This week’s political assassination in the United States was not the year’s first, and the difference in reaction among right wing leaders is terrifyingly stark.
When Minnesota Democrat legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in their home by a right wing extremist disguised as a cop in June, neither Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre nor his then-substitute opposition leader Andrew Scheer issued so much as a statement of sympathy.
The Consequences Of Rhetoric
This week, a rabid Trump supporter dressed up as a cop and shot two elected Minnesota Democrats and their spouses, resulting in the deaths of Melissa and Mark Hortman.
Following those murders, the right wing leadership was stone silent. President Trump did not even bother calling the governor of the state in which Hortman served to express … well, anything. Far from it, he said he would not “waste time” doing so.
Rage-baiting right wing influencers, on the other hand, went into overdrive with ridiculous conspiracy theories with some demanding state governor Tim Walz, who’d been Kamala Harris’s running mate in last year’s election, be immediately arrested.
That assassination took place around 2 in the morning on June 14th, the same day of the state’s scheduled “No Kings” protests. Governor Walz was scheduled to headline that protest, but he and other state leaders pulled out because of that morning’s murder of one of their colleagues.
When it was already known that Melissa Hortman had been killed earlier in the day, extremist right-wing social-media influencer Charlie Kirk joined into the conspiratorial cacophony, writing on X:
Tim Walz has reportedly backed out, but he was slated to headline the Twin Cities No Kings “protest” today.
Total shocker that smearing a duly-elected president who won an overwhelming electoral mandate as a fascist or a king leads to violent political radicalization.
After an extensive manhunt, it was revealed that Hortman’s killer was a MAGA Trump-supporter with a 45-name hit-list including numerous other prominent Democrats. The silence on the right was once-again deafening.
When that same Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah this week, though, Pierre Poilievre, who, let’s not forget, never acknowledged Hortman’s assassination, wrote:
We must all strongly denounce the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Political violence is NEVER justified. The attacker must be brought to justice. And free speech must be upheld. Pray for Mr. Kirk and his family.
Across Canada and the United States, the right wing is expressing shock about Kirk’s murder in a way they do not bother for people with whom they disagree. The generic “thoughts and prayers” offered for so many public shootings have been replaced with genuine anger and fear — one of their own has become a victim of their rhetoric.
So far in 2025, there have been 320 mass shootings in the United States resulting in at least 308 deaths and over 1400 injuries. Two years ago, Kirk shared a view of these deaths that vocalised the American right’s view of gun violence in a way few dare say out loud:
I think it is worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights.
The cost, though, is in real human lives — now including his own. On the same day Kirk was shot and killed in Utah, a “radicalised” student walked into his school outside Denver, Colorado and shot two other students before killing himself. It was one of 47 school shootings to take place so far this year in the United States.
How many lives are those rights worth? Does it matter, or is it actually about who is killed, with some lives being worth less than others?
Between Kirk’s shooting and when a registered Republican father secured and turned over his own son for the murder, the American right was in overdrive blaming the left for the attack, as they had also falsely done less than three months earlier with Hortman.
Trump directed that American flags be lowered to half-staff in honour of Kirk, something also not done for Hortman. That’s an honour he reserves for his strongest supporters.
Last month, in contrast, the president did not even acknowledge the death of David Rose, the DeKalb county police officer who was killed when an anti-vaxxer shot up the Centre for Disease Control. Rose, a former US Marine who died defending federal employees in a federal facility, would probably have been hailed as an American hero had he been a MAGA-hat wearing white cop. Instead, the Trump administration did not bother to send a representative to the funeral. Why would he; after all, when his supporters attacked Congress on January 6th 2021 and officers died protecting the Capitol, he issued pardons and rewards for the attackers, not the defenders.
Once it became clear that Kirk’s killer was from a local MAGA family, the American media started whitewashing him as the good student who lost his way, while right wing thought leaders ran back to their default “thoughts and prayers” mode, pretending they hadn’t blamed radical left lunatics hours earlier.
Then Utah state Governor Spencer Cox had another MAGA inside-voice moment when he said of the murderer:
For the 33 hours, I was praying that if this had happened here it wouldn't be one of us, somebody there from another state, somebody came from another country
What does that even mean? What was he actually hoping for? An excuse for revenge against… people who aren’t like him?
Ultimately, Pierre Poilievre is right this time: political violence is never justified.
People who espouse hatred, misogyny, and white supremacy and advocate for violence should be dealt with through the criminal justice system and through public ridicule, not through the creeping violence we are seeing and that some seem to be wanting.
When there is violence, it should be universally condemned — regardless of who committed it against who or why.
If Poilievre believes what he said, he and the rest of the right wing need to condemn Melissa Hortman’s killing, too.
We’ll be waiting for it.
If someone is asked: "What do you think about the assassination of Charlie Kirk?" - I think there are a number of appropriate optional replies, such as: 1) What do you think of the murder in July of 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sayfollah Musallet? 2) What makes you believe that the killing of Charlie Kirk was an "assassination"? 3) Hasn't the news cycle turned yet? 4) Charlie who? And there are others. I'm just not convinced that an individual killing, for (maybe) individual motives, is the right trigger (sorry) for a discussion about whether "political violence" is good or bad. To conclude on that point: Was the murder of Sayfollah Musallet an act of "political violence"?