First and foremost, this was an assassination. Part of the furious effort by Democrats, the news media and their dupes (or converse) to spin this crime into something other than what it obviously was is to tie it to mass shootings (It’s the guns’ fault!), and most despicably of all, the Capitol riot. The last was the tactic of Illinois’s Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker. See, if it’s all Trump’s fault. But while riots are certainly political violence, none of the drunken fools who descended on the Capitol were there to kill anyone, and indeed did not kill anyone.
Because this was a political assassination, just as the two attempts on Trump’s life were assassination attempts, and the “Bernie Bro” attack on the GOP Congressional Baseball Game team on June 14, 2017 was an assassination attempt. We’ll be hearing whataboutism spin using the Gaby Giffords shooting in 2011: you know, the one where the mainstream media blamed Sarah Palin because she used a crosshairs graphic on her map of vulnerable Democratic House seats? Eighteen people were shot and six were killed: that’s a mass shooting, and the shooter was bug-house crazy, believing the government was trying to control his thoughts. (He was, after all, a schizophrenic.)
Other things to ponder:
1. Poor Matthew Dowd, who was fired From MSNBC for his Charlie Kirk comments. He must have felt very safe when he implied on MSNBC that it was Kirk’s “hate speech” that got him killed; MSNBC hosts and guests had made far more offensive statements, and Dowd was just part of that culture. Ex-MSNBC demogogue Joy Reid recently ranted on her YouTube show about Trump being “supposedly shot,” saying, “He’s got these magical doctors who claimed that he was shot in the ear, but his ear, I guess, grew back. He had a Dukal bandage on one minute, no bandage the next. We can’t get a medical record from this alleged assassination. He was supposedly shot. We have nothing. We’ve got no—we can’t even ask.” This is MSNBC. I really don’t have as much sympathy for Dowd as my words suggest: he was ABC’s fake “moderate” on its Sunday Morning show and always displayed a strong partisan bias toward Democrats. Dowd’s sudden firing for “inappropriate” comments on Kirk were meant to send the message, “Too soon!’
2. Katie Tur, another Axis propagandist, kept her job after saying, “Steve, people are really upset, and they start lashing out online, and they start blaming others for what led up to this. I mean, we see it when Democrats are targeted. We see it when Republicans are targeted, and we’re seeing it with this. Anna Paulina Luna, who is a representative from Florida, has put this out on X she’s blaming the Democrats. She’s blaming the rhetoric the Democrats use it, use calling Republicans fascist. She’s saying you are the hate.” Gee, why would repeatedly calling Republicans and Donald trump fascists who are trying to end elections, destroy democracy and make people “disappear” in black SUVs convince someone that it was prudent to kill them?
3. Speaking of Biden’s 2022 MAGA Is An Existential Threat to Democracy speech, Ethics Alarms previously noted Minnesota Governor Tim “Knucklehead Waltz’s fearmongering speech just this Spring. He said in part, “Now, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we have university students being swept up and shoved into unmarked vans, and fathers being tossed into Salvadorean gulags without a hint of due process.”
Gee, why would anyone who believes that idiot feel that resorting to violence is a patriotic duty?
4. Van Jones, one of CNN’s house anti-white racists, called Kirk a racist hate-monger just the day before his murder for saying that the Charlotte miller targeted his victim because she was white. Oddly, Jones never made the same point about Black Lives Matter’s protests and riots, which were predicated on the assumption that officer Derek Chauvin’s negligent killing of George Floyd was based on racial animus—a theory that has no evidence to support it at all.
5. The progressives at Bluesky, the social media platform for progressives who can’t stand dealing with opposing political opinions, are almost unanimously celebrating Kirk’s murder. Here’s a nice one: “Fuck everyone trying to find some nugget of decency in that shitpile.”
6. The New York Yankees held a moment of silence for Kirk before last night’s game. For such a perpetually unethical baseball team, the Yankees are remarkably capable of sudden outbursts of kindness and class.
7. Several pundits and conservative figures are opining that the murder was a warning, and that no outspoken Trump supporter or conservative can feel safe. Others are saying that enraged conservatives are likely to seek an “eye for an eye.” Another commenter called Kirk’s death “Archduke Ferdinand bad.” All three guesses may be correct.
