Mehdi Hasan has hit out at Republicans in the US who have “weaponised” Charlie Kirk’s shooting.
On Wednesday, right-wing influencer and Trump loyalist Kirk was shot in the neck whilst he was speaking at a Utah university event.
Shots were fired at an event at Utah Valley University in Orem where the 31-year-old was speaking.
READ NEXT: South Park pulls episode after fatal Charlie Kirk shooting
It was later confirmed by Donald Trump that Kirk had died following his injuries.
Almost immediately after the incident, politicians on both sides of the political divide condemned the shooting.
However, a number of Republicans, including the president, started blaming the left for the shooting, despite the fact the shooter has yet to be apprehended and almost nothing is known about his motives.
Appearing on Newsnight on Thursday, Mehdi Hasan accused Republicans of weaponising the killing because the right in the US are “looking for any opportunity to crackdown on the left.”
He compared Trump blaming the “radical left” for Kirk’s killing to his reaction to the killing of a Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota by a Trump supporter earlier this year.
Condemning political violence on all sides, Hasan called out Elon Musk for tweeting that the left is the “party of murder” after Kirk was shot.
The Zeteo editor-in-chief continued: “It’s insane to see how many right-wing accounts came out with incendiary remarks yesterday.
“Meanwhile Democrats are all falling over themselves to condemn the killing of a guy who was vicious about them. I condemned it, it was horrific.
“Charlie Kirk hated me, Charlie Kirk said I should be deported from the US. But obviously what happened to him was horrific, and we all condemn it.”
He added: “No one should be killed for their speech, but for the Republicans to cynically weaponise it, it’s kind of disgusting.”
Earlier in the programme, Hasan had said Trump is “not the person who you want leading a country when it’s divided like this.”
He accused Trump of “doing a lot of dividing,” adding that the president talking about being ‘worried for the country’ was “like an arsonist turning up at the scene of the fire and saying ‘how did this happen?’”