Trump hopes US will heal after Charlie Kirk’s assassination

“I’d like to see it heal,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News. “But we’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did.”

“We’ll see what happens. They (the left) don’t like what’s been happening. We’ve been winning very big,” he continued.

Kirk, 31, was fatally shot Wednesday while addressing students at Utah Valley University in the city of Orem, some 40 miles (64.4 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.​​​​​​​

The apparent targeted attack occurred despite security, including six university police officers and Kirk's private team.

Online videos captured the moment a bullet struck Kirk as he spoke, sending students fleeing in panic. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead hours later.​​​​​​​

“To my great fellow Americans, I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Trump said in the same post that “for years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals,” adding, “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in the country today.”