Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Republicans Score Political Points, Rake In On-Line Money In Wake Of Kirk’s Tragic Murder

With every public tragedy, the same small ugly clique of greedy, amoral, bloodthirsty characters are always out in front to make matters worse, and they make millions by doing it off of the tragedy of others.

They are led by trump, followed by the likes of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Chaya Raichik, who is behind the prominent LibsofTikTok social media account, which frequently attacks the L.G.B.T.Q. community; Andrew Tate, the right-wing influencer known for his misogynistic views; and the latest darling of the trump inner circle, white supremacist and Islamaphobe, Laura Loomer.

The latest fodder for these digital vampires is the murder of far right wing influencer and trump ally, Charlie Kirk. Kirk, the founder and leader of Turning Point USA, a conservative political advocacy organization for students, was shot on Wednesday while speaking at a Utah college campus. Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah, was arrested late Thursday for the killing.

The blood had barely stopped spurting from the deadly wound to Kirk’s neck and the on-line mutants were hard at work, offering to one up each other on the nature of the killer, and calling for retribution, even though the murderer was not yet identified, let alone captured.

They used Kirk’s death to boost their own standings in the far right world trying to incite their followers, many who had never heard of Kirk until his sad demise. Every click brings more profit and the algorithms clearly show that the gorier, the more conspiratorial the topic, the better.

Just like the Internet has no end, there is no bottom to the number of ghouls who capitalize on tragedy. They are young and old, black and white, Republicans and Democrats, although by and large, they are Republicans.

Never one to lose a moment for self-aggrandizing, after he was notified of the shooting, and before anyone was charged, trump issued a video in which he declared it a “dark moment for America” and blamed the media and the “radical left” for language used to describe people like Kirk.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” said trump. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

Trump also signed a proclamation lowering the flags to half-staff in Kirk’s honor through Sunday and said he would bestow the Medal of Freedom posthumously on Kirk, who was fast becoming a martyr whose memory would be molded by those in power.

Trump declared in the video that “violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree.” Nobody does demonizing better than trump. Along with right wing supporters, trump has commonly compared Democratic and progressive leaders to Hitler and Nazis, Marxists and baby killers.

According to trump, right wing radicals are acting with the best intentions, just like the patriots who demonstrated peacefully at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem.”

Trump ignored the facts as reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which found that “Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years.”

The Brookings Institution reported in 2023 that, “Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, far-right extremists have killed 130 people in the United States, more than any other political cause, including jihadists.”

Among the many in lockstep behind trump was the Rev. Jackson Lahmeyer, a reliable sycophant, member of trump’s faith office and leader of the influential 1,700-member Sheridan Church, which has campuses in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Lahmeyer was an unsuccessful 2022 Senate candidate and has been a trump supporter since 2015. He was endorsed by leading disgraced, trump supporters, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani; retired General Michael Flynn; trump advisors Roger Stone and Sebastian Gorka; and trump backer, Mike Lindell.

Lahmeyer also founded Pastors for Trump, a coalition to engage the evangelical Christian voter base during trump’s 2024 campaign.

The pastor picked up on trump’s theme and said that people on the left have wrongly labeled patriots like trump and Kirk as “Hitlers, as fascists, as racists.”

“Let me tell you something: When you call people Hitler and when you call people fascist, if you really mean that, why would you be surprised that somebody goes out to kill a Hitler or to kill a fascist?” Lahmeyer said, “The blood of Charlie Kirk is on the hands of Right Wing Watch, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, left-wing influencers that labeled him Hitler-esque.”

Like trump, Lahmeyer has repeatedly compared his political enemies to Hitler and the Nazis and called his opponents fascists.

A post on X on Oct. 14, 2021, showed a photo of hundreds of Nazis saluting Hitler with one highlighted for not saluting.

“Who are you in this picture?” Lahmeyer said. “History is being made right now and I choose not to go along with modern day Nazi’s. I have caught **#FreedomFlu**.”

In a Jan. 18, 2022, post, Lahmeyer wrote, “I remember last year being called “CRAZY” for pointing out that on the CDC’s website the plan for Nazi-style quarantine camps called Green Zones ( **https://timetofreeamerica.com/quarantine-camps/...** )

Now about half of all Democrats want the unvaccinated sent to such camps. The Nazi party in Germany did not disband after WW2… it rebranded. Be thankful for the 2nd Amendment.”

