Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy has suggested that President Trump must foot some of the blame for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
MAGA leaders have been trying to blame left-wing ideology as the cause of the political violence, but Portnoy insisted that Trump’s role in aggravating divisiveness cannot be overlooked.
Kirk, a divisive right-wing activist, 31, was shot from a distance by an assailant who is still at large, as he spoke at Utah Valley University in Orem.
“It is nuts. Not nuts. I won’t say it was the most like…it’s shocking, but I don’t know that it’s surprising, and that’s really sad,” Portnoy said at the top of The Unnamed Show podcast.
He then explained that a fractious political climate with deep ideological divisions created fertile ground for violence. He also suggested that Trump’s role in this cannot be overlooked.
“Politics definitely has a huge part in it. Trump, and when I say Trump has a huge part in it, I don’t necessarily mean he’s to blame for it, but he’s so divisive without really even…just his face is like divisive, like he just, people hate him so much,“ he explained.
“And the left and the right, the rhetoric especially to me, the left is insane, and it just boils boils boils boils.”
It comes after the president’s niece, Mary L. Trump, pointed the finger at him and his party. “The fire was started by the Republicans,” she said in her The Good in Us Substack.
Portnoy, who, in March, claimed he was offered a job in the Trump administration’s Commerce Department, said a similar volatility spread throughout the country in the wake of the attempt on the president’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.
“This happened when Trump, [his assassination attempt], there’s like a three-hour period of like let’s tone down the rhetoric, right. And then they’re right back to it. It’s surprising, and that’s really sad.”
He later added that he respected Kirk’s bravery to enter universities and debate students despite some people vehemently rejecting his sometimes controversial rhetoric.
“The thing that I do respect the most about him, he knew he was in danger. Like going to those rallies in an open-air space with the amount of hate he has towards him, you are in danger, especially in this world,” Portnoy said.
Kirk was killed by a single shot as he spoke to students in Utah. Footage released by the FBI shows the suspect, who is still on the run, jumping off a roof before escaping.
Portnoy and the White House have been contacted for comment.
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