Can America avoid a Civil War when the President of the United States is openly agitating for one? We are about to find out.
An incendiary Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to shove our nation over the edge. As the wounded country reels, he is furiously pushing every hot button like it’s a video game console — and acting like the director of a sick late night reality show: “Survivor: American Democracy.”
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a real president would have tried to lower the temperature and soothe tensions. Instead, Trump was the instigator-in-chief, turning up the stove and dropping a distressed nation into a scalding lobster pot, while mischievously watching it boil over. It is eerily reminiscent of how Trump kicked back and calmly viewed his Jan. 6 insurrection play out on TV.
After Kirk died, the president released a four-minute gaslighting video from the Oval Office. Trump, who habitually demeans Democrats as communists, Marxists, and radical far-left lunatics, brazenly said that Kirk’s death was the “tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day.”
Without skipping a beat, Trump revealed his breathtaking insincerity when he mentioned several crimes against the right, while not mentioning a single instance of right-wing violence against the left. The New York Times wrote:
The president made no mention of the recent killings in Minnesota of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, who were on a hit list of dozens of left-wing figures; the arson attack on the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, while he and his family slept; a shooter’s attack on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a hammer assault on the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the shootings at an Arizona campaign office of Kamala Harris; or the Jan. 6 pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol that injured roughly 150 police officers.
Charlie Kirk himself made light of the MAGA hammer attack on Paul Pelosi. The bombastic activist, who openly distained empathy, praised the right-wing assailant and even tried to help him: “I want this guy to be bailed out. An amazing patriot should go and bail this guy out and then go ask him some questions…be a midterm hero.”
What does it say about MAGA, when a key player in their movement openly celebrates an 82-year-old man having his skull bashed in because he doesn’t like his wife’s politics?
The nation isn’t “polarized,” as the media euphemistically says. We have a Republican problem, with the party routinely encouraging violence, applauding a coup attempt and frequently calling for Civil War.
There are nuts on the left too — but they are mostly confined to the fringe. The whackos on the right are in the White House, the halls of Congress and leading influencers and media personalities. Any comparison of left-wing to right-wing violence is a false equivalency.
Case in point is President Trump, who only minutes after decrying violence, cynically pivoted to capitalize on Kirk’s death to promise brute force against Democrats. “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them…We have a radical left group of lunatics out there. Just absolute lunatics. And we’re going to get that problem solved.”
Such rhetoric is gobsmacking coming from the thuggish president who pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists who ransacked the U.S. Capitol. The combustible climate created by MAGA has made everyone less safe. Speaker Mike Johnson said that threats against members of Congress increased from 9,000 to 14,000 this year.
To exploit this opportunity, Trump and his MAGA minions know they have to turn Kirk into a martyr. They have even compared him to Martin Luther King, Jr., even though the nasty founder of Turning Point USA disparaged King. “MLK was awful…He’s not a good person.” He also criticized the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, “The Civil Rights Act…created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.”
Kirk spewed way too much hate for hagiography. A more apt comparison is the shooting of segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace. We can’t whitewash his white supremacy or produce bogus rainbows to cover-up his radical anti-LGBTQ bigotry. [In case you think I’m being harsh, I’ve pasted Kirk’s quotes below, so you can judge for yourself.]
Kirk was a heinous person, and the worst America had to offer. He was a member of the anti-democratic Project 2025, while falsely presenting himself as a heroic warrior for free speech. Truth be told, he was an inveterate liar who trafficked in false speech and embraced fascism. He did more to divide this country than almost any other person.
Yet, in spite of his tragic flaws, we must be crystal clear that his assassination was a tragedy for our nation. In America, we have the right to be wrong and the freedom to be an asshole without being shot to death for it. If we can’t mourn the person, we can at least mourn the attack on the Constitutional principles that truly make our nation great. There is also the question of humanity beyond politics. Kirk’s family did not deserve to lose a husband and a father. His death in no way should be glorified or celebrated.
Still, it’s fair to point out that Kirk was a victim of his own deluded worldview. He wanted to live in a Wild West where any fanatic could be armed to the teeth. It cost him his life.
“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death,” Kirk said. “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
Sadly, Kirk is being exploited by those looking to use his death to carry out their perverse agenda. Trump is using it as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, seek vengeance on his enemies and consolidate autocratic power.
In the service of Putin, we can’t dismiss the possibility that Trump might be trying to destroy America from within. It didn’t go unnoticed that when Russian drones entered Poland last week, NATO jets were scrambled, but none were American. Trump responded by oddly running interference for Putin, falsely claiming the violation of airspace was a mistake.
“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, posted on X. “But it wasn’t. And we know it.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues trying to destabilize democracy. After Kirk was murdered, he posted on X: “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die.” In his defense, it might have been the ketamine talking. Following Musk’s lead, mentions of Civil War on X soared.
The Religious Right certainly didn’t miss its opportunity to call for bloodshed. There were legions of anti-LGBTQ bigots calling for violence at Pride events. Libs of TikTok tweeted, “THIS IS WAR.”
