On Sunday, as tens of thousands of people mourned the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, President Trump made a seemingly unscripted remark that summed up the expansive retribution campaign that has come to define his second term.
“I hate my opponent,” Mr. Trump told the crowd at the memorial in Arizona, “and I don’t want the best for them.”
Mr. Trump has used the full might of the presidency — deploying his political and executive power — to express that mind-set in myriad ways, sparing no facet of American life. He has attacked law firms, universities, political leaders, government agencies, late-night TV hosts, news organizations and cultural institutions — and Mr. Kirk’s killing has only accelerated that campaign. Mr. Trump and his top advisers have signaled a broad crackdown on liberal groups, making the baseless argument that they are part of a violent conspiracy.
The president’s comment on Sunday was in keeping with his pugilistic style of politics, although the context was striking: He spoke just minutes after Mr. Kirk’s widow, Erika, said she forgave the man who assassinated her husband because that is what Christ would do.
Mr. Trump has been fueled by grievance and animosity over the course of his political career, and even in the years before, when he was a public figure in New York. After five teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a young female jogger in New York City in 1989, Mr. Trump called for New York State to bring back the death penalty and told reporters, “I want society to hate them,” according to a book on the president by Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. (The men were later exonerated.)
In his remarks on Sunday, the president said he held a different view than the one espoused by Mrs. Kirk, who said: “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love.”
He apologized for it — “I am sorry, Erika,” he said — but he could not feign forgiveness.
When asked about the divergent messages from the president and Mrs. Kirk — and how Mr. Trump’s comments square with calls to bring down the political temperature — Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that the president was “authentically himself.”
“I think that’s why millions of Americans across the country love him and support him, including Erica Kirk, who you saw so beautifully, was onstage with the president in an unthinkable moment, in the midst of an unthinkable tragedy, and was leaning on the president for support during that time, and he was there to give it to her,” she said.
Critics of the president pointed to rising political violence in the country, which has affected both Democrats and Republicans, to argue that Mr. Trump should seek to heal, not divide, the country’s political divides.
“At a time where the nation desperately needs to be bringing down the temperature, you’re saying he authentically doesn’t want to bring it down, or you’re saying that he authentically hates half of America,” said Sarah Matthews, who was Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary in the first term until breaking with him over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. “It just goes to show that’s what his mantra has always been. It’s just all about division and feeling like a victim and wanting to hate his opponents and get retribution.”
Some conservatives on Monday expressed support for the seemingly conflicting messages from Mrs. Kirk and government officials like the president.
“It is our job to forgive, not the government’s,” Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative commentator, wrote on social media. “Christians give grace; the government wields the sword (Romans 13). We turn the other cheek; the government punishes evil.”
Almost immediately after Mr. Kirk was killed, Mr. Trump promised vengeance. Even before the suspect was caught, the president said that rhetoric from the “radical left” had contributed to Mr. Kirk’s killing and vowed to find those responsible for the violence, as well as “organizations that fund it and support it.”
“We have radical-left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them,” he said.
The suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22, had a “leftist ideology” that was “very different” from that of his conservative family, according to Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah.
Although the authorities have said Mr. Robinson is believed to have acted alone, the White House has signaled a broad crackdown on liberal groups, with Mr. Trump using Mr. Kirk’s death as justification for measures to stifle his political opposition. ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off his late-night television show after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission criticized Mr. Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk and said his agency was “going to have remedies that we can look at.” (On Monday afternoon, Disney announced that Mr. Kimmel would return to his show on Tuesday.)
Even as Mr. Trump suggests that he allows his hatred to drive his agenda, at times he has shown some awareness of potential celestial consequences.
“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he said on Fox News last month.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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