Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Dems Could Not Resist Invoking January 6 Riot In Response To Assassination Of Charlie Kirk

Screen Capture/CSPAN

Congressional Democrats invoked the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot on Wednesday in response to the tragic assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Kirk died after being shot in the neck during a Q & A session at Utah Valley University after a bullet was fired from 200 yards away. Some high-profile Democrats could not help but bring up the Capitol riot while condemning political violence.

Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker blamed Trump for a surge in political violence across the U.S., particularly the Capitol riot, and condemned him for pardoning the prisoners.

“But I will say that political violence unfortunately has been ratcheting up in this country,” Pritzker said. “We saw the shootings, the killings in Minnesota. We’ve seen other political violence occur in other states. And I would just say it’s got to stop. And I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country,” Pritzker said. “I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it. We’ve seen the January 6 rioters who clearly have tripped a new era of political violence. And the president? What did he do? Pardoned them. I mean what kind of signal does that send to people who want to perpetrate political violence. Not a good one.”

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Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff made a similar remark and could not refrain from pointing to the Capitol riot as an example of political violence becoming far too prevalent.

“Today we saw another act of horrible political violence with the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk. This follows innumerable other recent acts of violence. The assassination attempts against the president, the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. It follows the murder of state legislators in Minnesota. It follows the attack on Paul Pelosi in his home,” Schiff said in a video posted to X.

This has to end. pic.twitter.com/Jwq9XDuaFP

— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) September 11, 2025

In footage taken by the Daily Caller News Foundation, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren scoffed at the notion that the political left is responsible for the rise in political violence and stated that Trump was the “leader of the insurrection.”

“Why don’t you start with the President of the United States and every ugly meme he has posted and every ugly word. He is the leader of an insurrection and I think that when he’s posting things like he did just a couple of days ago, trying to show a whole city on fire and a reference to helicopters and in fact, throwing people our of helicopters and showing himself as some kind of big chest beating threat, then I don’t want to hear this from the Republicans,” Warren told reporters outside the Capitol.

🚨 WATCH: Sen. Elizabeth Warren reacts to the death of Charlie Kirk & calls for more gun control legislation.

She then attacks Pres. Trump for seemingly ‘turning up the temperature’ in the United States.

Footage from @AndiNapier pic.twitter.com/vk7TYjvXQA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 10, 2025

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy echoed the same talking point on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes,” arguing that the riot resides in Americans’ “very present memory.”

“I’m certainly thinking about the quickening pace of political violence in this country, in this extraordinarily short amount of time,” Murphy said. “You’ve seen the murder of state legislators in Minnesota, attempted assassinations of the president of the United States. Obviously January 6th still lives in our very present memory. And we gotta have a conversation about how we draw a line here and we can’t afford to argue who’s more at risk, the right or the left, the fact of the matter is the shots are being fired.”

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Murphy then claimed that Trump “needs to answer” for how he had allegedly “created” a culture that permits political violence.

The suspect who killed Kirk is not currently in custody. FBI Director Kash Patel announced that a suspected killer was in custody, but the individual was eventually released after going through an interrogation.

MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd claimed that Kirk’s rhetoric and so-called “hate speech” made him a natural target for political violence. MSNBC issued a statement deeming Dowd’s remark as “unacceptable” and “insensitive.”