IN THE WAKE of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Trump administration is preparing a broad crackdown on its domestic opponents. Donald Trump, JD Vance, Pam Bondi, and Stephen Miller have spoken in sweeping terms about using prosecutions, investigations, tax policy, and other levers of government to crush or cripple any organization that can be linked, even tenuously, to left-wing violence.
In the most detailed formulation so far, Miller told Fox News on Friday that the administration would unleash “the power of law enforcement” against people responsible for “radicalization,” cultivating “extremism,” spreading “hate,” “fomenting violence,” “trying to inspire terrorism,” or calling their adversaries “evil,” “fascists,” “Nazis,” or “enemies of the republic.”
That sounds like a recipe for prosecuting speech. Bondi indicated as much when she endorsed a crackdown on “hate speech” before revising her position.
Drawing lines around protected speech can be tricky. But in this case, there’s a clear standard any honest Republican could accept: Nobody should be pursued or punished by the government for saying the kinds of things Kirk himself said. Here’s a list.
Kirk persistently claimed that George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer on video, actually died of a drug overdose. Even after Kirk’s allegations were debunked, and even after the officer was convicted of murder, Kirk repeated his story, most recently last week. If Kirk was a hero, as the administration contends, then clearly it would be wrong to use the power of the state against someone who, like Kirk, blames a murder on the victim. And that free-speech protection should extend to anyone who accuses Kirk of causing his own assassination.
In May 2023, Kirk told his followers that a certain kind of crime was “happening all the time in urban America: Prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people. That’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
Six months later, he charged that (1) “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” (2) “Some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans,” and (3) “Tucker Carlson is completely correct by saying this, that the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors.”
It’s easy to see how such statements could lead an unstable person to commit violence against blacks or Jews, though that wasn’t Kirk’s intent. If it’s wrong to prosecute him for saying such things, it would by the same token be wrong to prosecute someone who, in the same manner, fuels animosity against whites, Christians, or conservatives.
On June 1, Kirk tweeted, “Islam is not compatible with western civilization.” Three weeks later, when Zohran Mamdani won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, Kirk asked: “What western city or country has improved as the Muslim population has increased? America’s largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall.”
If Kirk didn’t deserve to be punished by the government for saying these things, it would also be unwarranted to punish demagogues who portray conservatives or Republicans as an existential threat.
Last month, Kirk told his audience that “the great replacement of white people” was “at the core of the Democrat project.” He singled out Jasmine Crockett, a black congresswoman from Texas, claiming: “What she represents is very serious, which is the continued attempt to eliminate the white population in this country.”
Kirk’s statement about Crockett, like his statement about Mamdani, could easily be interpreted as an invitation to violence against certain public officials. If you wouldn’t prosecute him for those statements, you can’t fairly prosecute people who make similar statements about Republican politicians.
Last year, Kirk declared, “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.” Arguably, that sort of language could have contributed to the escalation of attacks on gender clinics and physicians. If Kirk’s words weren’t prosecutable speech, then invocations of Nazism against Republicans aren’t prosecutable, either.
In 2021, Kirk said “patriots” in Texas should be deputized to handcuff illegal immigrants who, according to Kirk, were part of a leftist plot aimed at “decreasing white demographics in America.” In 2024, he suggested it was time to “use real force,” starting with tear gas and rubber bullets, against people crossing the border illegally. “Those are the men that will go into your communities and break into your homes and rape your women, take your children,” he alleged. “But, hey, they’re ‘Dreamers.’”
If that’s not criminal incitement to attack DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants, then surely it’s not criminal incitement to speak the same way about people on the right.
Last year, responding to a Christian who cited Scripture to justify her support of sexual minorities, Kirk retorted that Leviticus 18 says a man who “lay with another man shall be stoned to death. Just saying.” Kirk pointedly added that this chapter of Leviticus “affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
Nobody who dismisses that as an innocent remark has any business prosecuting someone who speaks, in a similarly oblique way, about a scriptural basis to kill sinners on the right.
In 2022, David DePape, a man armed with a hammer, invaded the home of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, planning to interrogate her and potentially “break her kneecaps.” She wasn’t home, so DePape bludgeoned her husband, Paul Pelosi. Kirk questioned whether the incident was truly a home invasion, echoing other conservatives who implied that DePape was there for a tryst with Paul Pelosi. “There’s something very fishy going on with this story,” Kirk suggested.
“If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,” Kirk proposed. One reason was to “ask him [DePape] some questions,” presumably to challenge the home invasion story. But the other reason, according to Kirk, was that DePape was being treated harshly compared to suspects in other crimes.
If these comments weren’t worthy of official investigation or punishment, then neither are the callous jokes and insinuations about Kirk’s murder, including sympathetic words about the killer.
On January 4, 2021, Kirk tweeted that his political operation, Turning Point Action, was “sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for” Trump at the January 6 rally to overturn the election. The buses were sent, and the passengers participated in the rally. After the subsequent attack on the Capitol, Kirk deleted his tweet, and TPA denied any role in the post-rally events. Kirk faced no charges or penalties.
IN THE COMING WEEKS, officials who have eulogized Kirk as an exemplar of free speech and constructive debate—Trump, Vance, Bondi, Miller, and others—plan to roll out a program to hobble, intimidate, and silence the administration’s critics. In the name of thwarting violence, they’ll try to impose a regime of investigations, prosecutions, tax penalties, and other harassment.
Each time they blur the line between speech and violence, calling somebody’s words “incitement” or “terrorism,” ask yourself: Did they call it that when Charlie Kirk did it? If not, fight them like hell. Nonviolently, of course.