President Trump is ramping up his attacks on the left in the wake of last week’s killing of Charlie Kirk, providing fuel to the White House’s efforts to clamp down on left-leaning groups and institutions.

Trump has at nearly every turn since Kirk’s assassination argued the problem in the country stems from left-wing groups. The strategy has animated Republicans, who are mourning Kirk as a free speech champion and political martyr, but it ignores what his Democratic critics contend is Trump's own history of normalizing political violence.

In a four-minute video posted hours after Kirk was shot, Trump said years of attacks from the left comparing figures like Kirk to Nazis was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

When co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Trump how the country can come together, noting there are “radicals” on both the right and the left, Trump defended those on the right as concerned about crime, while condemning those on the left as “vicious” and “horrible.”

On Sunday, Trump again insisted the problem “is on the left.”

“When you look at the agitators, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that's the left, that’s not the right,” Trump said.

Other Republicans have backed Trump’s rhetoric.

Just hours after Kirk was shot, Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) both accused Democrats of creating an environment that makes conservatives targets of violence. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called for a national divorce Monday

© The Hill