In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder, President Donald Trump has falsely blamed the "left" and the media for the shooting and has used the incident to justify going after Democratic groups.
"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today and it must stop right now,” Trump said on the day of Kirk’s death, adding that he was going to go after anyone who "contributed to this atrocity and to other political organizations that fund it and support it.”
But a new YouGov poll released Monday found that weaponizing Kirk’s death to crack down on Trump’s political opposition could be politically costly for Trump and his party.
According to the survey, a majority of American adults (50%) say they believe Trump is "using Charlie Kirk’s death as a way to silence political opponents." Just 32% said Trump isn’t using the murder to silence his opposition.
And when asked if they think it's right for Trump to use Kirk's death for that goal, a whopping 80% of American adults said it was not.
Trump has been hell bent on blaming Democrats for Kirk's murder, even though all of the evidence says that the shooter acted alone.
“The radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we're fixing it," Trump said last week.
Other members of Trump's administration have made similarly false accusations that the "left" was responsible for Kirk's murder.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said “left-wing radicals” were responsible for Kirk's murder and that “they will be held accountable.” Vile White House aide Stephen Miller also accused Democrats of having an “organized campaign that led to this assassination"—a wildly false and inflammatory accusation.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller said. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
And Vice President JD Vance specifically said he wants to go after George Soros' Open Society Foundations, which he insanely accused of promoting "violence and terrorism." Open Society Foundations is a progressive grant network founded by Soros, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks right-wing extremism, and the Ford Foundation, another progressive philanthropic organization.
But going after Democratic-aligned groups is unlikely to be popular with the public.
The same poll found that 55% of Americans think it would be unacceptable for Trump to "use Kirk’s killing as a reason to crack down on activist organizations."
Aside from going after progressive groups, the Trump administration has taken tangible steps to silence people they say have made insensitive comments about Kirk's death.
Federal Communications Commission Director Brendan Carr celebrated that ABC pulled late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air, after Carr threatened the network if it didn't punish Kimmel. Kimmel made comments that polling shows Americans did not even view as offensive.
Colleges and universities—which have been a favorite target of the Trump administration since he took office—have also fired professors for making comments about Kirk’s death that could have angered Republicans. The firings were likely an effort to obey in advance so as not to face more punishing actions from the federal government.
And the Washington Post, led by Trump pal and billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, fired a reporter who criticized Kirk’s past racist comments.
This same YouGov poll found that a majority of Americans (50%) say it’s unacceptable for employers to fire people for making comments about Kirk’s death. And a plurality of Americans (49%) believe that ABC was pressured by the government to remove Kimmel's show. And a whopping 67% said that pressure was wrong.