Ethics Alarms 
6. In the minor-by-comparison world of comic books, DC Comics has fired trans writer Gretchen-Felker-Martin for this gem of a comment on, where else?, BlueSky: “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi b-tch… Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie.”
https://cosmicbook.news/dc-comics-cancels-gretchen-felker-martin-red-hood
A link to this article was posted on Facebook with one commenter lamenting, “It you go on blue skye it’s crazy the amount of people defending her, saying it should be expected, that she was just making a joke etc. This was not time to make a joke and I’m kind of surprised how open the hate is on the platform that wasn’t suppose to be hateful.”
Surprised at the hate on BlueSky? Where has this guy been?
“ ‘It you go on blue skye it’s crazy the amount of people defending her, saying it should be expected, that she was just making a joke etc.’ “
From another thread: “Expect to see a tsunamic cacophony of Schrödinger’s Douchebag comments from Lefty.”
PWS
Yeah, seriously, a joke? Let me make a joke like that the next time a transgender person is murdered and see if I can get away with saying it’s a joke.
A couple of weeks ago, I was angry at something that happened at work and I ranted about it for awhile, even though there was nothing I or Mr. Golden could do about it. He finally told, quite wisely, that I was acting as if I wanted to be angry about it.
These are terrible, terrible people and they thrive on being angry because they want to be angry.
“they thrive on being angry because they want to be angry.” Bingo.
We have a non-trivial percentage of the population who are addicted to anger and outrage (by which I mean psychologically addicted, the way people can become compulsive gamblers who cannot stop even as it destroys everything else of value in their lives).
This keeps these rage addicts feeding at the trough of media outlets that tell them every day what outrage of the day they should be angry about. And this has proven to be an effective business model for said media.
Exactly. (anti-) Social media feeds the savage beast.
As Jack noted, Jeeze Louise, the Dems dragging Mark Kelly around to every network was pathetic. But probably totally predictable. Talk about a false equivalency…
We never know at this point what kind of inflection point this moment is, or where it will lead. I have often thought that events like the Trump shooting would be the match that lit the fire. I have thankfully been wrong about most of this, so I will decline to try to read the tea leaves.
I have seen a lot of online anger, but it has been mostly modulated anger. That in itself is a significant distinguishing characteristic between the rhetoric of the right and left in such cases. If Charlie Kirk had been a high-profile leftist, we’d most likely be hearing calls for violent vengeance. I have seen none of that — not saying it doesn’t exist, it probably does, but it is neither common nor pervasive.
But that does not mean that the anger will not blow up, especially if the shooter is caught and turns out to be what most of us fear.
Also, I have some concern for the reaction of the administration. As usual, President Trump sets his better angels right beside the guy with the pointy horns on his shoulder, and lets them both speak. This is the kind of event that can be used to justify a lot of bad stuff, and Charlie Kirk was well known by almost everyone in the current administration, and by all reports, virtually impossible to dislike.
The combination of the brutal murder on the Charlotte train and this assassination in close proximity has even me, who didn’t pay that much attention to Kirk, with my head spinning and inappropriate thoughts encroaching on my day. It is hard to assimilate this much horror — it almost reminds me of 9/11, even though it is only two people. I think that is largely due to the fact that both events were perpetrated (most likely) by fellow Americans, and caught on camera in dreadfully lurid detail.
Assassinations, particularly of the innocent (and Kirk was an innocent despite his activism) strike home in a way that mass murder does not — it is personal rather than indiscriminate, and directed rather than circumstantial. To me, that makes it even more jarring and galvanizing. We are living that famous Chinese curse about interesting times, and Kirk’s assassination brings home to me why that is a curse.
In closing, I will point out that while the rife shot that took Kirk’s life was not extremely long, the assassin doubtless had significant shooting skills, at least that of a skilled hunter or fairly long-term practice. It is not an easy thing to take a life, much less a human life, and to handle the stress of that and execute a 200-yard shot at a human target is… pretty exceptional. It may not be likely, but there is a significant chance that this was done by a professional killer. If so, he will likely escape justice. In fact, that may be how we know.
“Also, I have some concern for the reaction of the administration. As usual, President Trump sets his better angels right beside the guy with the pointy horns on his shoulder, and lets them both speak. “
Glenn, would you like to elaborate on this please? What are your concerns with Trump’s remarks?
