Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a pretext for a concerted assault on Trump’s enemies.
President Donald Trump walks on the South Garden of the White Home after arriving on Marine One in Washington, DC, on Sunday, September 14, 2025.
(Francis Chung / Politico / Bloomberg through Getty Photos)
The phrase “nationwide therapeutic” is at all times extra aspirational than actual in the US, a nation whose blood-stained historical past of ethnic genocide, racist pogroms, and assassinations provides the deceive any pious phrases of comity. However the very best American politicians have been in a position to make use of their platform to, on the very least, provide a path to a extra peaceable future. In 1865, whereas delivering his second inaugural tackle, Abraham Lincoln created the template for the deployment of presidential eloquence within the face of strife when he spoke of the necessity “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” The reconciliation Lincoln referred to as for by no means emerged, however right here was a politician looking for a manner out of civil conflict, slightly than a manner in.
Since Lincoln’s day, nationwide therapeutic has been a staple of American political discourse, most just lately revitalized by Barack Obama in his well-known 2004 speech on the Democratic Nationwide Conference, the place he declared that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the US of America.” In some unspecified time in the future of their tenure, each president is ultimately referred to as upon to concern these sorts of platitudes in moments of nationwide strife.
Within the wake of final week’s killing of Charlie Kirk, President Trump is at present being requested to take up the “healer in chief” position.
On Sunday, Yahoo! Information carried the headline, “Trump Hopes for Nationwide Therapeutic After Charlie Kirk Capturing.” This headline recommended Trump was adopting the reassuring voice utilized by predecessors akin to Lincoln and Obama.
There’s only one downside with this narrative: it has nothing to do with actuality, as anybody studying the article beneath that headline would know. Requested by NBC Information about nationwide therapeutic in an interview launched Sunday, Trump responded, “I’d wish to see it [the nation] heal,” the president stated in a short phone interview. “However we’re coping with a radical left group of lunatics, they usually don’t play truthful they usually by no means did.” A lot for therapeutic.
The feedback underscore what anybody can plainly see: that, for Trump and his followers, solely left-wing violence is a menace, whereas right-wing extremism is merely excessively enthusiastic conservativism. Trump has constantly painted the issue of political violence on this one-sided manner—not simply blaming the left however exonerating right-wing violence.
Present Concern
There’s no ambiguity about this. On Friday, Trump was asked by Fox Information if “radicals on the correct” had been additionally an issue. He curtly pushed again, saying, “I’ll inform you one thing that’s going to get me in hassle, however I couldn’t care much less. The radicals on the correct oftentimes are radical as a result of they don’t wish to see crime. The radicals on the left are the issue, they usually’re vicious they usually’re horrible they usually’re politically savvy.”
Trump returned to this theme on Sunday, telling reporters, “The issue is on the left. It’s not on the correct, like some individuals wish to say. While you take a look at the agitators—you take a look at the scum that speaks so badly of our nation, the American flag burnings everywhere—that’s the left, not the correct.”
That is no shock, coming from a person who not solely incited the January 6 assault on the Capitol but in addition granted pardons or clemency to almost 1,600 rioters convicted that day.
The pure upshot is that the Trump administration is utilizing the Kirk assassination as justification for attacking political enemies.
On Saturday, The New York Instances reported: “President Trump and his prime advisers are escalating their assaults on their opponents within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, inserting the blame for political violence on Democrats alone and signaling a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning establishments.”
In fact, Trump’s declare that solely left-wing political violence is a menace is a lie. On the very day Kirk was assassinated, a school shooting in Denver left two college students wounded. Investigators discovered that the alleged shooter, who killed himself earlier than he may very well be captured, had posted neo-Nazi views on-line. The Denver capturing follows a sample of terrorist violence from the acute proper going again many years, which incorporates the 1995 bombing of a federal authorities constructing in Oklahoma Metropolis bombing of 1995 which killed 188. A comparative analysis of political violence in the US since 1975, performed by the libertarian Cato Institute, concluded that left-wing violence is much less frequent than both right-wing or Islamicist violence. Relying on whether or not 9/11 is included within the knowledge or not, left-wing violence quantities to both 2 % or 10 % of political violence.
Due to this actuality, some Republicans have shied away from Trump’s incendiary rhetoric. On Sunday, Utah Senator John Curtis told ABC, “I feel it’s worthwhile to take the phrase ‘radical’ and take away proper or left. And radical, if coming from any route, will not be good. It’s not wholesome, and it must be referred to as out.” This nonpartisan strategy is echoed by many Democrats akin to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and independents akin to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
However Trump can’t make such a nonpartisan argument as a result of his core political intuition is to divide the world into buddies and enemies. New York Instances reporter Peter Baker offers a compelling evaluation of how Trump’s complete strategy to politics places him at odds with the concept of nationwide therapeutic:
In an period of deep polarization in American society, he not often talks about therapeutic. Whereas different presidents have sometimes tried to decrease the temperature in moments of nationwide disaster, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He doesn’t subscribe to the standard notion of being president for all of the individuals. He acts as president of red America and the individuals who agree with him, whereas those that don’t are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.
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For Trump, polarization will not be one thing to worry however a tactic for gaining and conserving energy. Therefore, “nationwide therapeutic” now not has any pressure whilst an aspiration. The true purpose of the present administration is to not bind the injuries of division however to make use of the ability of the state to maintain pummeling its enemies. This ultra-partisanship makes the decision for nationwide therapeutic by different politicians irrelevant. There might be no nationwide therapeutic except Trumpism is defeated politically.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Writer, The Nation
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