The Trump administration is trying to harness outrage over the rightwing activist’s killing to crush dissent, experts say
They will gather to mourn one of their own. On Sunday the late rightwing activist Charlie Kirk is set to be hailed by Donald Trump as a martyr of the Make America great again (Maga) movement.
But Kirk’s memorial service at a 63,000-seat football stadium in Arizona could, critics fear, be exploited by the US president to serve a darker purpose: turning collective grief into a campaign of vengeance against America’s enemy within.
Trump has spent the past 10 days escalating threats against what he calls the “radical left” after the fatal shooting of Kirk, 31, on a university campus in Utah.
The White House is considering classifying some groups as domestic terrorists and revoking tax-exempt status for certain non-profits, even though there is no evidence linking these groups to the killing.
