On September 10, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. The shooter remains at large. The motive is unknown. And yet, before the blood was even dry, the right-wing propaganda machine was already hard at work, weaponizing tragedy with ruthless efficiency.
Within hours, Fox News was already setting the tone. Jesse Watters went on air and declared:
“They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. What are we going to do about it?”
Watters rattled off shootings, riots, even Elon Musk’s cars, weaving them into a single paranoid narrative. Democrats were cast as terrorists. Republicans were told to “put as much pressure on these people as possible.” He called it a “turning point.”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NLTIffBf5u4
This wasn’t mourning. It wasn’t journalism. It was a call to arms, broadcast into millions of homes. And Watters’ audience - primed for outrage and violence - heard it exactly that way.
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And Fox wasn’t alone. Across right-wing media, the chorus was immediate and identical.
Screenshots tell the story. Libs of TikTok blasted “THIS IS WAR.” Elon Musk declared “The Left is the party of murder.” Influencers from Joey Mannarino to Laura Loomer to Christopher Rufo repeated the same script: Democrats must be destroyed, Democrats must be labeled terrorists, Democrats are the enemy.
The right’s response to Kirk’s death wasn’t mourning. It was mobilization. Every figure in the ecosystem, from Trump to Musk to anonymous outrage accounts, echoed the same talking points in lockstep.
This is not spontaneous grief. This is the machinery of disinformation, propaganda, and authoritarian narrative control.
At the very same moment the right unified around its “Democrats are terrorists” frame, President Trump began deploying domestic federal troops into Democratic cities.
Los Angeles. Washington, DC. Chicago. More are being prepared.
The official excuse? Democratic cities are “crime-infested” and need law and order. The reality? This is authoritarian consolidation. Trump is exploiting a national tragedy to justify a militarized federal presence in blue strongholds.
If this framing sticks - if people accept the lie that Democrats are violent radicals and Democratic cities are war zones - Trump wins two battles at once: