Obama says Trump deepened US divide in rush to 'identify enemy' after Charlie Kirk shooting
Source: The Guardian
Wed 17 Sep 2025 13.40 EDT
First published on Wed 17 Sep 2025 12.48 EDT
Barack Obama addressed the recent killing of Charlie Kirk and told a crowd in Pennsylvania on Tuesday the country was “at an inflection point”, but that political violence “is not new” and “has happened at certain periods” in US history. Obama added that despite history, political violence was “anathema to what it means to be a democratic country”.
The former president made the remarks at the Jefferson Educational Society, a non-profit in Erie, Pennsylvania. He explicitly denounced political violence, addressing the fatal attacks this year of Kirk and the Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman. He called both incidents “a tragedy” and said Donald Trump had further divided the country rather than work to bring people together.
“There are no ifs, ands or buts about it: the central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resorting to violence,” he said. Obama warned that the response to Kirk’s assassination last week, which has kicked off a debate about free speech and the incitement to violence, could serve to deepen political and cultural divisions.
“There’s been some confusion, I think, around this lately, and, frankly, coming from the White House and some of the other positions of authority that suggest, even before we had determined who the perpetrator of this evil act was, that somehow we’re going to identify an enemy,” he said.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/obama-charlie-kirk-political-violence
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