The US has a long history of presidents using their rhetorical powers to try to overcome political fissures.
Instead, the tenor of his response to the Kirk shooting has been hyper-partisan and grounded in retribution.
In Friday’s comments, he threatened the philanthropist George Soros with a Rico investigation of the sort normally reserved for organised crime.
In an Oval Office address delivered hours after Kirk was pronounced dead, Trump made menacing remarks indicating he would seek revenge against “organizations that fund and support” political violence.
He laid blame for the current plight entirely on what he called the “radical left”.
Following the assassination of his close friend, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump has refused to advocate for a united United States in order to heal the nation’s divisions, instead blaming the entire issue on “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of American politics.
During his Friday morning appearance on Fox and Friends, the US president was questioned about his plans to address the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. The show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked him, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” while pointing out that radicals were active in both the left and the right wing of American politics.
Trump responded, “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” less than 48 hours after Kirk was shot in broad daylight on the Utah Valley University campus. “”.
“The radicals on the left are the problem – they are vicious, horrible, and politically savvy,” he continued. “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime.”. They support transgender equality for all, open borders, and men participating in women’s sports. The worst thing that has ever happened to this nation. “”.
Even by Trump’s own standards, it was a stunning move for a sitting US president to refuse to look for a shared bipartisan path forward during a period of intense national rage, fear, and grief.
Presidents of the US have a long history of attempting to bridge political divides through rhetoric. Toward the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address was arguably the apex, as he aimed to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and emphasized the importance of pursuing unity “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”.
In 2021, a few days after Trump supporters staged an uprising at the US Capitol on January 6, Joe Biden used his inaugural address to urge unity, stating that “there is no peace, only bitterness and fury” without it.
Trump made it apparent during his Fox News appearance that he has no intention of adhering to that rhetorical tradition. Rather, his response to the Kirk shooting has been retribution-based and extremely partisan.
He threatened philanthropist George Soros with a Rico investigation—typically reserved for organized crime—in his remarks on Friday. “More than protest, this is real agitation, this is riots on the streets,” he said, accusing Soros of supporting “professional agitators.”.
Hours after Kirk’s death, Trump threatened to exact revenge on “organizations that fund and support” political violence in an Oval Office speech. He accused the so-called “radical left” of being solely to blame for the current situation.
