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‘Fascist Playbook’: Trump Blasted for ‘Gas on the Fire’ Kirk Assassination Address
President Donald Trump is facing intense backlash over a video he released hours after Wednesday’s murder of prominent conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk, pointing to rhetoric from the “radical left.” Kirk’s killer remains unidentified and at large.
“For years,” Trump said in his address from the Oval Office, “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 denounced “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible,” which numerous critics noted has been a regular feature of his rhetoric.
And the President vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that funded and supported, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
READ MORE: ‘I Love the 90s’: RFK Jr. Mocked for Latest Outdated Take on Mass Violence
Critics also noted that Trump listed several acts of violence largely attributable to left-wing extremists, but omitted those committed by right-wing extremists.
“Trump doesn’t know who killed Kirk,” noted Mother Jones’ Dan Friedman. “So when he blames the left, we know he is lying, attempting to use tragedy to silence critics. That’s not honoring Kirk, it’s exploiting his death.”
“Why did the President of the United States only decry ‘radical left political violence’ and list killings by Democrats in this address tonight?” asked retired award-winning political reporter Doug Sovern. “What about the assassinations & murders by Republicans? That is shameful, divisive, and inciting—exactly what fuels political violence.”
Some critics warned that Trump may be using the assassination to target his opponents.
California Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener said that “using the Kirk assassination to brand as ‘terrorists’ those who don’t support him or who criticized Kirk & threatening to ‘find’ them. This from the guy who pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists. It’s straight out of the fascist playbook.”
“The president,” warned CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere, “is laying a pretext for investigations and other actions against a currently undefined group of people and organizations in the wake of Kirk’s murder, in ways he has not for other murders.”
Critics accused the President of inflaming tensions instead of working to ease them.
The New Republic’s Alex Shephard said that Trump was “pouring gasoline on a raging fire as usual. utterly despicable, entirely in character.”
READ MORE: ‘Not Particularly Deep’: Trump Mocked for Response to Russia Attack
Former Republican Capitol Hill communications director Tara Setmayer served up a simple four-word critique: “Divisive. Disgraceful. Deplorable. Dangerous.”
Former Republican U.S. Congressman Denver Riggleman characterized Trump’s remarks as “insane hyperbole.”
“The very thing he says he’s dismissing is what he’s propagating,” Riggleman, now an independent, wrote. “Hate. Dehumanization. Are we going to compare and contrast how many ideological killings there have been over the last ten years now? Compare right wing and left wing violence? This is wrong. This will cause awfulness downstream.”
Author and political commentator Sophia A. Nelson, a Republican turned independent, remarked, “we get a presidential address for the murder of #CharlieKirk but nothing for the murder of a Minnesota state elected official and her husband. And another MN legislator and his wife assailed. See how we got here? My tribe counts. Yours not so much.”
Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party Republican Congressman, now a Democrat and podcaster, wrote that Trump “had an opportunity last night to heal a broken/divided nation. Instead, he attacks, he pours gas on the fire, & he further divides. For the next 3yrs, the American people are on their own trying to lower the temperature in this country. Bcuz the guy in the White House is humanly incapable of it.”
TO MY GREAT FELLOW AMERICANS… pic.twitter.com/oRsrE5TTHr
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Is He Lying Now?’: Dem Skewers Johnson’s Claim Trump Was an ‘FBI Informant’
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
