Trump administration officials delivered a series of threats and accusations on Monday against “left-wing extremism” which they allege has fueled violence in America.
The allegations have escalated following the tragic shooting death of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk last week in Utah.
On Monday, Vice President JD Vance slammed the left and issued a call to action while guest hosting a two-hour taping of The Charlie Kirk Show in which he paid tribute to his friend.
The 31-year-old was fatally shot on September 10 at his political event. Some conservatives have seized on his death as a rallying cry.
A 22-year-old suspected gunman has been taken into custody. Utah Governor Spencer Cox indicated he had “leftist ideology” but said the motive for the shooting was not yet clear.
“We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years,” Vance declared early in Monday’s taping. “I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”
Later on the show, Vance went even further in slamming the left. He angrily claimed it was a fact that “most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”
During his rant, the vice president also specifically called out coverage of Kirk in The Nation magazine and named liberal foundations.
“Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight, and well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder,” Vance claimed while speaking straight to camera. “This is soulless and evil.”
The vice president angrily argued that the country needed to come together but said “real unity can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth.”
He specifically called out the “generous tax treatment” that billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation receive while accusing them of funding the “disgusting article” in the Nation, which he claimed justified Kirk’s death.
The Nation’s president Bhaskar Sunkara responded with a post on X on Monday, in which he accused Vance of lying about the magazine, and said it had never received funds from the Open Society Foundations.
The Ford Foundation provided money to the magazine in 2019, according to its online records. That grant supported its internship program.
During the show taping from his executive branch office, the vice president also brought on a series of White House officials to share their memories of Kirk and reflect on his legacy.
First among his guests was White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who repeated his recent vow to bring the full force of the federal government to investigate the left.
“The last message that Charlie sent me was - I think it was just the day before we lost him - which is that we need to have an organized strategy to go after the left wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country,” Miller recalled.
The far-right top Trump official said he would “write those words into my heart” and carry it out.
“Focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history,” Miller said. “We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”
His comment came in response to a question from Vance who asked Miller to describe how the administration was going to go after “the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”
Miller went into further detail that they would be going after the “organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization.”
“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller declared. “With god as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout the government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks.”
