Congressman Bob Onder of Missouri didn’t mince words on the House floor when he addressed the shocking assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Less than 24 hours after the 31-year-old conservative activist was gunned down, Onder delivered a blistering rebuke of the radical left, calling Kirk a martyr for truth, faith, and America itself.
“Charlie Kirk died yesterday at age 31, his neck ripped open by an assassin’s bullet,” Onder said somberly, reminding the chamber that Kirk leaves behind his wife Erika and their two young children. His words struck with force: those kids will now grow up without their dad at birthdays, graduations, or even weddings—all because a radical leftist pulled the trigger.
Onder was clear about what motivated the killing. Tyler Robinson, the shooter, left no doubt about his politics, inscribing Antifa-inspired messages on shell casings and openly identifying with far-left ideology. This wasn’t random. This was political. And as Onder pointed out, Kirk himself had warned about the rise of “assassination culture” on the left just a year earlier.
To drive the point home, Onder compared Kirk to martyrs of history, from Socrates to John the Baptist. Socrates was executed for questioning the cultural orthodoxy of Athens. Kirk, Onder argued, was executed for questioning the cultural orthodoxy of today—the transgender movement, radical progressivism, and the assault on God, family, and country. “They couldn’t stand for that, so they killed Charlie, martyr for the truth and for Christ,” Onder declared.
That may sound dramatic, but it’s impossible to ignore the parallels. Kirk built his career by showing up on college campuses and engaging respectfully with students, not with violence or hatred, but with debate and reason. For that, he was vilified, smeared, and ultimately killed. Onder put it plainly: “Some of the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people, but their ideology is pure evil.” He connected the dots between modern radical leftists and their ideological ancestors—Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot—all regimes built on silencing and killing dissent.
Onder closed with a chilling but necessary reminder: “There is no longer any middle ground.” The congressman’s words reflect what many conservatives already feel in their gut. Kirk’s assassination wasn’t just the murder of one man, it was the attempted assassination of a movement. And if conservatives don’t recognize this for what it is, the twilight struggle Onder described could quickly become something much darker.
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