Team Trump’s campaign against entities opposed to the president reached an extraordinary new level on Monday, exploiting the activist’s death.
The New York Times noted in March that Trump and his “allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left,†through “a series of highly partisan official actions.â€
Six months later, that problem is spectacularly worse. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-09-16T13:04:23.409Z
That might’ve sounded alarmist to some, but it wasn’t long before the White House bolstered Murphy’s concerns in dramatic fashion. The New York Times reported:
President Trump and his top advisers threatened on Monday to unleash the power of the federal government to punish what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.
The report added that while the motive in Kirk’s slaying is still under investigation, and law enforcement officials have said that the suspected shooter acted alone, the president and several of his top allies “suggested that the suspect was part of a coordinated movement that was fomenting violence against conservatives, without presenting evidence that such a network existed.”
T
rump and his team have been unsubtle in recent days about their vision. Hours after Kirk’s death, the president delivered Oval Office remarks in which the Republican not only lashed out at the left, he also vowed that his administration “
will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”....
Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for example, promised to bring the resources of the federal government to bear against what he described as
“terrorist networks,” adding that he believes there are liberal organizations that constitute “a vast domestic terror movement” that the administration intends to dismantle through a variety of federal agencies and departments......
In case this isn’t obvious, the White House could be using this opportunity to lower the temperature, reduce tensions and avoid a potentially incendiary blame game.
Instead, it’s pointing to a vast conspiracy that doesn’t appear to exist, using a shooting death as a pretense to launch a multifaceted federal campaign against political opponents of the president.
The New York Times noted in March that Trump and his “allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left,” through “a series of highly partisan official actions.” Six months later, that problem is accelerating.
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