Two months after the public assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin marked the grim anniversary by tying the killing to what he described as a broader pattern of Democrats embracing their party’s far-left base.
Speaking at a policy event conducted by Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle, Zeldin, who, like Boyle, was a close friend of Charlie Kirk, reflected on the two-month anniversary of Kirk’s assassination.
“What we witnessed on September 10 is something that should never happen anywhere in this country,” Zeldin said. “It’s the kind of thing you might expect in a third-world country — where someone is targeted for encouraging disagreement and debate, for defending the First Amendment and the freedom of speech. And simply because their argument is winning, or because they’ve created a space for open dialogue, they’re shot and killed — assassinated — for it.”
Zeldin noted the timing of the conversation with Boyle — nearly “two months to the minute” since Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University — and revealed they were in touch as the tragedy unfolded in real time.
He pointed to Jay Jones, the newly elected Attorney General of Virginia, who faced widespread backlash from Republicans after text messages from 2022 surfaced in which he fantasized about killing Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert and referenced the deaths of Gilbert’s children.
Despite the revelations, Democratic officials, including Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, refused to revoke their endorsements of Jones, who went on to win his race in a close contest.
Zeldin drew a direct line between Jones’s rhetoric and Kirk’s killing. “This isn’t anything where, like, ‘Hey, there’s a rumor’ … This is something that Jay Jones said not that long ago,” he emphasized, criticizing Democrats for standing by Jones even after Kirk’s assassination, which took place just weeks prior.
Zeldin also highlighted the Democratic nomination and election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. “You have a choice made by the Democratic Party in New York City to nominate Mamdani. They didn’t have to. There were plenty of other choices. They chose to nominate this guy,” Zeldin stated.
Kirk had long warned of what he viewed as the threat posed by radical Islam and the growing influence of socialist ideologies in American politics — particularly in cities like New York. In the months prior to his assassination, he repeatedly sounded the alarm about the rise of what he called “Islam as a fundamentally political ideology that aims to conquer us,” and characterized Mamdani’s candidacy as “one of the biggest threats to our country.”
Breitbart News previously reported that Mamdani has campaigned alongside a Muslim cleric connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and has declined to forcefully denounce radical groups like Hamas or reject slogans such as “globalize the intifada.”
Zeldin asserted that Democratic leaders, including Chuck Schumer during the shutdown standoff, are not pushing back on the activist base within their party but are “feeding” it and letting it shape the party’s direction. He cautioned that this bloc is being allowed to “take over and consume their party.”