In my Sunday column, I wrote that I feared the worst about what would follow in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Turns out, I didn’t know the half of it.
I knew that Donald Trump and his MAGA pals would exploit Kirk’s death, reject any calls for national unity, make Kirk a martyr and blame the martyr’s death, in Trump’s words, on “the radical left” instead of on the person charged with the shooting — who seemed to believe that shooting someone for “hateful” rhetoric would somehow make the world better.
What I didn’t know was that JD Vance, Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trump team would go full McCarthy on us. On a Charlie Kirk podcast hosted by Vance, we heard from one MAGA operative after another. Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff who is often said to be the brains of the operation, said there was an “organized campaign” behind Kirk’s killing and vowed to crack down on what he called a “vast domestic terror movement” on the left.
I knew the speech police would come down hard, but they’re not distinguishing between those who (disgustingly) celebrated Kirk’s death and those who simply criticized Kirk and his beliefs or criticized those who have rushed to canonize him.
And I didn’t know so many would have already been fired for these criticisms, including a Washington Post columnist and an MSNBC commentator as journalism organizations continue to bow to Trump. I hope the New York Times, which Trump is suing for $15 billion — yes, that’s with a b — will do better.
And then there’s the story of a Michigan Office Depot employee who refused to print flyers for a Kirk vigil. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the employee would be investigated, which is almost funny considering the right-wing support for the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner who refused to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
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Fear-mongering is what has followed in the wake of Kirk’s death. And who can guess when it will all end?
We can look forward to more doxxing, more threats, more firings and, if you believe Trump, a widespread crackdown on liberal groups or, for that matter, anyone who opposes him. I mean, how many people has Trump already fired on his vengeance tour?
I should have guessed — but didn’t — that Bondi, not exactly a constitutional scholar, would tell a podcaster “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
She added: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Let me quote a prominent free-speech defender on why Bondi and so many others are so wrong:
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
I’ll bet many of you can guess who tweeted this post.
Yes, it was Charlie Kirk from earlier this year. Lots of free-speech advocates, from left and right, criticized Bondi. But not Trump. He threatened an ABC reporter who asked him about Bondi’s quotes, saying we’ll “probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lotta hate in your heart.”
I was not a fan of Kirk. I’m not sure he was quite the free-speech advocate he claimed to be. But he was murdered — as the Utah county prosecutor said when announcing murder charges against the suspect — “while engaging in one of our most sacred and cherished American rights, the bedrock of our democratic republic: the free exchange of ideas and a search for truth, understanding, and a more perfect union.”
And now, in Kirk’s name, the bedrock of our democratic republic is under assault.
Since the charges against Tyler Robinson were announced, we know a lot more about possibly why the alleged assassin pulled the trigger.
In presenting evidence to support the charges, Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray took us through texts that Robinson had sent to his romantic partner, in which he wrote of Kirk, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
He said he had a chance to “take out Charlie Kirk” and would.
His romantic partner, as I’m sure you’ve seen, is a man in the process of transitioning to be a woman. And Kirk had strongly opposed transgender rights.
We don’t know if that’s the motive. Robinson never said what kind of “hate” he’d had enough of.
But that didn’t stop right-wing “influencer” and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer, as just one example, from calling transgender people a “national security threat” or from posting that their “movement needs to be classified as a terrorist organization IMMEDIATELY.”
Apparently, there are many terrorist organizations out there on the left in the fevered imaginations, or manipulations, of certain right-wing leaders.
Is there any limit for how absurd this can get? The New York Post actually wrote an article about which National Football League teams had asked for a moment of silence for Kirk on Sunday. It seems that seven teams did, but, according to the Post, the Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions, Indianapolis Colts, Minnesota Vikings, Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens did not.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, former House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, who resigned her post Monday, was soon back at work calling for Gov. Jared Polis to fire a suicide-prevention coordinator — a state employee — for criticizing those praising Kirk.
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I’m not going to use the employee’s name, but she posted that people who don’t care about various liberal causes — most of which “radical leftists” like me support, although maybe that’s too dangerous to say these days— “should do some self-reflection … of why you speak up for a white man who spews horrid shit against every marginalized community.”
She asked Kirk supporters to “pleeeeeease look at who and what you’re speaking up for.”
I don’t know how effective the Kirk critic’s argument might be or how many e’s you should use in saying please, but I’m pretty sure that we’re better off without a House minority leader who hunts down little-known state employees to fire.
That’s McCarthyism. Who will be next to get called out — and maybe fired — for saying so?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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