1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

After the horrific killing of influential MAGA activist Charlie Kirk — who was struck down by a sniper’s bullet as he answered students’ questions at Utah Valley University on Wednesday — President Donald Trump had a rare opportunity to call for a moment of national unity. The president could have mourned his close ally, who was a 31-year-old husband and father, a highly effective unofficial adviser to Trump’s administration and a popular leader of a mass movement of young conservatives. And he could have taken the opportunity to denounce violence emanating from any spot on the political spectrum. Instead, Trump saw another opportunity: to squarely lay the blame for Kirk’s murder on the media and his political opponents. Trump said "all Americans and the media" must "confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible." He added, "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals," and he blamed "this kind of rhetoric" as being "directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today." So far, none of this is out of character for Trump. While lamenting Kirk's killing as the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day," Trump ignored his own statements referring to immigrants as "vermin," calling the media the "enemy of the American people" and saying he hates Democrats, whom he also on different occasions referred to as "evil" and "demonic." But Trump's hypocrisy and serial deployment of violent rhetoric are such a part of his character that Americans - both supporters and detractors of the president - are mostly inured to it. He is the Divider in Chief after all.