Charlie Kirk warned about a growing “assassination culture” on the left several months before his own assassination in September 2025. In an April 2025 post on X (formerly Twitter), he cited a Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) study indicating that 55% of left-leaning respondents believed it would be at least “somewhat justified” to murder Donald Trump, and 48% said the same about Elon Musk. He stated, “Assassination culture is spreading on the left,” and argued that rising support for political violence was a “natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture” that tolerates “violence and mayhem”. Kirk also pointed to the naming of a California ballot measure after Luigi Mangione—the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—as evidence of a broader cultural shift normalizing ideologically motivated violence.
