This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination will likely serve as the crux of a new era of political violence and repression in the United States. In the days since Kirk was shot at a speaking event at Utah Valley University, right-wing groups and figures have demanded mass censorship of all critical online speech directed at Kirk. President Donald Trump has effectively attributed the attack to the “radical left” and vowed to go after those he deems responsible. Mass doxing campaigns targeting people who contextualized Kirk’s politics or celebrated his killing has led to firings across the country.

Amid the online chaos, narratives surrounding Kirk’s assassin, stemming from incomplete reporting from mainstream outlets and a lack of clear analysis by the FBI, have further fueled confusion and outrage across the political spectrum.

Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to analyze the implications of the assassination. He also details his latest article, which reveals exclusive background information on Kirk’s flailing relationship with Israel and tensions within the Trump administration.

Kirk’s refusal to accept Zionist financial contributions as well as his deepening disconnection from Israel “left him feeling cold and anxious and even in the words of the friend, frightened,” Blumenthal tells Hedges.

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Host

Chris Hedges

Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript:

Diego Ramos

Transcript:

Chris Hedges

The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. Political violence — including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump — seems certain to expand. So does state repression of individuals and groups, accused by the far right and the Trump administration of fomenting the hate that led to Kirk’s assassination.

Trump blames the “radical left” for Kirk’s murder, claiming it is “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.” He vows to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

If Trump means what he says, and I suspect he does, we will see the full force of the federal government used to target Trump’s opponents and organizations, including the Democratic Party, the media, universities and advocacy groups – which are already under heavy assault. More ominously, it will give a green light to far right vigilante groups to carry out violent attacks against those blamed for polluting America including Muslims, the LGBTQ community, groups such as antifa, feminists, liberals and the Left, the undocumented, the poor and people of color.

Joining me to discuss Kirk’s assassination, what it means for the United States and the future of our disintegrating democracy, is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, whose most recent article is “Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu funding offer, was ‘frightened’ by pro-Israel forces before death, friend reveals” which adds another fascinating twist to the unfolding saga.

So Max, before we get into the ramifications of this assassination in terms of civil liberties and repression, let's talk a little bit about the article that you just published about Kirk's alienation or distance from the Zionist lobby. I know you've been writing about Kirk for some time.

Max Blumenthal

Yeah, I've been writing about him since 2015, three years after he started TPUSA [Turning Point USA], which became the largest, most influential conservative youth organization in history. And at that time he was at the forefront of a massive infusion of Israel lobby cash into his group through the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which was basically making him the property of Israel in exchange for this sort of Faustian bargain.

He was going to be at the top of the conservative youth grassroots or astroturf grassroots. So he could talk about race, immigration, all the social issues and take the most extreme lines possible, say whatever he wanted, as long as he pushed this so-called Judeo-Christian relationship and constantly talked about the Judeo-Christian roots of the country and supported Israel and attacked BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions], the BDS movement which was growing on campus, whenever he could.

And so Charlie Kirk was actually at the forefront of many of the blacklisting operations that have targeted college professors as well as students. He was in the same circles as those who were behind Canary Mission, which is now being used to target green card holders and visa holders for deportation under Trump.

So I was covering it early on before anyone had heard about him. He was like a baby-faced activist then, but he was obviously very hardworking, talented, a huge asset for them. And flash forward to July of this year, Charlie Kirk is the most influential conservative activist period.

He is on his way to possibly becoming the next president. Almost certainly would have become senator even though he's from Illinois. TPUSA is major, but there's a crisis taking place. Charlie Kirk is under pressure from his own grassroots on the issue of Israel.

Israel's exerting, under [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, so much control on Trump, amid a genocide, that the grassroots have turned against it. And if you look at recent polling, YouGov polling, Pew polling, all of them show about only 25% of Republicans under 35 support Israel over the Palestinians.

If you actually pay attention to what Nick Fuentes — who's the most influential right-wing, America First streamer — says they're not just upset over Jewish influence. They're not just being anti-Jewish. They're actually upset by the same things that upset us — the deliberate starvation of a civilian population unfolding in real time, and then watching their president just fold to a foreign apartheid state.

And so this pressure was building within Charlie Kirk's camp, and Charlie Kirk himself was beginning to turn and it all exploded out in the open at the Student Action Summit, which I believe was in Tampa, Florida in July, 2025.

And that's where Charlie Kirk brought Tucker Carlson, someone who had already turned on this issue on stage to not only talk about how Jeffrey Epstein was possibly a Mossad agent, but to call for those who had gone and fought for Israel, American Jews who had gone to fought for Israel's military rather than the US military to be stripped of their citizenship.

And he called out Bill Ackman, one of the most influential Zionist billionaires in the U.S. who is a Netanyahu cutout who had been sort of manipulating and bullying Harvard into submission. His money got Claudine Gay as president out at Harvard. He mocke