He posted on July 21, 2021, “No one should be pressured, coerced or forced to take the COVID vaccine. Oklahoma healthcare workers are in a state of emergency! The Fascists are intentionally and aggressively taking over this marketplace. They now have the health professionals of Oklahoma in their crosshairs; demanding they take the experimental, non FDA certified shot to combat a man made sickness that has a 99 percent recovery rate!”

“According to the Biden Communist regime, 70 percent of Americans have been vaccinated to date. Now, he’s sending his storm troopers door to door to get the other 30 percent to comply.”

Lahmeyer, who was running for U.S. Senate at the time, also noted, “DO NOT COMPLY! Stand up for your freedoms, regardless of the cost! P.S. If you desire a Senator that will REPresent you, aggressively fight against the Biden communist Regime and for a free Oklahoma, I am asking you to prayerfully consider making a significant donation TODAY! I will never back down and never stop fighting!”

On Christmas eve, Dec. 24, 2021, Lahmeyer posted on Facebook that “Mass-murderers like (Anthony) Fauci, Stalin and Hitler do not determine how we celebrate the holidays like Christmas.”

Lahmeyer posted on Face book on March12, 2023, that “Fauci needs to be tried, convicted and sentenced accordingly for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. The Nazis paid for their crimes after WWII. Fauci needs to pay for his.”

Fauci has never been charged with a crime but has been credited with marshalling the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The on-line denizens also have suggested that Kirk’s assassination could be a “Reichstag moment.” They are referring to the 1933 fire that destroyed the German parliament building. The Nazis used the fire as a pretext to increase repression of communists and ultimately Jews. Historians have concluded that the fire was intentionally set by a disgruntled German.

GOP Bile

The rage was flowing from Republicans.

Far right personality Matt Forney said the killing of Kirk means, “It is time for a complete crackdown on the left. Every Democratic politician must be arrested and the party banned under RICO. Every libtard commentator must be shut down.”

Right wing commentators and some lawmakers irresponsibly called for violence and some said the nation was in the throes of civil war.

On Wednesday, Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., posted on X: “The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it.”

Following the 2025 shootings of Minnesota legislators, Van Orden falsely linked the perpetrator to the anti-trump No Kings protests.

“Yesterday, a whole pack of election deniers got together and spewed hate,” Van Orden wrote. “One of them decided to murder and attempt to murder some politicians that were not far Left enough for them.”

Van Orden responded to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s statements mourning the shootings in posts calling Walz “stupid” and a “clown.”

Billionaire Elon Musk posted about Democrats, “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die.” The post was viewed more than 1.7 million times and liked over 37,000 times.

A group of Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus called for a select committee to investigate the “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law” in the wake of Kirk’s assassination.

Rep. Bob Onder R-Mo., claimed Americans on the left “embrace the evil, the false, and ugly.” Onder said the left “literally will kill those with whom they disagree, just as their predecessors — leftists Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro — did.”

“Everything has changed, if we didn’t know it already there is no longer any middle ground,” Onder said on the House floor. “Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people but their ideology is pure evil. They hate the good, the truth and the beautiful and embraced the evil, the false and the ugly.”

Fox News host Jesse Watters called on conservatives to “avenge” Kirk. Watters claimed the nation is targeted with rampant left-wing political violence, telling his audience that the American left was “at war” with conservatives.

“We’re sick, we’re sad, we’re angry, and we’re resolute, and we’re going to avenge Charlie’s death in the way Charlie would want it to be avenged,” Watters said. “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us! And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate?”

Nazi Baiting

While trump and others complained that Democrats have fomented hatred by comparing Republicans to Hitler. Republicans,, however, have a long history of labeling Democrats and Democratic policies as Nazis.

For example, Conservative commentator Dennis Prager said on May 25, 2016, that he planned to support trump for president over Democrat Hillary Clinton because sometimes “mature people have to support a Stalin to defeat a Hitler.”

American Family Association host Sandy Rios said on Dec. 6, 2013, that the Democrats’ alleged war on Christmas “is exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany.”

