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“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Charlie Kirk was speaking at an event at a university in Utah when he was shot. Source: AAP / Tess Crowley
The president listed several other incidents of what he described as “radical left political violence”, including the killing of UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson, the 2017 shooting of Republican congressman Steve Scalise and the attempt on his own life in Pennsylvania last year.
At the same press conference, however, Beau Mason, the Utah public safety department commissioner, said the shooter remained “at large”.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No-one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us,” Trump wrote on social media.
Utah police remained at the scene of the shooting at Utah Valley University on Thursday (AEST). Source: Getty / Tayfun Coskun
The killing was the latest in a series of attacks on US political figures, including two assassination attempts of Trump last year, that have underscored a sharp rise in political violence.
He responded: “Counting or not counting gang violence?” He was shot moments later.
Who was Charlie Kirk?
“You had Turning Point’s grassroots armies,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix in December. “It’s not my victory, it’s your victory.”
Charlie Kirk was part of an ecosystem of pro-Trump conservative influencers who have helped to amplify the US president’s agenda. Source: AAP / Andrew Harnik
Kirk had 5.3 million followers on X and hosted a popular podcast and radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show. He had also recently co-hosted Fox & Friends on Fox News.
He was part of an ecosystem of pro-Trump conservative influencers — including Jack Posobiec, Laura Loomer, Candace Owens and others — who helped to amplify the president’s agenda.
Kirk’s conservative ideology was closely aligned with Trump: he backed the US president’s false claims of fraud when he lost the 2020 presidential election and used his heavyweight influence to lash out at migrants and transgender people.
Politically motivated violence on the rise in US
In 2022, a man broke into Democratic then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, leaving him with skull fractures and other injuries. In 2020, a group of right-wing militia members plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
