Trump vows to punish critics after slaying of Charlie Kirk

President Donald Trump, following the death of GOP activist and close friend Charlie Kirk, vowed to unleash the weight of his administration onto those he said contributed to an environment of “radical left political violence.”

How that might translate into policy remained unclear Thursday, as the president and his aides spent part of the day grieving while strategizing their next steps.

Trump invoked Kirk’s memory to urge supporters to refrain from retaliatory violence. But he also indicated a desire to not just punish the killer, whose identity and motivations remain unknown to the public, but also to tackle what the president and his staff described as a movement bent on the destruction of the American way of life.

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy,” Trump said Friday morning on Fox News, where he also announced that authorities had detained a suspect in the case.

Other senior administration officials spoke of a broad plan to focus on public speech and rhetoric, declaring that those who speak in violent terms about Trump and his allies will face consequences. Some suggested a more expansive campaign, calling out schoolteachers and college instructors who have made public statements criticizing Kirk since his death, and promising to deport noncitizens who do the same.

The statements from Trump and his top advisers provided early insight into how the president will respond to both the personal loss and political juncture he faces in the wake of Kirk’s fatal shooting Wednesday on a Utah college campus. Trump appeared to be positioning himself to launch a campaign against some of Kirk’s - and his - opponents who have spoken out since the conservative activist’s death.

“We are working, we were actually already working, spurred as much by the Ukrainian woman who was killed on the train as by Charlie’s tragic passing, [on] a more comprehensive plan on violence in America, the importance of free speech and civil speech, the ways that you can address these, they can only be called hate groups, that may breed this kind of behavior,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told radio host Scott Jennings on his show Thursday.

“So in the coming days, the president will be telling the American people about what we plan to do,” she continued. “It will not be easy. There’s layer upon layer upon layer, and some of this hate-filled rhetoric is multigenerational, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Wiles stressed that the administration intends to protect free speech as it continues to develop its plans.

Trump told reporters on the South Lawn on Thursday that he had “an indication” of the shooter’s motive and would say more later. He also called Kirk “an advocate of nonviolence” and said, “That’s the way I like to see people respond.”

The previous day, Trump had said from the Oval Office that his administration “will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

In that speech, Trump blamed the “radical left” for rhetoric that he said was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

A senior White House official declined to comment when asked to elaborate on what Trump meant when he promised to find those responsible for political violence.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, the official said next steps could be directed at people who explicitly say they will commit acts of violence.

“A lot of these people who commit these heinous acts, they post on social media,” the official said. “Sometimes they profess what they will do and actually do it.”

Others in the administration and beyond, however, signaled plans to go after more than just those making explicit threats of violence.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called out “people in positions of institutional authority,” noting the social media posts of “educators, health care workers, therapists, government employees” who he said had cheered Kirk’s death.

“There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved,” Miller wrote Thursday on X. “It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.”

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said he had directed consular officials “to undertake appropriate action” against foreign visa applicants and holders who praised or rationalized the shooting.

“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Landau declared on X, asking for users to flag posts for him so that he could direct the State Department’s attention to them.

The request suggested an unusual amount of personal attention from the State Department’s No. 2. Landau - or someone posting from his account - was actively responding to X users flagging accounts for him Thursday with a Bat Signal-like cartoon of a spotlight that was captioned “El Quitavisas,” or “The Visa Canceler.”

In a video tribute shared Wednesday, Trump highlighted other politically motivated acts of violence against Republican officials and business leaders. He cited the assassination attempt against him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer, the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the 2017 shooting of Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise.

The president did not mention Melissa and Mark Hortman, the Democratic state lawmaker and her husband who were killed in their Minnesota home in June, nor a suspect’s alleged attempt to kill Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and his family last spring by setting fire to their house.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson criticized The Washington Post for asking whether Trump viewed those incidents as political violence too.

“The Washington Post is a shameful publication and they should be humiliated for using whataboutisms to nitpick the President’s heartfelt video about the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, a dear friend,” she said. “The President wants the perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrific act to pay for what they did. They will be caught, and they will be brought to justice. It is disgusting and ghoulish for anyone to question the President’s motive, especially when there were two assassination attempts on his life.”

Some Republican officials, a day after the killing, which was captured by gruesome video footage and widely shared online, echoed Trump by pledging action against others who showed prejudice against Kirk.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said that “celebrating the assassination of a 31-year-old father of two young kids is disturbing; that teachers would be among those who do so is completely unacceptable. … It is sad that we’ve seen a number of teachers across America celebrate Charlie Kirk’s murder.”

He praised Florida’s commissioner of education, Anastasios Kamoutsas, for warning school districts that teachers who celebrated Kirk’s death on social media could be fired under state law.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) said he would seek to permanently ban the accounts of every poster or commenter on social media who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk” and would be looking to revoke their business licenses and driver’s licenses and kick them out of school.

“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” Higgins wrote on X. “I’m starting that today.”

As Trump and his advisers planned their next steps, the administration also focused on celebrating Kirk, 31, one of the right’s most prominent and polarizing figures, as an American hero. Vice President JD Vance canceled his 9/11 memorial plans to fly to Utah to be with Kirk’s family and closest friends.

A somber Trump, meanwhile, opened his remarks at the National September 11 Memorial Museum with an ode to Kirk.

“I felt Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people,” Trump said. “I have no doubt that Charlie’s voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on.”

He then said he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.