Donald Trump has been accused of delivering ‘one of the most disgraceful speeches by any president’ in response to Charlie Kirk’s death.
On Wednesday, right-wing influencer and Trump loyalist Kirk was shot in the neck whilst he was speaking at a Utah university event.
Trump later confirmed in a post on Truth Social that Kirk had died from his injuries.
Kirk’s shooting has been universally condemned by politicians across the political spectrum, but Trump has since been called out by some for the video message he later shared from the Oval Office.
The shooter has not yet been apprehended and his motives remain unclear, with officials saying they have “no current ties” to the shooting, the BBC reports.
Despite this, Trump explicitly blamed the “radical left” for the shooting in an inflammatory message.
He went on to say their “rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
Reacting to the message on X, one person labelled it “one of the most divisive and disgraceful speeches by any president in the aftermath of someone’s death.”
They accused Trump of ‘dishonoring’ Kirk by “turning his passing into a rallying cry to smear Democrats.”
Meanwhile, others compared Trump’s response to that of Joe Biden’s when he was in office and Trump was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Others have highlighted how there are many more example of Trump supporters and alt-right figures carrying out political violence than there are Democrats, and condemned all forms of political violence.
When US senator Elizabeth Warren was asked by a reporter after the shooting if the Democrats should tone down their rhetoric, she pointed out that the most poisonous and toxic messages have almost entirely come from the president himself.
She said: “Oh, please. Why don’t you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he’s posted and every ugly word.”