President Donald Trump’s speech Sunday at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk quickly devolved into familiar remarks about targeting his political opponents — remarks that were promptly ridiculed Monday by a panel on CNN.
As the last speaker at the event, which was reportedly attended by around 200,000 people, Trump paid tribute to Kirk as the “greatest evangelist for American liberty,” but also used his speech as an opportunity to announce that his Justice Department was investigating “networks of radical left maniacs,” and declared that he hated his political opponents.
CNN’s Audie Cornish said she was “a little surprised” to hear such comments during what was a memorial service and celebration of life, to which senior CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere said he wasn’t.
“I mean, no, because Donald Trump gives the same speech no matter what venue he's in, even at what was supposed to be a funeral or celebration of Charlie Kirk's life. It was a rally speech,” Dovere said.
“When we see the things that are being done in the name of Charlie Kirk's killing and responding to it, many of them are things that the president and top aides around him have been talking about doing for a long time. Trump, here, is using Kirk's assassination as a pretext for pursuing more political investigations.”
Kirk was shot and killed earlier this month while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University, an attack that drew bi-partisan condemnation. Critics, however, say the Trump administration has seized on the assassination to target political adversaries, with Trump immediately blaming the “radical left” — despite evidence to the contrary — and vowing investigations into organizations he claims helped create the conditions for the killing.