WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he hopes the nation will heal following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, though he suggested in an exclusive interview Saturday with NBC News that a “radical left” contingent in the country stands as a barrier to reconciliation.
“I’d like to see it [the nation] heal,” the president said in a brief telephone interview. “But we’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did.”
The suspect arrested in Kirk’s murder is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah. He is alleged to have shot the conservative activist during a speaking event Wednesday at Utah Valley University. Public records show that Robinson’s last voter registration date was July 13, 2021, with no political party declared.
Officials said Robinson had only recently shown interest in politics. A relative recalled him criticizing Kirk during a dinner ahead of the Utah Valley University event.
Investigators say Robinson left behind bullet casings etched with references to fascism, internet memes and video games. He now faces charges of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury and obstruction of justice.
Authorities are continuing their investigation into Robinson and the shooting, including a motive.
Kirk’s death has sparked a debate over the toxicity of the nation’s political dialogue, with Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox calling for more tolerance and an end to finger-pointing.
Trump, in the interview, said: “We’ll see what happens. They [the left] don’t like what’s been happening. We’ve been winning very big.”
After the shooting Wednesday, Trump appeared in a video from the Oval Office in which he pledged that his administration would ferret out “each and every one of those who contributed this atrocity … including the organizations that fund and support it.” In that video, Trump also went after the “radical left,” even though the shooter’s identity and motivations were not yet known.
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, he singled out George Soros, the 95-year-old Democratic megadonor and the founder of a group called the Open Society Foundations. Trump said that “we’re going to look into Soros” for possible violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law.
In reply to a question from NBC News about Soros, the president said that he “should be put in jail.”
“He’s a bad guy,” Trump added.
Soros has long funded both Democratic candidates and progressive causes and been one of the biggest donors on the left.
Asked to comment Saturday, a spokesman for the Open Society Foundations pointed to a post from the group last month on X.
Trump had posted that Soros and his son, Alex, now the chair of the organization, should be charged under RICO “because of their support for Violent Protest, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”
In reply, the group wrote that it does not “support or fund violent protests. Allegations to the contrary are false, and the threats against our founder and chair are outrageous. Our mission is to advance human rights, justice, and democratic principles in the United States and around the world.”
“We stand for fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” the group added, “including the rights to free speech and peaceful protest that are hallmarks of any vibrant democracy.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
