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WASHINGTON – If you happen to follow Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s official account on X, you’d see his swift rejection of violence in response to last week’s horrific killing of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
“There is no place for political violence in America,” the Wisconsin Republican said Wednesday, the day Kirk was shot at a Utah event.
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But on his personal account, Van Orden is giving a different message: He’s inviting war against “these leftist scumbags” as retaliation for Kirk’s murder.
“Today we remember those lost on September 11, 2001. It was the reason I went to war for over 20 years,” he posted Thursday on this account. “Yesterday is the reason I will be at war for the next 20. I will not allow these leftist scumbags to take my country.”
These messages, posted a day apart, are from the same person. But Van Orden, like some other Republicans in Congress, is using separate social media accounts — one aimed at constituents, the other aimed at political supporters – to send contradictory and disturbing messages about Kirk’s assassination. There is still no known motive for Kirk’s killing or any understanding of possible political views the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, may have.
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In the five days after Kirk was killed, Van Orden posted about him three times on his official X account, which has roughly 7,800 followers. These messages are largely about praying for Kirk’s family. On his personal account, where he has 81,000 followers, Van Orden posted about Kirk more than 550 times in the same span of days. Throughout these posts, the Wisconsin Republican baselessly accuses Democrats, Democratic organizations, billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and the media for Kirk’s murder.
“These people are domestic terrorists,” Van Orden wrote in one of these posts, referring to people who wrote messages in chalk on a sidewalk near White House advisor Stephen Miller’s house, criticizing his attacks on democracy.
In another, he falsely accuses the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee of fanning a civil war: “The DCCC/DNC and the complicit media are driving America to a second civil war,” he claims in this post. “Until they collectively renounce members of their own party, I’m done with them.”
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“Correct,” Van Orden says in another message, responding to a post falsely claiming Democrats orchestrated Kirk’s killing because “assassination became their last resort.”
Neither Van Orden’s office, nor the offices of other congressional Republicans featured in this story, responded to a request for comment.
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He’s not the only one using different accounts to condemn, and fan, political violence after Kirk’s killing. On her official X account with roughly 678,000 followers, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has praised Kirk’s “grace” and suggested he would want people to respond to violence with prayer.
“We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ,” Mace said Friday. “We will try to do the same.”
A day later, on her personal account, she was falsely accusing Democrats of being murderers in dramatic, all-caps messages.
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“I repeat: DEMOCRATS OWN THIS,” Mace wrote on this account, which has 506,000 followers. “Time for the TRUTH. For years democrats and the fake news dehumanized conservatives by calling us nazis, hitler and fascists. They made extremism and violence MAINSTREAM and cool. They celebrate murder and burning cities. Never back down. Now more than ever: HOLD THE LINE.”
Mace, who is currently running for governor, claimed in another post here that there is “no uniting” with Democrats in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing because they “want to murder us.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), too, is urging prayers and unity on his official X account.
“I have introduced a resolution condemning the assassination of Charlie Kirk, commemorating his outstanding patriotism and achievements,” he posted Wednesday. “I look forward to the Senate uniting to honor Charlie, his family, and his courageous legacy.”
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He followed up on Thursday with a wish for no such violence again: “As the FBI and Utah law enforcement continue to reveal more about the motives behind this heinous assassination, let us once more pray that justice be done, that Charlie Kirk’s family be surrounded by love and comfort, and that we never allow such a crime to happen again.”
But over on his personal account, Lee was baselessly accusing a vague faction of Democrats — “they” — as being to blame for Kirk’s death.
“Meanwhile, they’ve painted the killer as the good man — while celebrating the death of the murder victim,” Lee said Saturday. His comment was in response to another post that stated, “The left did this. They radicalized the killer and he murdered a good man. Then they celebrated. I will never unify with the monsters who did this.”
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In another message on his personal account, the Utah Republican on Friday shared someone else’s post featuring the faces of prominent Democrats in politics, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), MSNBC political pundit Rachel Maddow and former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The original poster shared those images with the sentence, “Here is the roadmap to Charlie Kirk’s assassination…”
Lee piled on with his own extreme rhetoric, suggesting Democrats were hoping someone would assassinate Kirk: “When they brand conservatives as Hitler, they encourage the criminally insane to launch Operation Valkyrie.”
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Some Republican lawmakers aren’t even pretending to try to bring down the reckless political rhetoric in Washington, D.C.
During a Thursday Fox News segment about Kirk, the day after he had been killed, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) accused “the left” of being “so righteous” that they believe “the ends justify the means” for political causes.
“We have to say to our friends on the other side, we can’t survive as a country if this is how we settle our differences,” Fine said in the interview, a video of which he shared on his X account. “So they have to decide, do they want us to survive as a country? Unfortunately, I fear for too many, they don’t.”
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The Florida Republican went further Monday, describing Democrats as “an enemy that believes that they are so right, that they can advance their cause by any means necessary.”
“They believe in violence,” Fine said in a video posted on his X account. “It is core to their views. And we have tolerated it in our country for far too long.”
“They believe in violence. It is core to their views.”
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It’s not hard to see Republicans taking their cues from President Donald Trump, who has been dangerously, and falsely, blaming Democrats and liberals for political violence and Kirk’s death. In the hours after Kirk was shot, when details were scant about what had happened, Trump responded by delivering an Oval Office speech condemning “the radical left” for the violent attack.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis, and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he read aloud from pre-written remarks. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop now.”
Except the president’s own record of promoting violent rhetoric has spanned his political career. From encouraging rally-goers to assault protesters, to saying he’d like to punch them himself, to glorifying violence against journalists, to egging on his supporters as they attacked police and stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump has never been subtle about supporting violent rhetoric in the context of criticizing his perceived political enemies.
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He’s also been noticeably silent in response to political violence aimed at Democrats. It took him a week to call Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, after someone set the governor’s mansion on fire in April. In May, he said he was considering pardons for the people convicted of plotting to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He doesn’t talk about the Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband who were murdered in their home in June, in what appeared to be a politically motivated shooting.
In a particularly disgusting moment, Trump mocked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her family after a man broke into her home in 2022 and nearly killed her husband with hammer blows to the head. The attacker, David DePape, testified in his trial that he was motivated by far-right conspiracy theories spread by Trump.
Especially in the wake of Kirk’s tragic killing, Trump could be using his platform and influence to call for an end to all political violence. Instead, he’s simply trying to direct it at Democrats.
“Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” he said in his Oval Office remarks. Two days later, he was sending the same dangerous message to millions of people during an interview on Fox News.
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But he followed up with a plea for everyone to tone down their political rhetoric.
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“Look, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric all around and what I’m trying to advance here is this idea that we can have bigger policy debates,” Johnson said. “That is the legacy of Charlie [Kirk]. He loved the debate, but he didn’t hate the people on the other side. And that’s what I’m trying to encourage all of us to remember.”