Specifically, I am concerned about his remarks regarding political rhetoric, and his admonition that it “must stop right now.” This kind of remark may be boilerplate, but I am always concerned when I hear it. This rhetoric, that is the demonization of conservatives, will absolutely not stop, and he can take no action consistent with the First Amendment to stop it.
True threats, yes. Rhetoric, no. This is the kind of event where the follow-through could lead us to common cause with the censors.
I know, Trump, but still, it gives me pause. The solution to such rhetoric is exposure and ridicule, not an implied threat of prosecution.
The President is simply calling out the left for it rhetoric of hatred, that led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and many other assassination attempts. I do not think the President is incorrect here. Are you suggesting that there is no relation between leftist violence, and the radical tone of the political discourse of the Democrats and the mainstream media?
The President calls all Americans to commit themselves to values as free speech, citizenship, rule of law, patriotic devotion, and love of God. This address is not a call to censorship.
CVB wrote:
The President is simply calling out the left for it rhetoric of hatred, that led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and many other assassination attempts. I do not think the President is incorrect here. Are you suggesting that there is no relation between leftist violence, and the radical tone of the political discourse of the Democrats and the mainstream media?
Simply calling out the rhetoric is fine, but it doesn’t actually matter if the rhetoric is related to the violence — this type of hateful rhetoric is always present, on both sides. Right now, it is much more prevalent on the left, but it is far from absent on the right. I have seen rhetorical calls for “war” on the right. The First Amendment protects non-threats.
But when the President says this rhetoric “must stop,” it gives me pause. Trump has always had a poor understanding of what free speech actually is, and his tendency is to call for its suppression when it suits his purposes.
No, this speech was not a call for censorship, but I know Trump is thinking about ways to shut up the radical left. He almost always defaults to that kind of thinking, and when he champions free speech, he is absolutely not talking about free speech for the left.
Further, the speech Trump is referring to is not just continuing, it is amplifying. I have seen many posts from leftist forums celebrating Kirk’s death and speculating on who should be next. This is horrible and unethical, but it is also protected.
That’s what concerns me. This is personal for Trump, because he knew Charlie Kirk pretty well. If he stays on the reservation, then I will be happy. Find the perps, find any people who aided or funded him/them and throw the book at them. That’s his job. But let the speakers speak, hateful or otherwise.
I know the speech of the left is protected. But doesn’t the President have the duty to shame the left for this violent speech? Doesn’t the President have the prerogative to mount the bully pulpit on this issue?
The Presidents words are not what chills free speech. Leftist cancel culture and violence chills free speech. And assassination is the ultimate cancellation.
No doubt it is personal for the President. It is also personal for him because he himself survived two assassination attempts.
It is time for the administration and the GOP to show they have a pair of balls, lest the country devolves into civil war.
Missing item two.
Suggested edit:
2. This item intentionally left blank.
Charlie Kirk himself left a tweet not too long ago about the leftist assassination culture. I got the link to this tweet from the Federalist. Reading the articles at the Federalist makes me feel really gloomy. Well it is 9/11 and is normal to feel gloomy at 9/11, but today I hardly see any references to that day in 2001. I am afraid that 9/10/2025 may be just as consequential a day for the USA as 9/11/2001, and it may require a similar forceful response from the Trump administration and Congress as this assassination may be a precursor for civil war.
“Well it is 9/11 and is normal to feel gloomy at 9/11, but today I hardly see any references to that day in 2001.”
Well, you know, 9/11 was just that day when some people did some things…
There’s a guy who has stood on the bridge above one of our major interstates and waved an American flag every morning on 9/11 for the last 24 years. He was out there today.
Another commenter called Kirk’s death “Archduke Ferdinand bad.”
A co-worker made almost this exact comment yesterday.
This was bad. Really bad.
Leftist TwitteX ghouls are gloating and opining that Kirk might now support their chimeric “gun control”, if he could. I prefer to imagine he would be more likely to respond with something like this:
We should remember that the majority of murders in the US are committed by those in democrat party-supporting demographics.
Can we let the depredations of crazed and violent democrats be used by those same predators to attempt to lay the blame on others, or curtail the rights of their victims?
Fuck you, no.
(That last line might be a bit more speculative than the rest, though it has become a common retort of 2A supporters weary of trying to reason with wishcasting, illogical, anti-Constitutionalists.)