Conservative radio host Michael Savage spoke on oct. 27, 2015 about his anger over President Obama’s immigration policies. Savage declared that the president is a “psychopath” who is “equally insane” and “as crazy as Adolf Hitler.”

Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance said on March 3, 2016, “I saw what happened to Jews in the 1930s and 40s and much of that same thing is happening to Christians now. There’s an organized movement to demonize Christians.”

On Feb. 9, 2015, Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel and former Arkansas governor, said “You have to lie to people, and when lies permeate our culture, it’s a dangerous, dangerous thing.” Huckabee said the Nazis pushed lies on a massive scale, and that American culture has been inundated with “lies” about the definition of marriage.

On Liberty Counsel’s “Faith and Freedom” radio program on Jan. 22, 2013, Matt Barber and Mat Staver said that federal funding for family planning services at Planned Parenthood is like “enriching Hitler,” and that it was no different than forcing people to fund a “Hitler kind of killing machine, or Pol Pot or some of these other genocide tyrants.”

Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez encouraged listeners in an Aug. 4, 2020, webinar to “draw inspiration” from Soviet dissidents and resisters of Adolf Hitler when confronting “identity politics” in their workplace.

Right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau posted a video on his Facebook page on March 7, 2016, warning that trump was under attack from a “leviathan spirit” that seeks to “dismember his credibility,” adding that this attack is being carried out by liberals who are under demonic control, just like Hitler was.

Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and presidential candidate, warned on Oct. 30, 2014, that Christians in the U.S. must remain vigilant because the sort of deadly persecution faced by Christians around the world “does not just happen overnight.” He said that Jews in Nazi Germany found it “unfathomable” that anything like the Holocaust could ever happen, “so too does it seem unfathomable that anything like that could ever happen in America.”

Eric Metaxas, author of a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor, warned in a video on Nov. 3, 2014, that if the church does not stand together against government oppression, America will follow the path of Nazi Germany.

Pastor Rob McCoy of Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks in California said in a Dec. 22, 2014, radio interview that if more pastors do not get involved in politics by running for office, America could turn into Nazi Germany.

Televangelist Jim Bakker warned on March 21, 2016, that public schools are teaching anti-American views to students as part of a plot to bring down the U.S., which he said explained why Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is popular among young voters. Bakker said Sanders’ support from young people proves that the U.S. is transforming into Nazi Germany.

In an interview with Newsmax, Ben Carson said that if people want to know the truth about President Obama, they should simply “read ‘Mein Kampf’ and read the works of Vladimir Lenin.” Carson, a future Republican presidential candidate, strongly hinted in the interview on Sept. 9, 2014, that he believes Obama is a communist.

Jerry Boykin, Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council, said during the “Religious Hostility in America” panel on Sept. 19, 2012, that Adolf Hitler was a progressive”; that “America is moving rapidly to Marxism under the influence of these people who call themselves progressives”; and that the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center “are following, to the letter, the Marxist model.”

During an appearance on the American Family Association’s radio program *Nothing But Truth*, Harry Jackson said on May 17, 2012, that “radical gay activists” have turned America into Nazi Germany. Jackson, who claims demonic forces are behind the gay rights movement, said that since gays and lesbians “cannot reproduce” they “try to recruit” young people and “just like during the times of Hitler,” gay rights advocates are “coming after one group after another group after another group.”

On his radio program on Sept. 3, 2013, , Bryan Fischer, the former Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association (AFA), said that Adolf Hitler was gay, that the Nazi Party was started by gays, and that Hitler filled the ranks of his Stormtroopers with gays because they were the only ones he could find who were “savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders.”

Conservative commentator David Horowitz claimed on March 18, 2016, that people who protest at trump events are “fascists” and resemble “what led to the rise of Hitler. But they’re fascist tactics anyway, the left is dedicated to shutting down the free speech of anyone who disagrees with them by calling them names like ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ and by physical violence.”

After declaring that the “only real fascists in America are on the left,” Horowitz echoed trump in saying that protesters should be arrested, student demonstrators in the 1960s should have been expelled and Black Lives Matter protesters should all be “in jail.” March 18, 2016.

Jody Hice, the GOP nominee for an open House seat in Georgia, said on his radio program in 2011 that “totalitarian” liberals have turned public schools into “camps for indoctrination,” a strategy he compared to Nazi Germany.