Politics
/
September 15, 2025
Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a pretext for a concerted assault on Trump’s enemies.
Advert Coverage
President Donald Trump walks on the South Garden of the White Home after arriving on Marine One in Washington, DC, on Sunday, September 14, 2025.
(Francis Chung / Politico / Bloomberg through Getty Pictures)
The phrase “nationwide therapeutic” is all the time extra aspirational than actual in the USA, a nation whose blood-stained historical past of ethnic genocide, racist pogroms, and assassinations provides the misinform any pious phrases of comity. However the perfect American politicians have been in a position to make use of their platform to, on the very least, supply a path to a extra peaceable future. In 1865, whereas delivering his second inaugural tackle, Abraham Lincoln created the template for the deployment of presidential eloquence within the face of strife when he spoke of the necessity “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” The reconciliation Lincoln known as for by no means emerged, however right here was a politician looking for a means out of civil battle, somewhat than a means in.
Since Lincoln’s day, nationwide therapeutic has been a staple of American political discourse, most just lately revitalized by Barack Obama in his well-known 2004 speech on the Democratic Nationwide Conference, the place he declared that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the USA of America.” In some unspecified time in the future of their tenure, each president is finally known as upon to challenge these sorts of platitudes in moments of nationwide strife.
Within the wake of final week’s killing of Charlie Kirk, President Trump is at the moment being requested to take up the “healer in chief” position.
On Sunday, Yahoo! Information carried the headline“Trump Hopes for Nationwide Therapeutic After Charlie Kirk Taking pictures.” This headline recommended Trump was adopting the reassuring voice utilized by predecessors comparable to Lincoln and Obama.
There’s only one downside with this narrative: it has nothing to do with actuality, as anybody studying the article beneath that headline would know. Requested by NBC Information about nationwide therapeutic in an interview launched Sunday, Trump responded“I’d wish to see it (the nation) heal,” the president stated in a quick phone interview. “However we’re coping with a radical left group of lunatics, and so they don’t play honest and so they by no means did.” A lot for therapeutic.
The feedback underscore what anybody can plainly see: that, for Trump and his followers, solely left-wing violence is a risk, whereas right-wing extremism is merely excessively enthusiastic conservativism. Trump has constantly painted the issue of political violence on this one-sided means—not simply blaming the left however exonerating right-wing violence.
Present Concern
There’s no ambiguity about this. On Friday, Trump was requested by Fox Information if “radicals on the proper” have been additionally an issue. He curtly pushed again, saying, “I’ll let you know one thing that’s going to get me in bother, however I couldn’t care much less. The radicals on the proper oftentimes are radical as a result of they don’t wish to see crime. The radicals on the left are the issue, and so they’re vicious and so they’re horrible and so they’re politically savvy.”
Trump returned to this theme on Sunday, telling reporters“The issue is on the left. It’s not on the proper, like some individuals wish to say. While you take a look at the agitators—you take a look at the scum that speaks so badly of our nation, the American flag burnings far and wide—that’s the left, not the proper.”
That is no shock, coming from a person who not solely incited the January 6 assault on the Capitol but in addition granted pardons or clemency to almost 1,600 rioters convicted that day.
The pure upshot is that the Trump administration is utilizing the Kirk assassination as justification for attacking political enemies.
On Saturday, The New York Occasions reported: “President Trump and his prime advisers are escalating their assaults on their opponents within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, inserting the blame for political violence on Democrats alone and signaling a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning establishments.”
After all, Trump’s declare that solely left-wing political violence is a risk is a lie. On the very day Kirk was assassinated, a faculty capturing in Denver left two college students wounded. Investigators discovered that the alleged shooter, who killed himself earlier than he could possibly be captured, had posted neo-Nazi views on-line. The Denver capturing follows a sample of terrorist violence from the intense proper going again a long time, which incorporates the 1995 bombing of a federal authorities constructing in Oklahoma Metropolis bombing of 1995 which killed 188. A comparative evaluation of political violence in the USA since 1975, performed by the libertarian Cato Institute, concluded that left-wing violence is much less frequent than both right-wing or Islamicist violence. Relying on whether or not 9/11 is included within the knowledge or not, left-wing violence quantities to both 2 p.c or 10 p.c of political violence.
