Charlie Kirk assassination latest episode in current scourge of political violence

The assassination of conservative activist and television host Charlie Kirk at a speaking engagement in Utah is the latest chilling incident in a growing problem of political violence in the United States. 

The assassination follows two similar attempts on then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. Like the now-president, Kirk was addressing a crowd of supporters at a speaking event on the campus of Utah Valley University. Kirk rose to fame as a conservative activist for his mission to bring the conservative message to college students. 

But the assassination against the Turning Point USA co-founder is not an isolated incident. The organization, which Kirk founded in 2012 when he was just 18 years old to bring his message to campuses across the country, has faced threats from far-left groups and violent protests for years. Kirk had also faced personal threats from at least two individuals, who were both charged with threatening to attack Kirk or one of his political conventions. 

Conservatives' offer to debate was regularly met with violence

“Kirk and Turning Point have been targeted for years by the left with violent attacks. Rather than debate TPUSA members (which is the premise of many of their displays), students have torn down the displays and abused their fellow students for holding opposing views,” Legal scholar Jonathan Turley said in a post to X. 

“Such attacks are occurring as some leaders are ratcheting up rage rhetoric on the left, hoping to ride the anger back into power. Many of us have been warning about how the rage rhetoric is fueling political violence,” he assessed. 

Shortly after President Trump returned to office, Turley — himself a Democrat — warned that Democrats were ramping up “rage rhetoric” during a time of mounting tensions across the country was particularly dangerous.

Polling data shows that these concerns are not unfounded. As recently as last year, nearly one-third of Americans surveyed — and around half of those identifying as left-of-center — believe that the murder of certain public figures is at least somewhat justified, The City Journal reported, citing research from the Network Contagion Research Institute. 

Thirty-eight percent of all respondents, and 55 percent of those who identify as left-of-center, said assassinating President Trump would be at least somewhat justified; 31 percent of respondents, and 48 percent of those left-of-center, said the same about Elon Musk, another prominent conservative figure. 

Charlie Kirk was targeted several times

Kirk and his political events have been at the receiving end of violent protests and threats in recent years. In part because of these threats, Kirk often traveled with security.  

In 2022, a Texas teenager was arrested after making an online threat to attack a convention for young conservatives being hosted by Kirk’s Turning Point in Tampa, Florida. The man, Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez, was convicted and sentenced last year to five years in prison for the threat. On the first day of the convention, investigators say the 19-year-old Velasquez posted to social media under the name "Latino Zoomer" that the first day of the convention would be “the day of retribution the day I will have revenge against all of humanity,” the Associated Press reported. 

Then, in October, an Arizona high school teacher was arrested for online threats against Kirk and Donald Trump Jr. The suspect, Daniel Ashpes, sent a threatening message in response to an automated mass-messaging system about Kirk’s upcoming event in Tempe, Arizona. As of September 2025, there are no public reports confirming the resolution of the legal case.

Kirk’s Turning Point has also faced violent protests at events across the country. In October 2023, Kirk said staffers from his organization were attacked by "pro-Hamas supporters" outside an event in a Chicago suburb. Kirk said at the time on social media that "On the way to their cars, [TPUSA staffers] encountered pro-Hamas supporters who assaulted them, punched them repeatedly, and hit them with a flag pole before cops could pull them away to safety. All of these thugs need to be arrested and charged with hate crimes." No arrests were ever made.

Earlier that year, violent protestors shattered windows outside a similar event at the University of California Davis. Two non-students were arrested, but not for any threats to Kirk. Local media reported that one of the people arrested was charged with misdemeanor vandalism and resisting arrest. The other person was charged with vandalism, resisting arrest and threats to a police officer.

Plague of violence incubated by anti-Trump "Bernie Bro" who asked where the Republicans were 

The assassination of Kirk and the attacks and threats to his organization are part of a growing trend of political violence that has significantly escalated in recent years, beginning with the Congressional softball shooting in 2017 and culminating in two close-call assassination attempts against then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2024 election. 

While political violence in the United States did not begin with the Congressional softball shooting, that event marked the beginning of the recent escalation. 

In 2017, James T. Hodgkinson, who The New York Times reported was "distraught over the election of Donald Trump" approached a baseball field in Virginia, and after wandering a while, asking if the men playing were Republicans, opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., suffered extensive injuries, and was in critical condition after the assault. 

According to CBS News, Hodgkinson made a number of posts criticizing President Trump and expressing support for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on his Facebook page. Hodgkinson shot four other people, including two Capitol Police officers, before being shot himself and taken into custody. He later died from his injuries.

Then, in 2024, two more would-be assassins attempted to shoot then-candidate Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for president, during a heated campaign. 

Notable Democrats' history of talk of violence 

The attempts followed years of increasingly divisive rhetoric from Democrats that included comparisons of Trump to Hitler and accusations of extremism, Just the News previously reported.

For example, in 2022, then-President Joe Biden labeled Trump’s Make America Great Again movement “semi-fascism.” Vice President Kamala Harris once joked during an interview with Ellen DeGeneres about killing Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, or former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

“If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?” DeGeneres asked, to which a smiling Harris responded, “Does one of us have to come out alive?” DeGeneres' audience loved the answer, and Harris joined in the laughter with her now-infamous cackle. 

