Trump vows to dismantle ‘radical left’ groups in wake of Charlie Kirk killing | CBC News

Following the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his key allies are floating plans to shut down left-wing organizations that they say encourage political violence. 

The warnings from Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and other prominent White House figures are prompting concern that the administration may use Kirk’s killing as a pretext to muzzle legitimate, non-violent political opposition. 

The promises to crack down on what Trump calls “radical left” groups began within hours of the shooting last Wednesday, well before authorities had identified suspect Tyler Robinson. Investigators have yet to allege a definitive motive.

The administration has amplified the calls on a near-daily basis: 

• Wednesday: In a video address, Trump said 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.”

• Friday: Trump repeated the threat in an interview on Fox News and called for a racketeering investigation into George Soros, claiming without evidence that the 95-year-old billionaire philanthropist funds “professional agitators.”

• Friday: Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s key advisers, also pledged a crackdown, crediting what he says was the last message he received from Kirk. “He said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” Miller told Fox News. 

• Monday: “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” said Vance while hosting a podcast tribute to Kirk from the White House.

Later in the same podcast, Vance spoke of dismantling what he called “this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.” 

The vice president also fuelled fears of a far wider crackdown on mainstream liberal organizations by specifically calling out Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the long-established Ford Foundation, accusing them of “setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.”

Billie Murray, an associate professor of communications at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, says the administration is disingenuously attacking civil rights groups that don’t support political violence. 

“The fact that they’re talking about going after these organizations is really distressing. It makes me very nervous for the state of our democracy,” Murray said in an interview with CBC News.

“If we really want to be serious about addressing these kinds of problems, we have to be honest about why these things are actually happening, and it is not because organizations are funding some sort of political violence from the left.”

After Vance’s podcast aired, Open Society Foundations issued a statement condemning Kirk’s killing and describing its work as entirely peaceful and lawful. 

“We oppose all forms of violence and condemn the outrageous accusations to the contrary,” said the statement posted to X. “It is disgraceful to use this tragedy for political ends to dangerously divide Americans and attack the First Amendment.” 

Soros, a longtime donor to the Democratic Party, has faced plenty of criticism from Trump and his MAGA movement over the years. 

But in recent days, Trump has escalated matters by twice hinting at criminal investigations into the billionaire’s finances. 

Trump threatens racketeering case against Soros

“We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him,” Trump said in his Fox News interview last week, using the acronym for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, U.S. federal legislation designed for prosecutions of organized crime. 

In late August, in a social media post, Trump said Soros should face RICO charges for his “support of Violent Protests, and much more.” 

The Trump administration is reviewing the tax-exempt status of left-leaning non-profits and considering targeting them with anti-corruption laws, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing unnamed officials.

The most tangible examples of how the administration intends to act against the organizations it believes support left-wing extremism have come from Miller. 

WATCH | How Kirk’s killing fits into a pattern of political violence:  

Charlie Kirk shooting: Why kill him? | About That

Charlie Kirk, a conservative podcaster, debater and close ally of President Donald Trump, died after being shot at a ‘Prove Me Wrong’ event at a university in Utah. Andrew Chang explores why the Turning Point USA co-founder was so polarizing, his role with the MAGA movement and how his assassination fits into the larger picture of political violence in the U.S.

Images provided by Getty Images, The Canadian Press and Reuters.

“The power of law enforcement under President Trump’s administration will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom,” Miller said in his Friday interview on Fox News.

“We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” he added Monday in conversation with Vance on the podcast.

‘Something dark might be coming’

It’s all got liberals in the U.S. worried about what the Trump administration could have in store. 

“I’m unaware of any other recent president explicitly vowing to unleash the power of the American state on a vast, inchoate ideological group in quite this way,” said author Greg Sargent, in an article for The New Republic, a left-leaning U.S. magazine.  

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, laid out his fears in a social media post, citing Trump’s and Miller’s comments. 

“Something dark might be coming,” wrote Murphy, “Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent.” 

Murray, the Villanova professor, describes the killing of Kirk “horrific and tragic,” and questions the administration’s sole focus on left-wing political violence. 

“There doesn’t seem to actually be a lot of evidence to indicate that this sort of violence is explicitly or exclusively coming from the left,” she said.

“Violent far-right perpetrators, such as white supremacists, anti-government extremists and violent misogynists committed most U.S. terrorist attacks in recent years,” according to the 2024 Global Terrorism Threat Assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. 

The report continues: “But violent far-left perpetrators, such as anti-fascist extremists, anarchists and violent environmentalists have also orchestrated a growing percentage of terrorist attacks.” 

Since the summer of 2024, the U.S. has seen two assassination attempts against Trump, an arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, and the targeted killing of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband.