EP 19: The Weaponization of Tragedy

Charlie Kirk was killed on September 10th. Within hours, the tragedy was transformed into a weapon of political warfare. In this episode, I break down how Kirk’s views and rhetoric are being rewritten, how Trump and his allies are using his death to demonize millions of Americans, and why every act of violence now risks becoming fuel for more division. Because if every tragedy is weaponized, we’re not stopping the violence — we’re guaranteeing more of it. 

Check out my substack page where I tackle some of the episode topics in depth and write about other issues our country and the world are facing today. https://substack.com/@ktdpodcast

Transcript

Raheel Khan: 0:01

Welcome back to Khannecting the Dots. Today I wanna spend a few minutes discussing the latest act of political violence this country has endured. The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10th while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. Like so many tragedies before it, we're watching it get weaponized in real time. Let me start with what should be obvious. Kirk's murder was inexcusable. No one deserves to be gunned down for their political views. No matter how controversial. His wife, Erica, and their two young children have lost a husband and father, something they would have to endure for the rest of their lives. That human cost is real and it matters. But how we respond to political violence. Who we blame, how we frame it, what lessons we draw also matter. And lately our response has revealed everything about where we are as a democracy. Within hours of Kirk's death, president Trump released a video calling him wonderful, legendary, and a martyr for truth and freedom. He blamed the assassination on years of radical left rhetoric. But here's the problem. If we're going to have an honest conversation about dangerous political speech, we can't sanitize the very person we're talking about. Kirk built his career on division fueled by the great replacement theory, the same white nationalist conspiracy that inspired mass shootings in Christchurch, Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo. He didn't just argue policy. He applied this worldview to demonize whole groups of Americans: on Black Americans. He called Martin Luther King Jr. Awful and dismissed the Civil Rights Act as a huge mistake because racial progress threatened his demographic vision; on Muslims. He proudly labeled himself as a Christian Evangelical Zionist and said that"Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America." On immigrants, he promoted Project 10 million. Calling for the removal of 10 million alien invaders over four years. He said doing this would launch a soft civil war in the major cities, by which he likely meant mass unrest and conflict violence and upheaval in America's largest communities. Kirk was openly predicting the rights deportation agenda would tear the country apart and presenting that as acceptable collateral damage. On violence itself. He once said"it's worth it to have some gun deaths every single year so we can have the Second Amendment". Some argue that Kirk's campus tours were about dialogue even about bringing opposing views into the same room, but his rhetoric wasn't designed to open conversations. Instead, it was another forum for him to elevate white cisgender Christians as the only real Americans and cast everyone else as the threat. That's the framework of the great replacement theory, and it defined his politics as much as it did his tours. Ever since Kirk's death, prominent figures on the right have been attacking Democrats and the left blaming the collective for an individual's actions. The hypocrisy is blatant when we compare this moment to other acts of political violence. When Paul Pelosi was nearly murdered in his own home, motivated by the same conspiracies that drive much of the modern right. Trump allies mocked it. Donald Trump Jr. Posted Halloween jokes. Elon Musk spread conspiracy theories. Ted Cruz shrugged, and Kirk himself, he raised money for Pelosi's attacker. So what do we see when violence hits Democrats? It's a joke. But when Kirk was killed, Trump claimed it was because the left compared him to Nazis. What about when the Republicans spent years comparing Barack Obama to Hitler, even plastering his face on billboards alongside genocidal dictators? Back then, it was defended as free speech. Today it's painted as incitement to murder. And more recently in Minnesota, democratic state, representative Minnesota Hartman and her husband were assassinated in their home by a man described as a Trump supporter who attacked others and carried a list of at least 45 targets. Instead of offering compassion, Senator Mike Lee posted on social media saying,"this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way". Blaming liberal politics and even posting nightmare on Walz Street. Targeting Governor Tim Waltz. He later deleted those posts after some criticism, but received no other blowback. And Trump? He issued a simple statement calling the attack terrible and insisting it would not be tolerated. But when pressed about reaching out to Governor Waltz, he refused, calling him, whacked out a mess and not worth the time. That kind of selective outrage isn't unique. Some acts of violence dominate the headlines. While others barely register. On the very same day, Kirk was assassinated. Two students at Evergreen High School in Colorado were shot one inside the building, one outside. Both were left in critical condition. Authorities say the shooter, 16-year-old