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.
Politicians on the right, including Trump, have blamed the “radical left” for fostering a dangerous political environment. Many on the left say those claims are a pretext for an authoritarian crackdown on free speech.
Obama has kept something of a low profile in his post-presidency. Responding to a moderator’s questions on Tuesday, he addressed Trump’s rhetoric after Kirk’s assassination, as well as other administrative moves.
He spoke about his own leadership following the 2015 killings of nine Black parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina church, as well as George W Bush’s decisions following the September 11 terrorist attacks. He said the role of a president in a crisis was “to constantly remind us of the ties that bind us together”.
The sentiment among Trump and his aides following Kirk’s killing of calling political opponents “vermin, enemies … speaks to a broader problem”, Obama said.
Kirk, a dominant figure in conservative politics, became a confidant of Trump after founding Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s largest political organizations. Trump has escalated threats to crack down on what he describes as the “radical left” following Kirk’s killing, stirring fears his Republican administration is trying to harness outrage to suppress political opposition.
The White House responded to Obama’s remarks by blaming him for animosity in the country, calling him “the architect of modern political division in America”.
“Obama used every opportunity to sow division and pit Americans against each other, and following his presidency more Americans felt Obama divided the country than felt he united it,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, in a statement.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, political leaders including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, Joe Biden and George Bush called for an end to political violence and a return to reasonable debate to lower the political temperature in the US.
Obama sought to hold a middle ground in his remarks, praising Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, who he said showed “that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate”.
The desire to identify an enemy, Obama indicated, was misplaced. “We’re going to suggest that somehow that enemy was at fault, and we are then going to use that as a rationale for trying to silence discussion around who we are as a country and what direction we should go,” Obama said. “And that’s a mistake as well.”
While he believed that Kirk’s ideas “were wrong”, Obama said that “doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family”. Denouncing political violence and mourning its victims “doesn’t mean we can’t have a debate about the ideas” that Kirk promoted, he added.
“Those are all topics that we have to be able to discuss honestly and forthrightly, while we still insist that in that process of debate, we respect other people’s right to say things that we profoundly disagree with,” Obama said. “That’s how we should approach this.”
Obama on Tuesday also referenced Trump’s recent deployment of national guard troops in Washington and ID checks by federal agents in Los Angeles. He urged citizens and elected officials to closely monitor the norm-busting decisions.
“What you’re seeing, I think, is the sense that through executive power, many of the guardrails and norms that I thought I had to abide by as president of the United States, that George Bush thought he had to abide by as president of the United States, that suddenly those no longer apply,” Obama said. “And that makes this a dangerous moment.”
This article was amended on 17 September 2025. A previous version misspelled the name of Melissa Hortman.
