The assassination of Charlie Kirk should have been a unifying moment — a pause in the vitriol, a collective breath, a line in the sand against political violence, no matter where one stands. Instead, it’s revealing just how deep our national rot has gone. In the hours and days since Kirk’s murder, we’ve seen not just silence from the usual quarters of the Left — we’ve seen smugness, deflection, and even celebratory undercurrents masked as “concern.”
Let’s call it what it is: ghoulish.
A man — a husband, a father of two small children, a committed Christian and bold advocate for free speech — was gunned down by a sniper on an American campus. A political assassination in broad daylight. And yet, prominent Democrats and their media echo chambers seem less interested in condemning the act itself and more focused on repackaging it for political leverage.
Take Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, for example. When faced with this moment — a time that demanded moral clarity — Pritzker couldn’t even manage the decency of staying neutral. He expressed nominal sympathy for Kirk’s family, but quickly pivoted to an all-too-familiar talking point: January 6th.
Not a word about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Not a mention of the fact that Charlie Kirk had received death threats for years due to his campus activism. Not a recognition that ideological hatred can run in any direction.
JB Pritzker responds to Charlie Kirk’s shooting by comparing it to January 6th.
However low your expectations were for Democrats, they are not low enough.pic.twitter.com/oXljflaipG
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) September 10, 2025
Instead, Pritzker did what too many politicians do best: deflect, demonize, and disguise political opportunism as solemn reflection. “I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it,” he said, referring to Trump — not the would-be killer who perched on a rooftop with a rifle. Not the suspect still at large, described by police as tactical, young, and deliberately concealed. No, the blame, somehow, belongs to the man who mourned Kirk on Truth Social and called him a “martyr for truth and freedom.”
This is moral inversion at its worst.
And it’s not just Pritzker. On MSNBC, the tone was no better. Katy Tur and her colleagues openly debated whether Kirk was simply “too divisive” — as though provocative speech justifies a bullet. That’s not journalism. That’s a tacit nod to violence as a legitimate tool of political “consequence.”
And let’s not forget — these same figures and networks who now call for “gun control” and “de-escalation” had no issue when Rep. Maxine Waters told supporters to create a crowd and push back on Trump officials. Or when former President Joe Biden fantasized about beating Trump behind the gym. Or when Senator Chuck Schumer stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and declared, “You won’t know what hit you” if the justices ruled against Roe.
There is a clear double standard. When someone on the Right is attacked, the Left blames guns, climate, toxic masculinity — anything except ideology. But if the roles were reversed? If a liberal activist had been killed at a conservative event? The media would already be calling it domestic terrorism.
