Torrent of hate: Multiple attacks against both political parties
After last week’s political assassination of conservative podcaster, radio talk show host, and political activist Charlie Kirk, the American landscape exploded in a torrent of hate, coming from both sides of the political divide, courtesy of social media, where hate-filled speech spreads in unfiltered fashion.
Both sides, some Republicans and some Democrats, are now claiming that the other is more guilty of the hate mongering so prominent across the American landscape.
After the killing of Kirk, did some people have hope that cooler heads would prevail, asking for a stop to the hate being spread on social media, which ultimately leads to at least some of the violence?
Undoubtedly, yes. Instead, across multiple social media platforms, there were people on the Left celebrating Kirk’s political assassination, literally dancing in the streets, cheering over his demise. Disgusting, but there they were.
On the Right, some guys decked out to look like hard-riding cowboys, sporting tats, bulging biceps, carrying AKs, showed up on their respective YouTube channels, saying enough was enough. If the “Radical Left” wanted to “go to war,” it was time to “bring it on.”
Case in point, not to gain him any more subscribers, check out “Heavy Duty Country” on YouTube. He’s clearly ready to go to war against what he calls, “The Radical Left.”
He starts out his 8:18-minute rant with this gem:
“Do I look like a person who is scared to f….ing fight you?”
Not with those riding chaps you have on, Country.
“Aren’t we all done talking?” he asks, looking directly into the camera. “When do we start fighting?”
Hopefully, no time soon, Heavy Duty, but, hey, that’s me.
Apparently, even the disabled are ready to saddle up.
Under the “comments,” ole’ danzam07 writes:
“I’m old and disabled but damn it, I’m tired of all this, I got one last ride in me.”
Even though Heavy Duty Country has a penchant for the F-bomb, he’s also self-admittedly a devoted Christian, leading one of his subscribers to write this comment:
“I agree 100 (percent), my brother in Christ. Time for change, time for evil to be wiped off this earth.”
Good luck with that, @Mr.Grimm_44.
The President Speaks
For his part, during an appearance Friday on Fox & Friends, when the president was asked about radicalized individuals on both sides of the political aisle, so to speak, and how me might fix it and bring both sides together, President Trump said, in part, that he wasn't really interested, before adding:
“The radicals on the Left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”
The day before, Thursday, the president had this to say:
“We have a Radical Left group of lunatics out there, just absolute lunatics, and we're going to get that problem solved.”
The truth, however, is that the political violence is being perpetrated by the crazies from both the fringe Right and the Left, many independents will argue.
For example, this past June, a Democrat Minnesota lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Melissa Hortman, and her husband, were assassinated by a man who held deeply religious and politically conservative views (Source: CBS News). The same man had just shot and wounded a Minnesota Democrat state senator and his wife.
When the president was asked if he had called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to offer his condolences to the residents of Minnesota, reeling from the multiple shootings, President Trump said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” (Source: CNN).
From a press release sent out July 15, 2025, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota:
“Vance Boelter, 57, has been indicted on six federal charges in connection with the stalking and murders of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, the stalking and shooting of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman, and the attempted shooting of their daughter Hope Hoffman, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson.”
Just two months prior, April of 2025, Democrat Pa. Governor Josh Shapiro, his wife, four children, another family member, and the family’s four dogs, were forced to flee the governor’s mansion after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the governor’s mansion, just hours after the family had celebrated a Passover meal.
“The suspect said he targeted the Democratic governor in part because of what he believed were Shapiro’s views on the war in Gaza, search warrants show. The Pennsylvania man faces seven charges, including attempted homicide, burglary, attempted assault and arson.” (Source: Fox News.)
In July and September 2024, respectively, President Trump survived the shooting in Butler, Pa., and an attempted assassination in Florida where the president was playing golf.
More Political Violence
On Aug. 8, 2025, an Atlanta, Ga., police officer was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire near the CDC HQ.
According to prosectors, the gunman had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him sick, depressed, and ultimately the victim of his own demise — death by suicide.
In early October 2024, during her bid to become Joe Biden’s successor, Kamala Harris shared office space in Tempe, Ariz., with the state’s Democrat Party. In less than a month, the office was damaged by gunfire three times, late at night, with no injuries reported. (Source: CBS News.)
Between December 2023 and early January 2024, a New Mexico politician who ran for the state legislature, Republican Solomon Peña, was sentenced to an 80-year prison sentence after being convicted of orchestrating attacks at the homes of four Democrat lawmakers (Source: ABC News).
In October 2022, a seeming deranged man who had compiled a list of people whom he believed were “systematically and deliberately” destroying American freedom and liberty broke into the San Fran home of Nancy Pelosi. She wasn’t home, but the intruder attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, fracturing his skull and knocking him unconscious. (Source: Fox News.)
Then there was the infamous Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, following an outdoor speech by then-former President Trump, during which he called for his followers to “fight like hell,” allegedly made to stop the certification of Joe Biden as this nation’s 46th president, which resulted in the death of five people (strokes, heart attacks, one shot, one crushed), and injuries sustained by approximately 140 police officers (Source: The Wall Street Journal).
Those people, more than 1,500 in all, supporters of President Donald Trump, would later be pardoned by the 47th president on his first day back in office, Jan. 20, 2025.
More Violent Acts
In October 2020, 14 people, not Democrats, were arrested by the FBI and the Michigan State Police, charged with plotting to kidnap the state’s Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in an attempt to take over the state government (Source: CNN).
In June 2017, four people were shot, including then-House majority whip and Louisiana Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise – when a gunman opened fire on Republicans practicing for a congressional baseball game close to D.C.
Scalise recovered; the gunman was shot and killed.
In January 2011, a U.S. Representative out of Arizona, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, suffered a serious brain injury when a man shot her point blank in the head while meeting with constituents in front of a grocery store near Tucson. Besides Giffords being the main target, six people standing nearby were killed and 13 wounded.
Just this year alone, January thru August, there have been approximately 14,000 threats against members of the U.S. Congress (Source: NBC News).
Last year, during the entire 12 months, that number was 9,000.
So clearly, instead of seeing a decline in violence, things are only heating up.
Now comes the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who leaves behind a wife and two children, ages 3 and 1.
Bobby Kennedy’s Remarks
Two months before he himself would be struck down by an assassin’s bullet in June of 1968, in the immediate aftermath of the April assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., hoping to quell the violence that would prove to be his own demise, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. had this to say about the state of the nation:
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country whether they be white or they be black.”
Kennedy ended his remarks by asking the audience members to pray for “our country and for our people.”
Today, if one substitutes “white” and “black,” for “Republican” and “Democrat,” the message still stands as a call for Peace.
To round out his speech, RFK, Jr., said:
“(Americans) should dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
If only.
In his Farewell Address, George Washington offered us this warning about the peril of political parties:
“Beware of Political Parties… they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government…”
Today, not aimed at any one person, it does speak of the inherent danger that exists within a republic if it is to last.
As the great Benjamin Franklin said not long after the Constitutional Convention was concluded in September 1787, when a woman named Elizabeth Powel reportedly asked of him:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Said Franklin, quick on the uptake: “A republic, if you can keep it.”