Kirk speaking to attendees for his American Comeback Tour at Florida State University, February 28, 2025. Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Back in 2003, during peak post-9/11/Iraq War patriotic fever, when, as Dylan said of the McCarthy Era, “as long as you don’t say nothing, you can say anything at all,” Bill and Kathy Christison and I gave a talk in Taos, New Mexico, about the Iraq War, the neocons and the Israel Lobby. It was a bitterly cold night with brutal winds blowing down out of the Sangre de Cristos. As we left the venue, Bill noticed we were being tailed by a black truck, which followed us down State Road 68 towards Santa Fe, sometimes flashing its brights in the rearview mirror. Just outside Española, the truck pulled even with us and someone fired two shots at us from the passenger side window. Kathy and I flinched and ducked at the flashes. We heard a sharp metallic “ting.”

Bill and Kathy had both retired from the CIA in the late 70s and became two of the Agency’s fiercest critics. Bill, who had started as an analyst in the 1950s, had risen to near the top of the Agency. In the course of his career, he worked on the Soviet desk and nuclear proliferation. He became the principal adviser to the CIA director for Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. He ended his career as director of the agency’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis. Few people knew more about how the world worked, who benefited and who paid the price. Bill and Kathy met Cockburn shortly after 9/11 and quickly began writing erudite and incisive pieces for CounterPunch, excoriating US foreign policy. In an early essay, Bill laid out what he considered the root cause for many of the terrorist attacks on the US: “the support by the U.S. over recent years for the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is as much to blame as Israel itself for the continuing, almost 35-year-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” Bill and Kathy had contributed a chapter to our book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. I’d spent the previous week driving across the Southwest, giving talks about the book and speaking at anti-war rallies, starting in San Antonio, then El Paso, Las Cruces, and Albuquerque, before meeting up with Bill and Kathy for events in Santa Fe, where they’d moved after leaving DC, and Taos.

The truck continued to shadow us for several miles and fired at least two more shots. But Bill engaged in some fancy evasive driving techniques, which he’d once put to use in wartime Saigon, and we made it safely back to Santa Fe. (Had I been driving, I’d’ve probably steered us right into the Rio Grande Canyon.) The Christisons’ car didn’t escape unscathed, however. At least one of the shots creased the roof of their Toyota, just above where Bill’s head had been. I’ve given a lot of incendiary speeches over the years and I really prefer it if people do not respond to them, no matter how crazy they might sound, with gunfire…

The murder of Charlie Kirk is awful, disgusting and about as American as it gets. But let’s recall that when two Democratic legislators and their spouses were assassinated by a Trump supporter in Minnesota a few weeks ago, Trump said nothing. Nada. Zilch…..When an anti-vaxxer fired 173 shots at the CDC HQ in Atlanta last month, Trump stayed quiet, which was probably welcome, given what he might have said.

The leaders of the Right didn’t waste much time counseling their ranks to restrict themselves to “thoughts and prayers” over the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even before the assassin had been identified or a motive uncovered, they blamed the “violent rhetoric “of the Left for Kirk’s death…

Senator Markwayne Mullin: “He was a Christian, and Christians are under attack right now from this far crazy left views that say they don’t feel safe. Well, they’re the ones going in and shooting up our schools and shooting up our churches and shooting people that they don’t agree with, like President Trump and now Charlie Kirk.”

Elon Musk: “The Left is the party of murder.”

Now this from Trump’s backroom Kissinger, Laura Loomer: It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single Leftist organization. If Charlie Kirk dies from his injuries, his life cannot be in vain. We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.”

Of course, Loomer had directed some pretty harsh words at Kirk herself…

Christopher Rufo: “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

Donald Trump: “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

Brendan Dilley, a MAGA pocaster/influencer, on Alabama GOP Senator Katie Britt’s call for “peace and unity” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder: “You want to talk about ‘unity?’ Shut the fuck up. This is why you should have been in the kitchen. You have no idea what these people are thinking. No thanks. Fucking, Katie Britt of Alabama. You could fuck off with that bullshit. Your rhetoric of fucking ‘unity’ with violent satanists?…Shut the fuck up, woman. I have no interest in what you have to say.”

Some recent acts of political violence committed by MAGA/Trump supporters…

August 2025: Firing of 180 shots into the CDC headquarters in Atlanta and the killing of David Rose, a black police officer.

June 2025: Killing Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their Minnesota home.

June 2025: Shooting and critical wounding of Democratic state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their Minnesota home.

April 2025: Attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro.

Late 2022 and early 2023: A series of shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico.

October 2022: Attempted kidnapping of Nancy Pelosi and assault on her husband, Paul.

January 2021: Storming of the Capitol, assaults on Capitol Hill and DC police, threat to lynch Mike Pence.

July 2020: Attack on the home of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas that resulted in the murder of her son Daniel and the shooting and critical wounding of her husband, Mark.

July 2020: Attempted kidnapping........

© CounterPunch