September 10, 2025, will not only be remembered as the day Right Wing activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, it will be remembered as Donald Trump’s Reichstag moment.
In 1933 Germany’s parliament building – the Reichstag – was ruined
in a fire. Arrested on the scene was communist Marinus van der Lubbe. Accused
of arson and sentenced to death by a Nazi court, the act of political violence
gave Hitler the opportunity to declare war on all political opposition, resulting
in censorship, control of the press and the nation’s entertainment, outlawing
all political parties other than his own, making unjustified arrests and
abandoning due process.
Tyler Robinson is proving to be our van der Lubbe. Kirk’s
murder has become Trump’s Reichstag.
Little is known of Robinson and his motive. The limited
clues that have been shared with the public is that he was raised in a MAGA family,
favored Trump as recently as last year, followed Alt Right Nick Fuentes online
and is registered as an independent. We also know he has a transgender lover
and that he took offense at Kirk’s condemnation of transgenders for undermining
our society. We know he messaged his lover that Kirk’s hatred had to be stopped,
and he believed murder was the only recourse.
Yet Trump has invented his own evidence, immediately blaming
Left Wing politics and Democrats for the assassination, promising he would seek
out and end Left Wing activism and commentary that is critical of him.
Trump has declared “The radical Left causes tremendous
violence in our country…I think they hate our country.” He says this even
though his own DOJ and FBI data shows 71% of political violence is from Right
Wing extremists and only 10% from the Left. Data which Trump had removed from
the DOJ website after he made these comments. Trump also ignores that two months
earlier a MAGA extremist assassinated a Democratic Senator and her husband; in
April another MAGA attempted to murder a Democratic Governor and his family by
burning them alive while they slept; and in 2021 MAGA violently attacked the
Capitol to overturn election results they did not favor
Trump declared ANTIFA, a loosely knitted conglomeration of
people opposed to fascism who do little more than march with signs critical of
Trump, a terrorist organization. That makes it against the law to participate
in ANTIFA.
Trump has declared war on liberal non-profits such as the
Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Type Media Center, threatening
to label them terrorist organizations as well and remove their tax-exempt
status. He is taking aim at the magazine The Nation.
He has ordered the DOJ and the FBI – two government entities
that are supposed to be distanced from the presidency so they are not under
political pressure or political direction – to round up his political opponents.
The hit list includes Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey, NY AG
Letitia James, his former National
Security Advisor John Bolton, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger among others.
He previously installed Trump loyalist and Project 2025 co-author
Brendan Carr as FCC Chair with, in Carr’s own words, to put an end to media
criticism of Trump.
Networks that include criticism of Trump, the president
says, should lose their licenses. He called negative reporting on him “…really
illegal” and that “action should be taken.”
Carr took action this week against critic Jimmy Kimmel. Carr
warned ABC affiliates they would suffer consequences if they continued to air
Kimmel and that ABC risked losing their broadcasting license. Kimmel was
suspended.
Trump has already stated that Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers and The
View will be next. Why? “They only give me bad publicity,” Trump explained.
Print media is also targeted. They now must receive
authorization from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to report on any
unclassified information or activity in the Pentagon.
Visas for foreigners are being canceled if they have made
negative comments about Kirk and Trump. Employers are being encouraged to fire
employees who harbor negative views of Kirk and Trump. Trump has directed the
DOJ to arrest anyone he defines as using “hate speech,” which would impact
rights to Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press given
Trump’s definition, which is anyone speaking negatively of him, his policies
and MAGA, while he himself remains the nation’s most high profile and constant
voice of hatred and division.
Trump has attempted to undermine the press, the courts, our
system of checks and balances and laid the foundation for a police state prior
to the Kirk tragedy. But what is noted today has transpired in a little over a
week, which illustrates that this is Trump’s pivotal Reichstag moment to both
accelerate and justify his authoritarianism.