In November 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman, R-N.Y., said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Inside with Jen Psaki," that Trump “is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated.”

The pushback was swift and hard: "In the least, Goldman should be investigated by the Secret Service for this threat," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton commented. At the time, Charlie Kirk also posted that "If a Republican went on TV and said that a Democrat presidential candidate needed to be 'eliminated' they'd be raided by the FBI within hours."

Goldman subsequently apologized for his choice of words and clarified that he did not advocate political violence.

Anti-Trump people did more than just talk

The first assassination attempt against now-President Trump, which occurred during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, nearly cost him his life when a bullet fired by would-be assassin Thomas Crooks struck Trump’s ear as he stood on stage.

Just months later, a second would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, lay in wait on the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Course in Doral, Florida, with a rifle and the intent to assassinate the president. He was stopped when the Secret Service, conducting a routine sweep, discovered Routh hiding in the bushes near a fence line.

Although not as frequent, Democrats have been the targets of violence as well. Shortly following the two assassination attempts, an arsonist gained access to the historic Pennsylvania governor’s mansion grounds and threw an “incendiary device” through the window into the mansion’s piano room, starting the first fire while the state’s Democratic governor and his family slept elsewhere in the house.

The suspect, Cody Balmer, who turned himself in following the attack, subsequently entered the mansion’s dining room by breaking through an adjacent window with his hammer and deployed a second incendiary device. He fled the scene by breaking down the dining room door and leaving the property the same way he came, by scaling the fence, a report from the Pennsylvania State Police showed. 

After Balmer was apprehended by police, he admitted “harboring hatred” towards Governor Josh Shaprio in an interview with investigators. He also said that, if he had encountered Shapiro after entering the residence, “he would have beaten him with his hammer,” the affidavit reads.

After the attack on the governor’s residence, Balmer identified himself on a 911 call and said that Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, “needs to know that he ‘will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,’” according to the search warrant. 

The governor and his family were uninjured in the attack. 

Earlier this year, two Minnesota state lawmakers were the victims of a politically motivated attack. Melissa Hortmann, the state's House Democratic caucus leader, was killed alongside her husband. Another legislator and his spouse were injured in a similar attack by the same suspect, Vance Boelter. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the attack "an act of targeted political violence." 

Assassination culture makes killing palatable when politically motivated, if the correct politics are involved

The prevalence of politically motivated violence has also recently expanded beyond the targeting of public figures. The same study by the Network Contagion Research Institute found an emerging “assassination culture,” found in predominantly left-leaning digital spaces, such as Bluesky and Reddit. The subculture justifies and glorifies political violence against Trump supporters and conservatives in general.

Some of these networks’ users wield the name “Luigi” or use the Luigi video game character as coded endorsements of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson’s accused murderer, Luigi Mangione.

Since the killing, Mangione has risen to folk hero status among some radical leftists, who consider his alleged actions acceptable — or even admirable. Taylor Lorenz, formerly a reporter for The Washington Post and The New York Times, is an admitted "fangirl" of Mangione. The New York Post reported that Taylor previously said she felt “joy” about Thompson's murder and attempted to rationalize the legions of Mangione supporters.

When asked by CNN about why women were rallying behind Mangione, Lorenz said, “You’re gonna see women especially that feel like, ‘Oh my God, here’s this man who’s a revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who’s young, who’s smart, he’s a person that seems like this morally good man,’ which is hard to find.”

Additionally, two school shootings were committed by transgender suspects who were apparently motivated by their political ideologies. The most recent, the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in late August in Minneapolis, left two students dead and more than a dozen injured after Robin Westman, a transgender-identifying 23-year-old, targeted students while they were attending a back-to-school Mass at the church of the same name.

Westman had previously posted disturbing and incoherent content on social media, including images of weapons with "Kill Donald Trump" and "Nuke India" written on them.

In 2023, a shooter attacked the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The FBI recently released new documents related to transgender shooter Audrey Hale which showed the shooter named President Donald Trump on a "fantasy murder list."

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, speaking at a press conference to address the incident in his state, said that the assassination of Charlie Kirk should be an opportunity for America to reflect and lay aside any hatred harbored for fellow Americans to end the scourge of political violence. 

"We've had political assassinations recently in Minnesota, we had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania, and we had an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate and former President of the United States, and now-current President of the United States," Utah Governor Spencer Cox said at a press conference on Wednesday addressing the assassination. "Nothing I say can unite us as a country, nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken, nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk. Our hearts are broken. We mourn with his wife, his children, his family, his friends. We mourn as a nation." 

He begged that if anyone "celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting," they should "look in the mirror" and "see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere." 

"I don't care what his politics are, I care that he was an American. We desperately need our country. We desperately need leaders in our country, but more than leaders, we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be, to ask ourselves: is this? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us?" Cox asked. 

"I pray that that's not the case. I pray that those who hated what Charlie Kirk stood for will put down their social media and their pens and pray for his family, and that all of us, all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans," he said.