By Team Zeteo
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
In the week since Charlie Kirk was killed, Trump administration officials and his allies have fanned the flames of political violence.
They have, without evidence, blamed Kirk’s killing on the “radical left,” threatened to “undertake appropriate action” against immigrants who are “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of Charlie Kirk’s killing on social media, and promised to “identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy” what they call “terrorist networks” responsible for the “the organized campaign that led to this assassination.”
While guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast on Monday, Vice President JD Vance claimed that “left-wing extremism” is “part of the reason” Kirk was killed.
He went on to say: “While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-left.”
Whether or not Vance actually believed what he said, the reality is that it has been consistently proven that the exact opposite is true: political violence is overwhelmingly more prevalent on the right.
Here are the receipts:
1. The Anti-Defamation League
In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League released a report on murder and extremism in the US, which concluded that between 2013 and 2022, right-wing extremists were responsible for 75% of all extremist-related killings (335 out of 444).
In fact, right-wing extremists committed the majority of extremist-related killings during that decade in every year except for one: 2016, the year of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
In 2022 alone, all of the 25 extremist-related murders were committed by right-wing extremists. People linked to white supremacists were responsible for 21 of the 25 murders.
2. University of Maryland
In 2022, University of Maryland professor Gary LaFree co-led a study about political violence, finding that between 1948 and 2018, left-wing extremists were responsible for less than one quarter (23%) of “domestic extremist activities,” while the majority (59%) was made up of right-wingers.
“There has been a strong presumption among many that while left-wing and right-wing ideologies vary a great deal in content, they resemble each other in terms of their willingness to use violence to further their political agenda. However, our analysis shows that right-wing actors are significantly more violent than left-wing actors,” LaFree said at the time.
3. Trump’s Own FBI Director
In 2019, during Trump’s first term as president, the FBI director he appointed spoke out about the danger of white nationalist extremists in the US.
While testifying at a House Appropriations Committee hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray called white nationalist extremism “significant” and a “persistent, pervasive threat.”
Then, in 2021, Wray once again warned about a stark rise in white supremacist violence.
“The number of arrests, for example, of racially motivated violent extremists who are what you would categorize as white supremacists, last year was almost triple the number it was in my first year as director,” Wray said.
4. Trump’s Own Acting DHS Secretary
In 2020, Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf expressed similar sentiment to Wray in a Homeland Threat Assessment.
“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Wolf wrote.
The report itself also predicted that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists—will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.”
5. National Institute of Justice Journal
In 2024, the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice published an article highlighting research from its journal about domestic terrorism.
The Trump administration has since removed the article from its website, and an archived version of it might just explain why.
The journal’s research found that far-right extremists “have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides” since 1990, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. During the same period, far-left extremists killed 78 people.
A 2021 study featured in the journal found that a far-right ideologically motivated homicide occurred at least once every year since 1990, while homicides motivated by far-left ideology took place in only 17 years of the 31-year timespan.
6. Center for Strategic & International Studies
In a 2018 brief, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) studied the rise of far-right extremism in the US.
Their research found that right-wing extremism was growing – in fact, the number of terrorist attacks by far-right perpetrators more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2017, which also happened to be Trump’s first year in office.
CSIS also determined that FBI arrests of right-wing extremists rose in 2018.
7. Cato Institute
The libertarian think tank Cato Institute published data in the wake of Kirk’s killing which found that, excluding the attacks on 9/11, right-wing perpetrators were responsible for a majority of politically-motivated terrorism deaths (63%) between 1975 and Sept. 10, 2025.
The data shows that since 1975, “right-wing terrorist attacks” resulted in the deaths of 391 people, compared to 65 deaths from “left-wing terrorist attacks.”
8. Public Religion Research Institute
In June, the Public Religion Research Institute published a poll that found that Republicans were more likely to agree that political violence may be necessary to save the US (18%) than Democrats (11%).
What was more concerning was that Americans who support Trump were twice as likely to favor political violence (20%) compared to those who don’t support the president (10%).
The number of Republicans who supported political violence peaked at 35% in August 2021, but has since dropped to 18% since Trump was elected for a second term.
While Trump and Vance, their administration, and their high-profile right-wing supporters continue ramping up their dangerous rhetoric against Democrats, progressives, and what they consider “radical left-wing” political violence, Vance’s assertion that it’s a “statistical fact” that most acts of political violence are perpetrated by the left is categorically false.
The experts, Trump’s own appointees, and even the Department of Justice itself have proven the exact opposite.
And as the right likes to say: facts don’t care about your feelings.
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