The ink had barely dried on Charlie Kirk’s death certificate when progressive propagandists began their sordid act.
Within hours of his assassination at Utah Valley University, left-wing commentators were already grinding out think pieces about how his death proved their point about Republican governance and gun violence. The shamelessness was breathtaking, even by modern standards.
This is what passes for journalism in 2025. A young conservative activist gets gunned down on a college campus, and before his family can even plan the funeral, hack writers are using his corpse as a prop in their partisan pageantry. There’s something profoundly pathological about this rush to exploit fresh tragedy for political gain.
The violence devastating America’s cities comes from places run by inept leaders, enforcing policies Republicans warned against.
And nowhere is it more blatant than in The Intercept, which takes the prize for sheer brazenness. Written by Alain Stephens, it claims Kirk’s assassination is part of a larger trend: spiking gun violence in red states. The article reads like someone tossed cherry-picked statistics into a blender with progressive talking points and hit purée. Stephens leaps from suicide rates to homicides to mass shootings as if they were interchangeable. They’re not, but admitting that would undermine his entire narrative.
The author conveniently ignores that those “red state” murder numbers are driven almost entirely by deep-blue cities inside them. New Orleans alone drags Louisiana’s figures into the abyss. Run by Democrats since Reconstruction, it has long ranked among America’s deadliest cities. Under Democratic Mayor LaToya Cantrell, homicide has become almost routine, with one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and the vast majority of killings carried out with firearms.
Memphis does the same to Tennessee’s statistics. This Democratic stronghold accounts for a massive share of the state’s violence, while the rest of Tennessee remains relatively calm. It’s telling that the president has announced plans to deploy federal resources there. You might not agree with such a move, but if you’re waiting on Mayor Paul Young to step up, you’ll be waiting a long time.
The pattern repeats in Alabama, where Birmingham’s Democratic leadership has turned the city into an arena of anarchy, somewhere between Mad Max and municipal malpractice. Violent crime is up 2.1 percent, and property crime is up 9.1 percent in just the first half of 2025. Mississippi’s story is no different. Jackson, the Democratic-controlled capital, drives the state’s grim statistics, with Mayor John A. Horhn cementing his shameful legacy as the man presiding over America’s murder capital.
Look at the real pattern here. America’s most violent places aren’t red states. They’re blue islands in red states. Even in blue states, the violence concentrates in the bluest cities. Illinois’ murder problem is a Chicago problem. New York’s violence clusters in New York City. California’s crime wave hits San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles hardest. Rural areas in these same states see almost no violence at all.
These aren’t accidents of geography. They’re the predictable results of progressive governance. Democratic mayors appoint progressive prosecutors who treat violent criminals like misunderstood victims. They implement “criminal justice reform” that prioritizes offender rights over public safety.
What makes this Intercept piece particularly vile is how quickly it pivots from Kirk’s death to attack conservative politics. The man died a few days ago, and already he’s being used as evidence for gun control arguments he opposed while alive. There’s something ghoulish about this kind of political graverobbing. The writer treats Kirk’s assassination as vindication for predetermined beliefs about Republican governance, ignoring the obvious reality that America’s violence problem concentrates in places Republicans don’t control. It’s intellectual fraud dressed up as data journalism.
Strip away the statistical games, and the pattern becomes crystal clear. America’s violence problem isn’t rural or suburban or even really statewide. It’s urban, and specifically urban areas controlled by Democrats implementing progressive policies.
Democratic control of America’s major cities has created killing fields that make war zones look peaceful. What else should we expect? When you refuse to prosecute criminals, crime explodes. When you demonize police, chaos follows. When you elevate looters to “protesters” and excuse arson as justice, you send a message that lawlessness is not only tolerated but celebrated.
Left-wing media outlets and their think tank enablers have poured gasoline on this fire for years. They glorified the thuggery of BLM, martyred George Floyd while erasing his criminal record, demonized law enforcement as inherently racist, and excused literal daylight robbery as “reparations.” That constant drip of justification and propaganda has reshaped the culture of America’s cities, emboldening criminals and shackling police.
The tragedy isn’t that rural Americans are dying from gun violence at higher rates. They aren’t. The tragedy is that urban Americans, mostly poor and powerless, are being sacrificed on the altar of progressive ideology while writers blame Republicans for problems they didn’t create and don’t control.
Charlie Kirk deserved better than becoming a political football before his body was even buried. But more than that, America deserves better than journalists who warp reality to score cheap points.
The violence devastating America’s cities comes from places run by inept leaders, enforcing policies Republicans warned against, with outcomes Republicans predicted. Blaming conservatives for progressive failures while dancing on conservative graves represents a new low in political discourse, one enabled by asinine activists masquerading as credible reporters.
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