A Country at an Inflection Point - Obama Warns of the Deadly Normalization of Political Hate

Barack Obama chose the words that a President Donald Trump has lacked for years: clear, unequivocal, without excuses. After the murder of Charlie Kirk, the former US president spoke in Erie, Pennsylvania, of an “inflection point” for the United States - a moment when it will be decided whether the country will continue on the path of democracy or finally slip into the abyss of violence. “There are no ifs, ands or buts: The basic principle of our system is that we can argue, debate, yes even clash fiercely, without resorting to violence,” Obama said. “And when violence is normalized, even if it affects the supposedly ‘other’ side, then that is a threat to all of us.”

It was an appearance that in its clarity recalled those rare moments when presidents, across party and ideological lines, invoked what is common. Obama himself referred to the eulogy in Charleston after the racist massacre of 2015, as well as to George W. Bush’s conduct after September 11. He made clear what Trump has refused in every one of his reactions: “The task of a president in crisis is to constantly remind us of the bonds that unite us.”

But since Kirk’s murder, Trump has done the opposite. Instead of moderation he opts for escalation, calling political opponents “vermin” and “enemies,” driving his followers with threats against the “radical left,” and trying to instrumentalize the outrage over the act for his own purposes. It is a dangerous pattern that Obama named with full clarity: a president who not only breaks the norms of his predecessors but with every step pushes aside the guardrails of democracy. “What you are seeing is the notion that many of the norms and rules that I felt bound by as president, that George Bush felt bound by as president, suddenly no longer apply,” Obama warned. “And that is exactly what makes this moment so dangerous.”

His words come in a situation overflowing with symbols. While in Orem, Utah, hundreds lay flowers at an improvised memorial for Charlie Kirk, while Kirk’s supporters in social networks speak of a martyr, the alleged murderer Tyler Robinson sits in pretrial detention. In the interrogation protocols he confesses by text message to his partner to have fired the shot. A young man, 22 years old, caught in a vortex of personal trauma and political hate - and now become the starting point of a debate that tears the country apart.

Obama reacted as statesmen should: he spoke the obvious, without regard for partisan noise. He publicly prayed with his wife Michelle for Kirk’s family, he said that he rejected many of Kirk’s positions, but that this rejection must never relativize the murder. “It was a tragedy, and I mourn with his family,” he emphasized. Words that should seem self-evident - and that in America in 2025 sound almost revolutionary. That Trump’s White House immediately shot back and insulted Obama as the “architect of modern division” was only the next turn in a cycle of hostility. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson claimed that Obama had dug trenches during his term instead of closing them. Yet it is exactly this reversal of cause and effect that makes Obama’s warnings so explosive: whoever trivializes violence, whoever feeds it with new enemy images, destroys the foundation of democracy.

Obama also highlighted in his speech what today almost gets lost: that despite everything there are still voices of reason. He praised the Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who after Kirk’s death had called for moderation and decency. “We disagree on a whole bunch of stuff,” Obama said, “but his words show that it is possible to argue and yet uphold a basic code of public interaction.” This admonition to civility, to a return to the simplest forms of decency, is what makes the moment so heavy and at the same time so hopeful. The country is at a point that Obama calls an “inflection point” - a fork in the road at which words can finally turn into deeds. The murder of Charlie Kirk has made tangible the danger that has long been hidden in the hate slogans, in the martial threats, and in the political instrumentalization of hate. Now it is up to Americans whether they accept the course of violence - or whether they, as Obama demands, once again remember the bonds that unite them despite all differences.