Barack Obama has said that the U.S. is “at an inflection point” after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and appeared to accuse Donald Trump and his allies of stirring political division.
Speaking Wednesday at a non-profit event in Erie, Pennsylvania, the former president said that while political violence was “not new” in America, it was “anathema to what it means to be a Democratic country.”
His remarks come one week on since 31-year-old Kirk was fatally shot at a debate event at Utah Valley University, sparking calls for the dismantling of “extreme left” institutions from those on the right.
“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy… there are no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Obama said. “The central premise of our democratic system is that we are allowed to disagree and have, sometimes really contentious debates, without resorting to violence.”
As well as discussing the horrific incident in Utah, Obama referenced the murders of Minnesota Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband. He described both incidents as “horrific and a tragedy.”
The former president said that he didn’t know Kirk and admitted that he believed “some of his ideas were wrong, but added that people should be allowed to disagree with the ideas of others.
He went on to warn that there is “a host of larger trends that we have to be concerned about,” that were being driven by the administration, though he did not refer to Trump by name.
“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin,’ enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now, and something that we’re going to have to grapple with – all of us,” Obama said.
As the fallout from Kirk’s death continues, Republicans and senior members of the government have been vocal about the perceived division that is growing between both sides of the political aisle. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday called for a “national divorce” between Republicans and the left.
During a guest host appearance on Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance placed the blame for his death squarely at the feet of an “incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism,” vowing to “dismantle that and to bring real unity” to America.
“This is not a ‘both sides’ problem,” he said.
During his remarks, Obama took a different view. “Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, independents, we have to recognize that on both sides, undoubtedly, there are people who are extremists and who say things that are contrary to what I believe are America’s core values,” he said.
“And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together.” Such tensions have turned into a “political crisis of the sort that we haven’t seen before,” he added.