Political commentator and journalist Mehdi Hasan delivered a masterclass Monday in using facts to debunk baseless lies and, after Vice President JD Vance claimed the far-left is more prone to political violence than right-wing extremists, showed it’s the “exact reverse.”
Vance inflamed political tensions by claiming the suspect accused of fatally shooting conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week was motivated by far-left ideology, and helmed the late host’s eponymous show Monday to vow retribution against “the lunatics in American politics.”
“JD Vance lied today on ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ when he said the statistics are clear that this is a left-wing problem,” Hasan told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo. “It’s the exact reverse, right? Exact reverse. You look at the ADL center for extremism, which looked at 444 people killed by extremists between 2013 and 2022 — 75% of them by the right.”
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism indeed confirmed this in a 2023 report.
“You look at the University of Maryland study that was done for their terrorism center, which found that from 1948 to 2018, right-wing extremists were more likely to carry out violence than left-wing extremists,” Hasan continued Monday, once again citing accurate statistics.
“You look at the head of the FBI who [President] Donald Trump appointed, Chris Wray, who said the No. 1 domestic terror threat in this country comes from religious and racially motivated extremists — specifically white supremacists,” the journalist added.
“You can keep going, the National Institute for Justice found that the majority of instances since 1990, violent terroristic acts, were right-wing extremists,” said Hasan. “The single-biggest day of political violence, Chris, in our lifetimes, in this country, was Jan. 6, 2021.”
The National Institute of Justice had indeed confirmed the former claim in 2024; however, the article has been curiously removed, with a notice stating that the Department of Justice is “reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders.”
Kirk was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, prompting Trump to state that “we have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics” and right-wing groups to threaten people not to make inappropriate comments about Kirk — unless they want to lose their jobs.
“This targeting of people for their views, I thought Charlie Kirk was supposed to be a free speech martyr,” Hasan said Monday. “Why are the right using his death to crack down on free speech and American rights and go after this amorphous left?”
While some believe the president is “struggling” with how to respond to Kirk’s death, he appeared not to even know about Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman — who was slain by an apparent Trump supporter in June — while defending his half-staff flag orders for Kirk.
“I mean, there was a Democratic lawmaker, Chris, I don’t know how many times we have to say this, who was murdered in her home with her husband in June, by a Trump supporter,” said Hasan. “And Donald Trump today said, ‘Who?’ when he was asked about it.”
The former MSNBC host added, “So it’s bizarre for Vance to go on TV or go online and say the exact opposite of what both the official statistics say and the think tanks say, all of our evidence tells us.”