Turning Point USA founder and close Trump ally Charlie Kirk was assassinated by what appears to have been a radical leftist who was infuriated by Charlie’s social conservatism, and the response from much of the Democratic Party has been to attack the right for being furious over the whole situation rather than admitting their party’s base has a violence problem.
As background, many Democrats are particularly mad that President Trump and those in his administration have decided to avoid the path of the RINOs and instead repeatedly and loudly call out the fact that the radical left appears to have killed Mr. Kirk, and that many on the radical left celebrated his murder.
That drove Democrats like Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to the point of fury, as they showed when they appeared on cable news programs in the days that followed Kirk’s murder and attacked President Trump for his “rhetoric” rather than admit that their own party and its message are clearly at fault.
Klobuchar said as much when she appeared on MSNBC’s “The Briefing” on Thursday, September 11, and attacked Trump and Republicans. She began, “It’s not about how I’m doing. It’s my state and we did not just didn’t lose Melissa and the other legislator shot and Melissa’s husband, we also had all those kids shot in that church just a few weeks ago.”
She then tried to frame the incident in which a transgender individual attacked a Catholic school and murdered the children who were worshipping God as a “both sides” problem, insisting, “And while that wasn’t political victims, they were eight and ten year olds, that was a political manifesto that was left from that shooter, including just all purpose hate at Hispanics and blacks and President Trump. And it was just across the board.”
She then took the opportunity to call for gun control, saying, “So it has made me think a lot about what’s going on right now. Some of it is guns, you saw an assault weapon. A lot of it’s guns used in the church in this case, not an assault weapon. But it’s also about the hate that we see online and how people are imitating these crimes and what triggers them. And I think our country and our leaders have to take a long look at what’s going on right now and make a lot of changes in how they’re talking to people.”
That’s when she started attacking “rhetoric,” insisting that “hate speech” is at fault. She said, “There are some people who are much more into this very intense rhetoric than others. They’re going to have to look at it. I’m not going to name names right now, but there are clearly that is going on. Then you have got the platforms themselves that allow misinformation, that allow hate speech.” Watch her here:
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Also chiming in was Senator Mark Kelly, who appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, September 15, and said that Trump should be calling for unity with those who celebrated Kirk’s assassination. He began by saying, “Well, Charlie Kirk and I didn’t agree much politically. I’m Democrat, he’s clearly a Republican. He was one of my constituents. The one thing we did on is his right to be out there speaking about issues on college campuses like he was last Wednesday. He had every right to be there. I will give him a lot of credit. He gave people a platform, and he would listen to people across the aisle. I had a difference of opinion from him.”
Continuing, Sen. Kelly insisted that “unity” is needed, saying, “I think it’s hard to say. This is one of those moments, I think, that people will remember. I think it will have a long-term impact. I hope it can be a positive one. I hope people and start to think about are they getting their information from people who are trying to exploit us or people who are trying to unify us?”
Then, taking the opportunity to attack President Trump in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, Kelly said, “We’ve seen this week from the governor of Utah, who I got to give a lot of credit to, who has tried to bring this country together. We have not seen that from the President of the United States, and I don’t think we can expect to. I’ve seen it from my senate colleague from Utah, John Curtis, you know, who is very thoughtful about how he’s approaching this. So my hope is that people go to those individuals that are not trying to exploit this tragic event.”
Watch Sen. Kelly here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video