[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on September 21, 2025.]
In the final minutes of FBI Director Kash Patel’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 16, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) acknowledged the obvious: Individuals on the left should not have celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but influential voices on the right were inflaming the situation.
The bottom line, Tillis observed, was that escalation of the rhetoric on the right was making the FBI’s job of law enforcement more difficult.
Trump Disagrees
Sen. Tillis’s analysis would have come as a shock to President Donald Trump, who blamed the episode on the “radical left.” Speaking Wednesday night from the Oval office only hours after Kirk’s death on September 10 – before the identity or motives of the assassin were known – he issued a video message from the Oval Office:
“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.”
Listing recent attacks against himself and other conservative figures, he didn’t mention violence against Democrats, including: the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband; the shooting of another Minnesota legislator and his wife; the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) residence; or the attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband. Those omissions were an important tell: Trump is going after Democrats.
[To continue reading, please click here to reach my Substack page (No paywall)]:
https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/the-ugly-aftermath-of-charlie-kirks
The Belly of the Beast 