Charlie Kirk’s death reigns an animated debate on political rhetoric and violence

The legislators are divided on the opportunity to stimulate animated rhetoric after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead at the University of Utah Valley on Wednesday, reviving the debate on the role of the inflamed language in the rise of American political violence.

Political violence has been a constant constant in recent years, including a pair of assassination attempts against President Donald Trump in 2024 and the murder of a democratic state legislator in Minnesota earlier this year.

Kirk’s death has once again rekindled the discussion on the role that political rhetoric, whether inside the walls of the Congress or the country, must play in political violence in the United States

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The founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk during an event before being shot down. (Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune via Reuters)

“It’s all about us, right?” Representative Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., Fox News Digital said. “I mean, you know, everyone has increased rhetoric, right?”

“If the left will blame the right, and the right will blame the left, and we will continue to say” it’s your fault “, and we will not collectively try to bring it together, then this cycle will continue to continue.”

And republican leaders hope to refuse temperature at the congress following the death of Kirk.

“I try to lower the temperature here,” said Chamber Mike Johnson, R-La., Said. “I always do that. I was very consistent.”

The whip of the majority of the Senate John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Told Fox News Digital that he believed that Reining in a hostile or divider rhetoric was “always a conversation with people in leadership”.

Watch: Bipartite group of the legislators expresses a shock, sorrow after the murder of Charlie Kirk

The president of the room Mike Johnson, R-La., Promises with the staff and its security details. (Kent Nishimura / Getty images)

“And it should be in both parties to ensure that you do not encourage this kind of activity,” he said. “And you don’t know someone, and depending on their mental health, what kind of activity it can – what role it can play in this area. We still don’t know what happened here.”

Some legislators fear that the escalation of political violence will return to America at the violent and chaotic period of the 1960s, which saw the assassinations of civil rights leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy and his brother and the presidential hope Robert F. Kennedy, among others.

“The message was love and not violence,” said representative Glenn Ivey, D-MD., About the agitation in the 1960s. “So you know, go back to a message like this could be good, but that did not change the result of the assassinations at that time. So, I don’t know there is an easy answer.”

However, emotions were running on the hill in the days following the shooting at the University of Utah Valley, which led to a two -day man hunt and the possible arrest of Tyler Robinson, 22.

When they were asked what extent the rhetoric had to play in the murder of Kirk, the representative Ralph Norman, Rs.C., said: “Many”.

“You say that you are a Nazi and a fascist and a threat to democracy, how does it help? If you do not agree on the questions, that’s one thing, but (you don’t say it,” said Norman. “The left is a poster child.”

Senator Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital that he had known Kirk for a decade and noted that the late founder of Turnout Point USA “represented the open exchange of ideas”.

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President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Laguardia airport on Thursday, September 11, 2025 in New York. (AP photo / Alex Brandon)

“I think what we have to learn about it is that we have to go back to the principles that have built this country is that it is actually a positive and healthy thing to debate ideas,” said Moreno. “We don’t have to be angry with each other because we have a different point of view, and even less degenerate violence.”

But Moreno noted that since the last decade, Trump and the Republicans like him have been compared to Adolf Hitler, Nazi and fascist sympathizers “, which Democrats do every day.”

“What is the problem?” Said Moreno. “As, you have registered in politics, you must be able to have thick skin. It is not on this subject. It is a question of sending you a message to madmen, who says:” You do a good deed if you kill someone who would otherwise be a Nazi and a fascist who will end our democracy. “”

Trump blamed, in part, the Democrats in an address to the nation on Wednesday evening, where he accused that “those of the radical left compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to the Nazis and the worst mass assassins and criminals of the world”.

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He repeated this feeling during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning when he was questioned on the radical elements on the conservative side of the aisle.

“I’m going to tell you something that will cause me trouble, but I don’t care,” said Trump. “Radicals on the right are often radical because they don’t want to see the crime. Left radicals are the problem.”

When he was asked for his response to Trump’s address, the head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, Dn.y., said: “This is a time when all Americans should meet and feel what happened.

“Violence affects so many different people, so many different political persuasions,” he said. “It is an infliction for America, and meeting is what we have to do, do not point our fingers to blame.”