Trump's partisan double standard for assassinations is chilling

Source: MSNBC

Opinion ǀ Trump's partisan double standard for assassinations is chilling

Zeeshan Aleem
Sat, September 13, 2025 at 7:59 AM EDT
5 min read

In his sharply differing reactions to two high-profile assassinations of political figures this year, the president of the United States has effectively encouraged the public to apply a partisan lens to the value of human life.

The two killings in question — a lone wolf assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman in June and the shooting of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at a Utah Valley University speaking event this past week — elicited very different kinds of treatment from the White House. President Donald Trump gave scant attention to Hortman’s killing, while he framed the killing of Kirk as a cataclysmic national tragedy and a political rallying cry for the right.

Republican lives matter more than Democratic lives, Trump is effectively telling his base. And in a shocking comment on “Fox & Friends” on Friday, Trump appeared to use Kirk’s assassination to explicitly designate political violence a partisan issue too, by defending violent right-wing extremists as sharing his political goals of bringing down “crime” and left-wing extremists as “the problem.”

In response to the murder of Hortman, Trump offered a brief, impersonal condemnation of her killing on Truth Social, stating that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” He didn’t do much else. He did not offer a substantial eulogy for her, or deliver an address on political violence, as he did after Kirk’s death. ...

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/opinion-trumps-partisan-double-standard-115907666.html