Democrats and the liberal media spent years characterizing President Donald Trump as a would-be dictator, a Nazi, a threat to democracy, and a danger to minorities. This demonization campaign set the stage for at least two known attempted assassinations.
In advance of his alleged Sept. 15, 2024, attempt on Trump’s life, Ryan Routh even parroted word for word some of the alarmist rhetoric pushed by the president’s liberal critics.
‘This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country.’
Trump’s good friend, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, was similarly long the subject of a liberal demonization campaign.
On Wednesday, the loving husband and father of two was assassinated in broad daylight in front of a massive crowd at Utah Valley University.
“It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible,” President Donald Trump said in a video statement after Kirk’s death.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” continued Trump. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today — and it must stop right now.”
Following Kirk’s assassination, the New York Times released an obituary titled “Charlie Kirk, Right-Wing Provocateur and Close Ally of Trump, Dies at 31.”
While an earlier version was relatively benign and largely stuck to the facts, the obituary was expanded over the course of several hours to include numerous critical elements, some reminiscent of a smear report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in May.
‘They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs.’
The obituary not only accused Kirk of spreading “unsupported claims and outright lies” and attacked him for “embracing the false right-wing narrative that Mr. Trump had actually won the White House in his race against Joseph R. Biden Jr.,” but suggested that the deceased had added “an antisemitic twist” to the “popular far-right idea that immigrants will soon displace white Americans.”
The Times made sure to suggest that Kirk amplified the left’s go-to bogeyman of 2024, “Christian nationalism,” and claimed he “continued to provoke,” citing as an example his willingness to question the popular hagiographies for George Floyd and Martin Luther King Jr.
Whereas the Times toned down its insinuations about the assassinated conservative’s imagined bigotry in light of the circumstances, it nevertheless drew on a nasty narrative constructed over time by liberal critics of Kirk and his organization.
One of the most inflammatory publications bolstering this false narrative was the SPLC’s May 22 “Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” report, which contained a lengthy section titled “Turing Point USA: A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
The SPLC report stated that Kirk’s organization was “emblematic” of the American political right’s supposed embrace of “aggressive state and federal power to enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy” against a backdrop of “patriarchal Christian supremacy dedicated to eroding the value of inclusive democracy and public institutions.”
It further suggested that Kirk’s organization was advancing a “narrow vision” that fights for “white, male, Christian dominance in America” and results in the demonization of nonconforming men, women, and “nonbinary people.”
In addition to noting — as the Times did Wednesday in its obituary — that Kirk criticized Martin Luther King Jr., claiming he did so to “discredit civil rights legislation,” the SPLC suggested that Kirk framed Christianity as superior and Christians as persecuted to justify TPUSA’s “extreme, authoritarian vision for the country that threatens the foundation of our democracy.”
The section on Kirk and TPUSA concludes with, “Turning Point USA’s effort to sow fear and division to enforce social hierarchies rooted in supremacism is emblematic of the hard right’s broader political project to destroy our foundational democratic principles and institutions.”
Kirk responded to the hit piece on May 25, stating, “The SPLC has added Turning Point to their ridiculous ‘hate group’ list, right next to the KKK and neo-Nazis, a cheap smear from a washed-up org that’s been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.”
“Their game plan? Scare financial institutions into debanking us, pressure schools to cancel us, and demonize us so some unhinged lunatic feels justified targeting us,” continued Kirk. “Remember the Family Research Council? An SPLC-inspired gunman went after them. They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs.”
Even after Kirk called it out, the SPLC kept smearing the patriot.
The day before Kirk’s assassination, the SPLC listed Kirk in its September “Hatewatch” report.
Blaze News has reached out to the White House and to the SPLC for comment.
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