Former U.S. President Barack Obama has cautioned that Charlie Kirk’s assassination could trigger a “political crisis of the sort that we haven’t seen before.”
Kirk, a conservative activist, was shot dead on September 10 while delivering a speech at Utah Valley University.
Speaking at an event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Obama said he did not personally know Kirk and disagreed with many of his views but still described the killing as “horrific and a tragedy.”
“He’s a young man with two small children and a wife who obviously – and a huge number of friends and supporters who cared about him. And so, we have to extend grace to people during their period of mourning and shock,” Obama added.
He also criticized President Donald Trump, accusing him of deepening national divisions rather than fostering unity.
“There are no ifs, ands or buts about it: the central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resorting to violence,” Obama said.
“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.”
Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA—one of the nation’s largest political organizations—had become a close ally of Trump. Following his death, Trump intensified his rhetoric against what he called the “radical left.”
In response to Obama’s remarks, the White House accused him of fueling division, describing him as “the architect of modern political division in America.”