In the aftermath of the shooting that claimed conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s life, Donald Trump had an opportunity to deliver a unifying message. The president let that opportunity pass him by, choosing instead to deliver deliberately divisive remarks from the Oval Office last week in which he pointed fingers and blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s death before a suspect was even in custody.
Looking ahead, the Republican also vowed that his 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.”
The scripted comments suggested that Trump is eager to exploit Kirk’s death to use the power of the state to go after his political opponents. Four days later, The Daily Beast reported:
Donald Trump boasted his administration has launched a ‘major investigation’ into people on ‘the left’ over the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Trump did not provide details on the probe but teased an upcoming announcement as he tore into his perceived political enemies over the fatal shooting of his close ally in Utah last week.
During a brief Q&A with reporters, the president began by pushing familiar smears against Americans who disagree with him. “If you look at the problem, the problem is on the left. It’s not on the right,” he said, once again ignoring the evidence related to right-wing violence. “When you look at the agitators, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag-burnings all over the place — that’s the left. That’s not the right.”
But then he went just a bit further. “They’re already under major investigation,” Trump added. “A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left [are] already under investigation.”
Trump: " They're already under major investigation, a lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the Left. They're already under investigation."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-09-15T01:18:31.658Z
It’s an open question as to whether or not this “major” investigation is real. Trump has a track record of alerting the public to investigations that exist only in his imagination, so it’s certainly possible that he was lying about this, too.
But given the circumstances, it’s also easy to believe the president has directed federal agencies to initiate probes into his perceived political foes as part of a broader authoritarian agenda.
As for the recent pattern, the Republican’s posture in recent days has served as a timely reminder of how he approaches his duties. As a New York Times analysis explained over the weekend, “Mr. Trump has long made clear that coming together is not the mission of his presidency. In an era of deep polarization in American society, he rarely talks about healing. While other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all the people. He acts as president of red America and the people who agree with him, while those who do not are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.”
He hasn’t even been especially subtle about any of this, telling NBC News over the weekend, “I’d like to see it [the nation] heal, but we’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did.”
The problem isn’t limited to his efforts to delegitimize his opponents. Just as serious, if not more so, are the signals Trump is sending to the right. During a Fox News interview last week, for example, the president appeared to excuse far-right crimes, insisting that extremists on the right “oftentimes” have a good reason to commit acts of violence. (He prefaced the comments by saying, “Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.” His indifference, of course, is part of the problem.) Trump added soon after that his advice to the right is to get “revenge at the voter box,” though he quickly added, “But unfortunately we don’t have so many ballot boxes because they have mail-in in voting, which is totally rigged.” Or put another way, the president’s message to those on the right is that they could stick to democratic means but that might not be an entirely credible solution since, in his view, his opponents have undermined the electoral system. Kirk’s death has created an important leadership test for Trump, and he keeps finding new ways to flunk that test.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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