Christopher Rufo tweeted, “The last time the radical left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Of course, Rufo is insincere when he suggests his desired crackdown is lawful. In the United States, the law is increasingly defined by what Trump says it is.
What’s baffling about the calls for civil war, is that those promoting the idea can’t even define why they are angry. In our first Civil War, we had distinct battle lines and were settling the intractable issue of slavery. In 2025, these aspiring “patriots” imagine themselves in an ill-defined crusade against whatever “woke” is in their diseased minds. Do they see themselves entering cities in fatigues and slaying anyone with green hair and a nose ring?
If you delve below the surface, most of these bloodthirsty creeps want a nation where they are empowered to use blunt force to dictate how others think, act, worship and love. They wrap their intolerant desires in the flag and justify their penchant for violence by clutching the Bible.
They are so eager to turn America into Lebanon or Syria to bring meaning to their empty lives. But these overcaffeinated ideologues have never endured the death, destruction and deprivation of war. It would behoove them to ask residents of devastated war-torn countries how much fun they had, before they go down this awful road.
Those banging the drums of war, it seems, have lived in their online MAGA bubble for so long that they believe their own rhetoric. They truly think the other half of the country is unarmed and weak. In their Rambo fever dreams, they storm Chicago or New York and no one returns fire.
Emblematic of this wishful thinking is the Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts. In a July 2024 interview, he said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Sorry, Kevin, but no, we aren’t going to peacefully hand you the keys to our country so you can end democracy and turn it into Gilead of the Handmaid’s Tale.
With the President of the United States sending troops to cities under false pretenses, creating a masked secret police force, using the Department of Justice to prosecute political foes, and leveling increasingly violent threats against the left, the prospects of peace are increasingly dim.
In a country with more guns than people, Trump is throwing a match on a tinderbox each time he speaks. The way out of this dystopian nightmare is de-escalation — but we have a president who began his political career on a golden escalator — and never hopped off.
Charlie Kirk Quotes
Oct. 31, 2022 — Paul Pelosi attack / bail
“I want this guy to be bailed out. An amazing patriot should go and bail this guy out and then go ask him some questions… be a midterm hero.”
Feb. 18, 2023 — LGBTQ / anti-trans
“[Transgender people should be] dealt with the way we did in the 1950s and 60s.”
April 6, 2023 — Gun control / gun deaths
“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death… I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
December 2023 (reported Jan 12, 2024) — Martin Luther King Jr.
“MLK was awful… He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”
“A myth had been created around King which had ‘grown totally out of control’ … [King] was currently ‘the most honored, worshiped, even deified person of the 20th century’ despite ‘most people’ supposedly disliking him during his life.” – Charlie Kirk, Wikipedia
April 3–5, 2024 — Women / birth control
“Birth control like really screws up female brains… [it] creates very angry, bitter young ladies.”
April 16, 2024 — Civil Rights Act of 1964
“The Civil Rights Act… created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon.”
May 2024 (TV hit) — Women / motherhood
“Young women, they don’t value having children.”
June 18, 2025 — Women / role in society & workplace (college)
“We should bring back the celebration of the MRS degree… be clear that’s why you’re going to college… you will find a husband… and that’s a really good reason to go to college.”
After Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement, he fantasized about her becoming more conservative. “Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”
Attack on Trans People -- (quoted widely; example) — LGBTQ / religion
“[Trans people are] a throbbing middle finger to God.”
No Separation of Church and State -- “There is no separation of church and state. It's a fabrication. It's a fiction. It's not in the Constitution. It's made up by secular humanists. It’s derived from a single letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention.” – Charlie Kirk, July 6, 2022
Great Replacement Theory: “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.” -- The Charlie Kirk Show, March 1, 2024
“The ‘Great Replacement’ is not a theory, it's a reality.” – Charlie Kirk, Instagram Post, 2024
Trans is Equivalent of Black Face: “A man who calls himself trans is wearing ‘woman face,’ no different than I would wear Black face trying to be a Black person.” – Charlie Kirk, BuzzFeed from an Instagram Post, April 2024
Black TV Personalities Affirmative Action Picks: On his radio show, he claimed Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were “affirmative action picks” and went further, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” – Charlie Kirk, Hindustan Times, 2024
Kirk Has No Use for Empathy: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage.” The Charlie Kirk Show, 2024
Vandalizing Pride Symbols: “We should work to overturn every conviction for those arrested, fined, or otherwise harassed for the ‘hate crime’ of doing donuts over Pride flags painted on public streets. It should be legal to burn a rainbow or [Black Lives Matter] flag in public.” – Charlie Kirk The Guardian, 2023
Raising Retirement Age: Kirk often railed against retirement. “For future retirees, people under the age of 45, we should absolutely raise the retirement age. I’m not a fan of retirement. I don’t think retirement is biblical… I think, what a waste of the gifts that God has given you.” – Hindustan Times
Wayne Besen is the executive director of Delray Beach-based LGBTQ nonprofit organization Truth Wins Out. He is the former spokesperson of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ rights organization.
