Twelve days after conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a left-wing radical, former Vice President Kamala Harris went on MSNBC to brand President Donald Trump as a “dictator” and a “tyrant.” Her language would be reckless under any circumstance, but in the shadow of a political assassination, it is much darker. It is the same type of rhetoric the left has used for years to dehumanize conservatives and desensitize Americans to the political violence that is now occurring rather regularly.
“I am a lifelong public servant,” but “I’ve worked closely with the private sector over many years,” Harris said. “And I always believed that if push came to shove, those titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy, for the importance of sustaining democratic institutions. And one by one by one, they have been silent.”
“Perhaps it’s because they want a merger approved or they want to avoid an investigation,” she said. “But at some point they’ve got to stand up for the sake of the people who rely on all of these institutions — to have integrity and to, at some point, be the guardrails against a tyrant [who] was using the federal government to execute his whim and fancy because of a fragile ego.”
Harris’ branding of Trump as a “dictator” and a “tyrant” is not a critique — it is the same dehumanizing slur the left has used for years to delegitimize Trump and his supporters. This language implicitly justifies resistance by any means necessary, since no free person wants to live under a tyrant or dictator. It’s language best described as assassination prep language.
The logic goes as follows: if Trump is a “dictator” or “tyrant” then the system is illegitimate. If the system and its supporters are illegitimate, then violence against them is not merely permissible, it’s actually noble.
In fact, Kirk’s alleged assassin appears to have understood this to be the case.
Last fall, Harris, for example, called Trump a “fascist” ahead of the November election. It was an attempt to equate Trump and his supporters with the fascists of World War II. The left preys on those historical associations, knowing that when people hear “fascist,” they think of enemies who rightly had to be defeated. By blurring that line, the left conditions their audience to see violence against today’s so-called “fascists” as not only acceptable but necessary.
Kirk’s alleged assassin clearly thought as much. He engraved political messages on his bullets, such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” and “Bella ciao,” which is an Italian song dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance.
Harris, like much of the left, is still trying to condition their audience to see Trump and his supporters as illegitimate and enemies of the state even after it was shown how harmful this rhetoric is. It’s a dangerous call that ends in one way: violence.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2