Desmond Holly had been radicalized by a far right extremist network online. When Kirk once said gun deaths were worth it for the Second Amendment, he was normalizing tragedy as a price of politics. The fact that two students were shot the very same day he was killed, and it barely made headlines, shows just how far that normalization has gone. Trump's, and the entire rights outrage is not just inconsistent, it's calculated. Recently, Trump cited the 2017 shooting of Steve Scalise as proof of radical left violence. He conveniently forgets that just weeks later when white supremacists marched into Charlottesville chanting Jews will not replace us and murdered Heather Hyer. He had insisted there were very fine people on both sides. And of course, he will never acknowledge his own use of Nazi style language calling political opponents"vermin" that need to be"rooted out". Language according to historians that directly echoed Hitler's propaganda. How about January 6th when his own supporters hunted lawmakers through the capitol, chanting about killing the vice President and Nancy Pelosi, or that just last year when he shared a video depicting President Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck. That's the pattern violence that helps the right's narrative becomes proof of the left's evil. Violence that contradicts it gets ignored or excused. And when asked about Unity in the aftermath of Kirk's, killing Trump's response, said it all on Fox. He said, I honestly don't care. And then justified political violence on the right as patriotic, but on the left as evil and despicable. Instead of calling for healing, his message doubled down on blame, targeting the left amplifying grievance, keeping the wound open. This isn't grief. It's a systematic weaponization of tragedy. Two days after the shooting, Erica Kirk addressed supporters for the first time. Her words were full of sorrow, but also of resolve and anger. She said,"you have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry". She promised that Charlie's work would continue the campus tours, the radio show. The mission. Her grief was real, but her words also carried the tone of mobilization, turning, mourning into a call to arms. For many of Kirk's supporters, that language was electrifying proof that his movement must not only endure, but grow stronger. For others outside that circle. It was deeply unsettling. A widow's grief expressed in militaristic imagery at a moment when a nation is already on edge. That's the risk. Her grief was raw and understandable, but the way it was expressed carried its own danger, amplifying the very divisions that make Kirk so polarizing in life. Even Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, urge and off ramp from hostility, but in the same breath expressed his wish that the shooter had been from out of state or even the country. Emphasizing how painful it was that the shooter was local, a Utah native. It may have sounded like an innocent wish, but it reflects an instinct to blame the other to further divide rather than confront what's within our own communities. Authorities have now arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, who turned himself in at the urging of his family. His grandmother said The family is all maga. Relatives say Robinson's politics were drifting away from his conservative family. Recently, governor Cox also revealed Robinson lived with a transgender partner who has been cooperating fully with authorities and is not accused of any wrongdoing. In other words, the story is murkier than the clean narrative some rushed to push. And it's exactly in those murky spaces that tragedies get twisted into weapons. If we want to honor victims of political violence, we need consistent principles, not selective outrage. Kirk's murder is now being used not just to mourn, but to demonize. Voices in the MAGA ecosystem are casting the left as fundamentally dangerous, labeling them all as radicals, agitators, threats. Laura Loomer has called for prosecuting leftist organizations. Trump has blamed radical left lunatics. Some commentators are even blaming colleges and universities claiming Robinson was radicalized after just one semester on campus. This isn't just about grief, it's about turning tragedy into a weapon to punish critics and opponents, and we're seeing it already reports of people losing jobs over their posts and officials in Washington talking about using this tragedy to justify broader actions against left leaning groups. I've said this before in another moment of tragedy, and it's worth saying again. We can and must hold two thoughts at once. We can grieve a man's death without erasing the real harm he caused to others. We can condemn political violence without ignoring the ecosystem of hatred that made it possible. We can acknowledge the human cost without excusing the human harm. Real leadership would lower the temperature across the board. It would mean Republicans owning their role, Democrats reflecting on theirs, and everyone treating all victims with equal concern. Instead, we're getting performative outrage designed not to heal, but to justify further escalation. And now this tragedy is being used to punish, dissent, silence critics and target entire communities. Here's the truth. American democracy can survive fierce disagreements. What it cannot survive is the exploitation of political violence or the tragedy that follows it. Because when every tragedy is exploited for political gain, grief stops being a path to healing and becomes the fuel for more violence. Thank you for listening.