Due to this actuality, some Republicans have shied away from Trump’s incendiary rhetoric. On Sunday, Utah Senator John Curtis advised ABC“I feel it’s essential take the phrase ‘radical’ and take away proper or left. And radical, if coming from any path, will not be good. It’s not wholesome, and it must be known as out.” This nonpartisan method is echoed by many Democrats comparable to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and independents comparable to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Advert Coverage
However Trump can’t make such a nonpartisan argument as a result of his core political intuition is to divide the world into pals and enemies. New York Occasions reporter Peter Baker provides a compelling evaluation of how Trump’s whole method to politics places him at odds with the concept of nationwide therapeutic:
In an period of deep polarization in American society, he hardly ever talks about therapeutic. Whereas different presidents have sometimes tried to decrease the temperature in moments of nationwide disaster, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He doesn’t subscribe to the normal notion of being president for all of the individuals. He acts as president of pink America and the individuals who agree with him, whereas those that don’t are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.
Fashionable
“swipe left under to view extra authors”Swipe →
For Trump, polarization will not be one thing to worry however a tactic for gaining and maintaining energy. Therefore, “nationwide therapeutic” now not has any power whilst an aspiration. The true objective of the present administration is to not bind the injuries of division however to make use of the ability of the state to maintain pummeling its enemies. This ultra-partisanship makes the decision for nationwide therapeutic by different politicians irrelevant. There could be no nationwide therapeutic except Trumpism is defeated politically.
Donald Trump desires us to just accept the present state of affairs with out making a scene. He desires us to imagine that if we resist, he’ll harass us, sue us, and minimize funding for these we care about; he might sic ICE, the FBI, or the Nationwide Guard on us.
We’re sorry to disappoint, however the reality is that this: The Nation gained’t again all the way down to an authoritarian regime. Not now, not ever.
Day after day, week after week, we are going to proceed to publish really unbiased journalism that exposes the Trump administration for what it’s and develops methods to gum up its equipment of repression.
We do that by way of distinctive protection of battle and peace, the labor motion, the local weather emergency, reproductive justice, AI, corruption, crypto, and rather more.
Our award-winning writers, together with Elie Mystal, Mohammed Mhawish, Chris Lehmann, Joan Walsh, John Nichols, Jeet Heer, Kate Wagner, Kaveh Akbar, John Ganz, Zephyr Teachout, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kali Holloway, Gregg Gonsalves, Amy Littlefield, Michael T. Klare, and Dave Zirin, instigate concepts and gasoline progressive actions throughout the nation.
With no company pursuits or billionaire homeowners behind us, we want your assist to fund this journalism. Probably the most highly effective means you possibly can contribute is with a recurring donation that lets us know you’re behind us for the lengthy struggle forward.
We have to add 100 new sustaining donors to The Nation this September. Should you step up with a month-to-month contribution of $10 or extra, you’ll obtain a one-of-a-kind Nation pin to acknowledge your invaluable assist for the free press.
Will you donate right now?
Onward,
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editor and Writer, The Nation
Jeet Lord
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The writer of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Opinions, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Overview, Virginia Quarterly Overview, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
Extra from The Nation
The Trump administration has introduced plans to audit exhibitions at eight Smithsonian museums. Among the many works labeled “objectionable” is an art work by cartoonist Felipe Galindo F…
OPPAR / Felipe Galindo
The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn’t a promoter of civil discourse. He preached hate, bigotry, and division
Elizabeth Spiers
On the brutal homicide of Charlie Kirk, the sure blowback, and this nation’s raging gun downside.
Elie Mystal
The Home simply authorized $892.6 billion in army spending—persevering with the march towards $1 trillion protection budgets.
John Nichols
Federal brokers are primarily performing as paramilitaries to satisfy the administration’s violent fantasies. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, they are going to be empowered.
Column
/
Sasha Abramsky
