Leading Republican voices responded to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in a wide variety of ways, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent managed to break new ground this week when he compared the slaying to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11,” Bessent said on a podcast. “Just as after 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, the ultimate culprit, was captured, we are operationalizing the Treasury, and we are going to track down who is responsible for this.” The secretary added that his Cabinet agency has “started to compile lists, put together networks.”
Putting aside the question about the propriety of the comparison, what was especially notable about Bessent’s comments was the scope of his plan. As the Treasury chief sees it, the Kirk case isn’t just a matter for law enforcement, as prosecutors move forward with their criminal case against a suspected gunman. Rather, to hear the secretary tell it, this shooting offers the Trump administration an opportunity to launch a massive and coordinated offensive against “networks” of foes.
Who’s the foe in this instance? Bessent didn’t say, exactly, but the administration has made little secret of its intention to go after the left with a vengeance. A TPM report added, “The remarks are the clearest statement yet from a senior Trump official that the administration intends to use the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination as a pretext to investigate and, potentially, charge progressive advocacy groups.”
Soon after, on the same podcast, JD Vance declared, “Political violence, it’s just a statistical fact that it’s a bigger problem on the left.” The vice president was, of course, brazenly lying: There’s overwhelming statistical evidence that proves the opposite is true.
But while it is certainly a problem that the Ohio Republican was peddling demonstrable nonsense, what matters more is how Vance and his colleagues intend to apply their nonsense. The Daily Beast reported:
Vice President JD Vance casually slipped Wednesday that the Trump administration is ‘retraining the entire government’ to focus on ‘left-wing violence.’ Speaking on The Charlie Kirk Show, Vance, 41, made the chilling remark while addressing the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “Because we have such a big problem with left-wing political violence, we have to train the investigatory and law enforcement powers of the government to focus on that particular problem,” the Republican said. “We really have to retrain the entire government to focus on this left-wing violence problem. We are doing it.” JD Vance: "Because we have such a big problem with left-wing political violence, we have to train the investigatory and law enforcement powers of the govt to focus on that particular problem … we really have to retrain the entire govt to focus on this left-wing violence problem. We are doing it." In other words, by the vice president’s own telling, the U.S. government is being “trained” to focus on a myth that the Trump White House likes to pretend is true, which would also presumably involve de-emphasizing right-wing violence, which has actually been far more common in the United States in recent decades. Pay attention to the lie; pay more attention to what Team Trump intends to do with the lie.
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."
Latest Post
Recommended
