dehumanization. Are we going to compare and contrast how many ideological killings there have been over the last ten years now? Compare right wing and left wing violence? This is wrong. This will cause awfulness downstream.”
Author and political commentator Sophia A. Nelson, a Republican turned independent, remarked, “we get a presidential address for the murder of #CharlieKirk but nothing for the murder of a Minnesota state elected official and her husband. And another MN legislator and his wife assailed. See how we got here? My tribe counts. Yours not so much.”
Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party Republican Congressman, now a Democrat and podcaster, wrote that Trump “had an opportunity last night to heal a broken/divided nation. Instead, he attacks, he pours gas on the fire, & he further divides. For the next 3yrs, the American people are on their own trying to lower the temperature in this country. Bcuz the guy in the White House is humanly incapable of it.”
TO MY GREAT FELLOW AMERICANS… pic.twitter.com/oRsrE5TTHr
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2025
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