New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Friday said President Donald Trump is “struggling” with the death of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was fatally shot Wednesday at Utah Valley University. She also tried to add some context to the president’s divisive rhetoric.
Trump on Thursday blamed left-leaning “lunatics” for the shooting, but also urged his supporters to respond to the tensions with “nonviolence.” On CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” Haberman was asked to explain the contrast between those statements.
“I think it depends on when somebody catches him as to exactly what he is going to say,” Haberman said Friday. “I think that a lot of his folks are, look — you know this, Kaitlin — so many people around President Trump were very close to Charlie Kirk.”
She went on to note that Trump himself was close to Kirk, whose conservative nonprofit advocacy group, Turning Point USA, has established hundreds of college campus charters across the country. Kirk was also friends with Donald Trump Jr.
“And President Trump faced two assassination attempts, one near-miss last year,” said Haberman, providing “context for how people in the White House and the president are responding to this. I think that he is struggling with this in terms of how to deal with this.”
Trump blamed “the radical left” in an Oval Office address mere hours after Wednesday’s shooting and appeared indifferent to the notion of bipartisan reconciliation Friday when he was asked on “Fox and Friends” how the country “can come back together.”
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” he said.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) took a different tone after the fatal shooting, issuing an urgent plea for calm during a press conference on Friday. The Republican leader said at the time that “we have to find an off-ramp.”
Haberman said Trump’s rhetoric isn’t surprising.
“I think that we have seen moments when President Trump has, over time, episodically, been calmer and more of a traditional leader at various points, in term one,” she said. “I think that he is never going to be the person who is… the clearest talker about this.”
“I don’t think you’re ever going to hear him say something like what Gov. Cox said,” Haberman continued. “I think he is saying what he thinks, and he is who he is. And I think that people knew that before they voted for him.”
While several conservatives have blamed leftists and the media for the shooting, a motive for the captured 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, remains unclear. Some on the far right have since warned Kirk’s critics to mourn him respectfully — or lose their jobs.
