Republicans Want Vengeance for Charlie Kirk’s Murder. But From Whom?

President Donald Trump and his allies are threatening to prosecute liberals and left-wing groups in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

But who, exactly? And for what? The specifics are hard to come by. In a CNN appearance Tuesday night, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration would go after “organized groups raising money with the intent to organize individuals to commit acts of violence.” When Kaitlan Collins asked him which groups he was referring to, Blanche said: “I’m not going to name groups here, that wouldn’t be fair to them.”

On X, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said the “radical left” killed Kirk. “Just look at the facts on some of the attacks that occurred, and where they’ve occurred, and who they’ve occurred from,” Gonzales told NOTUS. “We should not be having organizations that fuel that in any form or fashion.” Like who? “I can name a lot of them, yeah, but I’m not going to,” Gonzales said. “Because I don’t want to.” “Stay tuned,” he added. “It’s bigger than me.”

Some Republicans, like Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, have suggested that “everyone” on the left is guilty of inciting political violence. “MSNBC, CNN, they let all these fucking people on there dehumanize us, villainize us, and now we’re getting killed for it,” Mace said. “It’s out of control. These people need to be, you know, need to be locked up, and throw away the keys. It’s outrageous what they’re doing in this country, terrorizing our country.”

When asked what specific groups or individuals were responsible for an increase in political violence, Mace pointed broadly to “institutions, colleges” as well as the media and Democrats. “They’re raging lunatics who want us dead,” Mace said about her Democratic House colleagues. “I’m saying that about all of them right now. Everyone on the left, they’re all pro-murder, they’re all celebrating it, and it’s disgusting.”

In fact, no Democratic Party leader has publicly celebrated Kirk’s death. Former Democratic presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and many Democrats in Congress have issued statements condemning the shooting and political violence generally. And in charging documents filed in Utah, prosecutors have not cited any evidence that Kirk’s alleged killer belonged to, worked with or was influenced by left-leaning organizations.

Without specific evidence, some Republicans are just naming the usual suspects. Hosting Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance explicitly singled out the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation for supporting The Nation, which he said has falsely maligned Kirk’s memory. The magazine says Soros and OSF have never funded The Nation, and that the Ford Foundation hasn’t contributed to it in years.

In a letter to House leadership, Rep. Chip Roy said “NGOs, donors, media, public officials” and other entities are driving a “coordinated attack” against Republicans. He namechecked Soros, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as Antifa, which the Congressional Research Service described in 2020 as a “decentralized” movement “of loosely affiliated individuals.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden blamed the media and Democrats generally.

“These left-wing thinkers, emboldened by our silence and amplified by you people in the press, are partially responsible for that assassination and the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump,” Van Orden said. “When you guys echo these messages and you only seem to challenge it when it’s a Republican issue, that is not why you have the only vocation that was written into the Constitution for protection.”

Van Orden pointed to reporters quoting Rep. Ilhan Omar, who faced a censure vote over a video she posted following Kirk’s death, as one example of how that amplification takes place (four Republicans joined Democrats to block the resolution). But he added that he learned this week that Omar, too, was facing death threats — the same kinds of threats that led Van Orden to miss votes in May.

“I wanna find the people that are threatening Ms. Omar and put them in prison for threatening her life,” Van Orden said. “But I also think the things that she is saying are flaming hate against conservatives.”

Rep. Cliff Bentz blamed “the insidious effect of what we’ll call the internet,” and he called for a Congressional investigation.

“I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that algorithms have led to a much more angry society in general. I don’t think you can really pick any one group out,” Bentz said. “Everybody seems to be more angry for whatever reason, and it seems odd. And people have become way more likely to say really rude things.”

Rep. Jake Ellzey also decried the discourse surrounding Kirk’s death. When asked about some of his colleagues insisting that Democrats or left-wing organizations also deserved blame, Ellzey pulled up Romans 12:21 on his phone, a Bible verse about good triumphing over evil, and read it aloud.

“There’s a number of things wrong. Social media has sent a number of Americans down a bad path, and I don’t engage in that kind of deal,” Ellzey said of assigning blame for Kirk’s death. “If one person says something despicable, then the whole world sees it, and it upsets everybody. Social media is a terrible thing, always has been, and always will be.”

Not all Republicans are casting blame specifically, but they’re raising questions.

“I don’t think that there’s some big, mass-organized effort that Democrats, and like, there’s some group that they all hang out with, and are looking to be violent, and throw a coup to take over the world, right?” Rep. Max Miller said. “But I do believe, from everything that I’ve seen, you put the rhetoric aside on both sides of the aisle: blue shooters. Who do they identify with?”

“I’m not saying that these people are following any one of them,” he said, waving at the direction of his Democratic colleagues on the House floor. “But if you look at their manifestos, yeah, they’re Democrats. They associate themselves with the Democrat Party.”

Other Republicans said that law enforcement should be looking at anyone who’s advocating violence, on the right or the left. “Any group that has something other than nonviolent protest in their history or their dialogue should be continuously investigated,” Rep. Darrell Issa said. “That is the legitimate job of these organizations, such as the FBI, to always be looking at it. Not unfairly, not picking the left or the right only, but any group that might be moved toward violence.”

Issa pointed to an FBI investigation and sting that saved his office in 2001, his first year in Congress, from being bombed by a militant group. Issa was believed at the time to be targeted because he’s Lebanese American.

“The FBI believed they had assassinated another person in the past, but they couldn’t prove it. They watched them, and looked for their actions, and that’s how they managed to catch them before they bombed my office,” Issa said. “I don’t know if they were left wing or right wing, but they had a history of violence.”

In a statement provided to NOTUS, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more.” She said the Trump administration would “get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities.”

But the administration itself has struggled to say what conduct should lead to prison time. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Katie Miller’s podcast that the administration would “absolutely target” people engaging in “hate speech.” That prompted an immediate backlash from Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson and other Republicans who in the past have railed against “hate speech” laws as part of a “cancel culture” aimed at silencing conservatives. Bondi later attempted to clarify that targeting would only include speech that led to threats or violence, which she said included speech targeting Democrats, too.

But the president himself said this week that Bondi could prosecute ABC News and its White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, for reporting he doesn’t like. “She’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” Trump told Karl. “ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right?”