President Donald Trump wants to paint right-wing extremists as vigilante heroes, while demonizing “vicious” radicals on the left.
Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday about Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump admitted that he isn’t all that concerned about right-wing radicals.
“Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical ’cause they don’t want to see crime, they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’
“The radicals on the left are the problem,” he continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”
Trump’s blatant effort to defend political violence committed by people he agrees with is not necessarily surprising, given his steadfast support for the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 and accused murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. He also previously defended attendees of the 2021 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized by neo-Nazis.
But Trump’s statement is deeply misleading about the trends in politically motivated violence in the United States. Right-wing attacks and plans accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents between 1994 and 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.
As recently as this week, a 16-year-old in Colorado who was accused of shooting two of his classmates reportedly embraced antisemitic and white supremacist social media content.
Within hours of Kirk’s death and without knowing any information about the shooter, Trump blamed the “radical left” and their rhetoric for political violence by “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”
Meanwhile, Democrats uniformly condemned Kirk’s murder—and right-wing activists were foaming at the mouth for an all-out war.
It seems clear that Trump isn’t interested in turning down the temperature on political tensions in the United States, and he’s just given the go-ahead to right-wing radicals to take matters into their own hands.
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