‘Lunatics, vicious, horrible’: Trump blames political opponents over Charlie Kirk’s assassination

Trump’s remarks come in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, with whom he was personally close.    

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said, as per The New York Times. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we are seeing in the country today.”

But shortly after Trump’s Fox interview, the FBI and the governor of Utah announced the arrest of a suspect, saying preliminary indications showed he had acted alone.

According to The New York Times, Trump singled out 95-year-old philanthropist George Soros and his family, saying they should be investigated for “agitation.”

Trump also stressed on his earlier comments to reporters that “we have radical left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” While he later clarified that he wanted his supporters to respond “with nonviolence.”

The United States has faced a surge of violence across the political spectrum. Before Kirk’s killing, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, and state senator John Hoffman and his wife were critically injured in a separate shooting. Authorities said the suspect in those cases had compiled a list of Democratic lawmakers, abortion rights advocates, and other potential targets.

Since his inauguration nearly eight months ago, Trump and his allies have also sought to recast the narrative of the January 6 Capitol riot, pardoning almost all convicted rioters, including some who attacked police officers.

(With Inputs from NYT)

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