The Rage of Derrick Van Orden

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden

In the aftermath of the killing of conservative Charlie Kirk, Republican and Democratic politicians offered responsible reactions, condemning the killings and all political violence.

One notable and truly disturbing exception was Wisconsin Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden, who has blamed the killing on liberals, tweeting that “The leftwing political violence must stop now.” In another post he wrote, “The left and their policies are leading America into a civil war. And they want it. Just like the democrat party wanted our 1st civil war.”

Seriously? So the Democratic pro-Civil Rights liberals of today are the same as the slave-holding states of 1860?

Van Orden, it turns out, was just getting started. Over the past five days, he has tweeted hundreds of times, calling Democrats “domestic terrorists ” who “hate God,” agreeing with the conspiracy theory that Democrats tried to kill Donald Trump, calling for violence and a war against ‘leftist scumbags,’ and agreeing that liberal philanthropist George Soros should be investigated and charged with fueling the murder of Kirk.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin offered a press release tallying all of these tweets.

The idea that it is liberals who are fueling political violence in the U.S. couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremist violence in the U.S. did a report tracking “Domestic Extremist-Related Killings in the U.S. by Perpetrator Affiliation, 2013-2022,” and found that 75% of all killings were by right-wing extremists, 20% by domestic Islamic extremists and 4% were left-wing extremists.

In short, the overwhelming majority of these despicable acts are by right-wing extremists. And whether the alleged killer of Kirk is a liberal (the details on this are still murky) won’t change that fact. Yet is conservatives like Van Orden and President Donald Trump who are “placing the blame for political violence on Democrats alone and signaling a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning institutions,” as the New York Times noted.

It is Democrats who have called for sensible controls on guns to prevent more killings — with overwhelming support from voters — while conservatives like Kirk have opposed this. “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” Kirk said.

Now that a gun death has taken Kirk’s life, we can all agree that his killing was abhorrent and that all political violence — no matter the views of those shot — is wrong and must be called out. But that does not require us to declare Kirk a saint or overlook the damage he did. Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offered an inventory of Kirk’s demagoguery, including creating a watchlist of university professors that led to harassment and threats of violence; calling for state suppression of his political opponents (“Investigate first, define the crimes later”); supporting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that sought to overthrow the U.S. government; and opposing civil rights for Black Americans and offering distorted statistics on “Black crime.”

Kirk’s claims were often false: on fact-checker PolitiFact’s scorecard, 90% of checks of his claims rated them “mostly false”, “false”, or “pants on fire.” Small wonder he liked to denounce the “fake news.”

Why has Kirk’s death become such an obsession for Rep. Van Orden? Why the incredible flurry of tweets and comments? He seems to be following the playbook of Donald Trump, to find ways to change the subject from issues that hurt him by trying to inflame the anger of voters.

There is increasing evidence that job growth is down, while inflation and unemployment are rising. Meanwhile there is great concern about the impact of cuts in federal spending and workers. All of this could hurt Republicans in the November 2026 mid-terms. And so Trump changes the subject by condemning crime in (only) Democratic-run cities and threatening to station federal troops there. And just last week, by calling for investigations of liberals like Soros.

Republicans in Wisconsin are worried they will lose the Supreme Court race in the April 2026 election and the race for governor in November 2026. And the western Wisconsin seat held by Van Orden is in danger of being flipped. An analysis by Split Ticket found that Democrats had a huge advantage in turnout in the Spring 2025 Supreme Court election that is likely to continue in 2026, particular in the area Van Orden represents.

So Van Orden is working hard to change the subject with the most vitriolic language he can concoct, so no voter can ignore it and any Democratic challenger must address this. Indeed, he has declared that his likely 2026 opponent is “culpable” in Kirk’s death.

In fact, his likely opponent, Democrat Rebecca Cooke, tweeted that “I’m horrified and disgusted by the attack on Charlie Kirk. Political violence has no place in this country.”

But why let the truth stand in the way of your political attacks?

Update 6 p.m. September 15: Van Orden is now threatening to cut off federal funding for the city of Eau Claire, as Channel 18 News in Eau Claire reported, because one member of its City Council, Aaron Brewster quoted Kirk’s comment about gun deaths (the same one quoted above) and another member, Joshua Miller described Kirk as “A sick man who has been cut down by the very rhetoric he spewed.” Van Orden’s office was contacted by Channel 18, asking “for clarification on what rectification he is seeking. They responded that Brewster and Miller would either need to be fired or resign.”