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There was a time in America when the assassination of a political opponent was such a rare horror that it’d shut everybody up.
Even if you didn’t like the victim, you’d still gasp and take a step back and really think about what was happening. It was enough to turn the dial back a lot.
A fellow American being murdered for participating in political life horrified both sides, and basic human decency took care of the rest.
Since then, something has gone terribly wrong in this country. The left’s hatred of President Trump, driven by the mainstream media, has turned political death and violence into a victory march.
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Thanks to violent Dems, an assassination attempt or a successful killing is reason to celebrate and mock the dead. If anything, nowadays, a political murder will actually turn up the heat and get everybody excited.
And nowhere was that depravity more on display than on a college campus, where her turned Charlie’s assassination into entertainment.
Hasan Piker took the stage in San Francisco dressed in his Mao-style jacket and led a packed theater in a mocking rendition of “We Are Charlie Kirk,” a song written as a tribute after Kirk’s murder.
The crowd laughed. His co-hosts laughed. Piker just kept singing.
And people watching the video from outside that room were downright horrified and disgusted.
America has spent years watching left-wing political rhetoric become uglier and turn into full-blown political violence. We’re now at the point in this depraved game, where the murder of a young father and husband becomes something an auditorium full of people can laugh about together. And they wonder so many believe the Dem Party is soulless and lacking any decency or humanity.
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Jonathan Turley found it so disturbing, he actually wrote an article about it.
Turley has written about what he calls America’s growing “age of rage,” and he sees the Piker performance as something darker than just your run-of-the-mill political nastiness.
His concern was more about the reaction Piker got than Piker’s actual depravity… a room full of young people was delighted by it.
We have seen protesters on the left around the country mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even reenacting his murder. Hate traffickers like Jennifer Welch have even justified his assassination. It is all shocking and depressing, but none reached the level of Hasan Piker leading a huge crowd in mocking Kirk and his faith. Before he was murdered, Kirk debated Piker and called him a “socialist hypocrite.” What is shocking is not the utter depravity and cruelty of Piker, but the ecstasy of the crowd in relishing the death of someone with opposing views. It is part of the conditioning in an “age of rage.”
In the video, Piker leads the crowd in the meme song “We Are Charlie Kirk” at a stop of his “Fear& LIVE” tour, including such lines as “We are Charlie Kirk, we carry the flame. We’ll fight for the Gospel, we’ll honor his name.” His co-hosts and the crowd seem to be laughing with joy.
Joining him at this hatefest at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco on August 21 were reportedly Will Neff, QTCinderella, and AustinShow.
Hasan is wearing his now-signature Mao jacket as the young crowd and his co-hosts laugh hysterically. It is the very essence of this movement to desensitize people, particularly young people, to violence and hate.
In Rage and the Republic, I wrote about this national ragefest. It allows people to hate completely and without thought to the humanity of those being hurt. What people will not admit is that they like it. Rage is addictive, and it is contagious. Just look at the crowd in San Francisco, and you will see the addictive quality of uncut, undiluted hate.
People like being angry… and politics can turn that anger into belonging, entertainment, or even a form of “status.” Add a cheering crowd, and suddenly cruelty gets rewarded instead condemned.
What kind of people see the assassination of a young husband and father and find joy in mocking it?
Charlie Kirk was 31 years old when he was shot in the neck while sitting beneath a tent and talking politics with college students.
Whatever anyone thought about him, that’s what he was doing when a left-wing trans-supporter (allegedly) killed him.
Just for talking.
That’s what makes this mockery in San Francisco so hard to watch.
Piker had actually debated Kirk when he was alive. They disagreed. Kirk called him a “socialist hypocrite.” Big deal.
That’s how we used to settle political fights, with an observation, and everyone went home alive. Now, the left wants to settle political disagreements with bullets, where people leave in bodybags.
But the real danger isn’t one idiotic influencer acting like an ass.
Free speech protects Piker’s right to be as offensive as he wants, and we’re okay with that. But it also protects everyone else’s right to look at that stage and that gnarly-looking crowd and decide if something profoundly ugly is happening on the left.
The lasting danger is teaching people that political opponents deserve more contempt and hate, even after somebody puts a bullet into their neck.
Which brings us to something that happened almost simultaneously…
As clips from the Piker event were spreading online, another video began circulating for an even more serious reason.
A young man identified online as “Ayden Langevin” appeared in a TikTok video calling for violence against President Trump and the Secret Service.
Libs of TikTok publicized the video, tagged federal authorities, and on Monday morning said Langevin had been arrested by the FBI less than 24 hours later.
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MAJOR BREAKING: I can now confirm that Ayden Langevin has been ARRESTED by the FBI early this morning, less than 24-hours after we made them aware of these threats to President Trump
He is OFF the streets and is NOT a threat to our President now!
FAFO
MAJOR BREAKING: I can now confirm that Ayden Langevin has been ARRESTED by the FBI early this morning, less than 24-hours after we made them aware of these threats to President Trump
He is OFF the streets and is NOT a threat to our President now!
FAFO pic.twitter.com/u2wxSMPJYR
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 24, 2026
At the time of publication, we have not seen a public FBI or Justice Department statement independently confirming the arrest.
Political opponents are people you defeat in arguments, elections, legislation, and public debate.
They are not supposed to be enemies whose deaths become entertainment during a rally.
America has survived some vicious political fights because underneath all that noise was a basic bargain: we argue like hell, somebody wins, somebody loses, and we keep living together afterward.
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That bargain is worth protecting… but the only way to do that is to look hard and closely at the people who are perpetuating and celebrating this type of violence and make damn sure they don’t get anywhere near any real power.
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