NPR Tamara Keith examines President Trump’s response to the murder of Charlie Kirk along with her reaction to a 2017 political shooting and other moments of political violence.
Scott Detrow, host:
We are going to take a few minutes to see how President Trump has handled all this. In difficult times for the nation, it is from the role of the president to deliver meaning, resolution and calm. Think about George W. Bush in the immediate wake or on September 11 as a project recently. This week, in the hours immediately after the murder of Charlie Kirk, President Trump Tok a different approach. He blamed his political opponents.
(Archived recording soundbite)
President Donald Trump: The political violence of the radical left has hurt too many innocent people and has gained too many lives.
Detrow: Trump said his administration would come for people and organizations that contribute to political violence. The NPR Senior White House correspondent, Tamara Keith, joins us now. Hey, domesticated.
Tamara Keith, byline: Hello, Scott.
Detow: You have covered Trump for a long time. Unfortunately, this is far from the first violent political act that he has had to respond as president. So how does its handling compare here with the other times?
Keith: Trump and his family members were quite close to Charlie Kirk, so this attack was personal for Trump. And his response was immediately partisan. Compare that with what happened after the shooting in a Congress baseball team practice in 2017. In that case, republican legislators were attacked by a man who had a leg of Bernie Sanders. But in a script direction, Trump tok a very traditional approach and said that the nation is stronger when we are unified.
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Trump: We can have our differentials, but we are doing well in times as thesis to remember that everything that serves in the capital of our nation is here because, above all, they love our country.
Detrow: And, Tam, we have to talk about an important factor here: the same president was shot last summer in that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Remember us your rhetoric after that attempt at murder against him.
Keith: Yes, it was interesting because many of his followers were very fast to blame the leftist rhetoric, but Trump was more restricted. And in that case, the ideology of the shooter, which was killed by the police, to this day, is not yet clear. Its list of potential objectives included Democrats and Republicans.
Detrow: As we said, unfortunately, many examples to choose from, but I want to ask about an example recently that many people have mentioned this week, and those are the attacks selected against the Dococrats of Minnesota last Summerratman. How did Trump respond this summer after the shootings?
Keith: Hortman and her husband were killed. Another Democratic legislator was seriously injured. It was a directed attack. Trump published about the attack on social networks, saying that such horrible violence in the United States of America will not be tolerated. But he did not get into the partisan nature of orientation, and has really mentioned it since then.
Detrow: I mean, is it fair to say that only minimizes it when violence comes from the true right?
Keith: Yes, let me give you another example. In 2018, a Trump supporter who sent explosives to the Democrats and also CNN was tasks in custody. President Trump responded by praising the police and criticizing the media to mention the suspect’s political affiliation. He said that the media were using the sinister actions of an individual to obtain political points against him and the Republicans.
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Trump: However, when a supporter of Bernie Sanders tried to kill the Republicans of Congress and severely wounded a great man named Steve Scalise, and others, we do not use that daring attempt at mass murder.
Keith: Then, in 2018, he was saying that a partisan response to a terrible crime would be wrong. But in this case, with the murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump attaches a lot to his opinion that the Democrats and the hard left rhetoric are to blame.
Detrow: You say quite firmly. Is it fair to say that he has not softened his rhetoric since the alleged assailant was tasks in custody?
Keith: correct. Yesterday he was in Fox & Friends, and Ainsley Earhardt gave him the opportunity to offer a unifying message.
(Television program soundbite, “Fox and Friends”)
Ainsley Earhardt: How do we solve this country? How do we be together again?
Trump: Well, I will tell you something that will put me in trouble, but I couldn’t matter less. Radicals often are often radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime.
Keith: Then, take that and then compare it with the way he describes the other side.
(Television program soundbite, “Fox and Friends”)
Trump: The radicals of the left are the problem, and are vicious, and are horrible, and are political knowledge.
Keith: And in this way, Trump is like many others in this polarized country who thinks that his side is essentially good and the other side is evil. The difference, of course, thought, is that the president of the United States.
Detrow: NPR Tamara Keith, thank you very much.
Keith: You’re welcome.
(Soundbite of Jimin Song, “Like Crazy”)
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