Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, described America as entering a dangerous new phase he calls the “post-Charlie Kirk era,” claiming that the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk marked the nation’s first true instance of Christian martyrdom.
On Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Davis argued that Kirk was murdered because his Christian faith shaped every part of his political beliefs, and that his death represents a moral and cultural breaking point for the U.S.
“I think September 10, 2025, we entered a new era that was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think we are now in the post-Charlie Kirk era of American martyrdom. I think he was the first true Christian American martyr who was murdered because of his faith. His faith infused everything he believed about politics and he was murdered for it,” Davis explained.
He warned that the nation has not yet reckoned with how profoundly Kirk’s assassination has altered the national landscape, ushering in an age of heightened ideological violence and political hatred.
“I don’t think we have quite grasped yet how different the world is now and how different our country is as a result of what happened to him and what we’ve seen in the wake of his killing. So I think we’re in a very new, chaotic, potentially very dangerous new American era,” Davis said.
Davis said he believes the country has now entered something far more chaotic and perilous than previously seen at different points through modern American history, including during the post-Cold War years and the long shadow of September 11, 2001.
According to Davis, the political left has normalized violence by branding conservatives as “fascists” and “Nazis,” creating moral justification for attacks like Kirk’s killing.
“[The political left] has created this permission mechanism in their head where they say our opponents are fascists and Nazis. So that’s a very easy way to dehumanize someone, number one, so that, number two, you can justify violence against them,” Davis explained.
“Once you have decided that your enemy is morally equivalent to Adolf Hitler for whatever reason, like maybe he believes something crazy, like boys and girls can’t change their sex, they have all the justification they need to go kill them. So you have Antifa, you’ve got the completely deranged ideologically trans left, and you’ve got the John Brown Gun Club and they have decided, much like John Brown did, that the ends clearly justify the means and if the end is having removed a fascist or an anti abolitionist or Nazi, then so be it,” he added.
Davis argued political violence in America is overwhelmingly driven by the Left, rejecting what he called the false narrative of “violence on both sides.”
“We’ve been told we have a ‘violence on both sides’ problem. Clearly on each bracket there are people who want violence, but the actual perpetration of it is like 99 percent a left-wing problem…The reality is that violence is the language of the unhinged and the Left is fluent in it. It is a massive problem facing us as a country because they have justified to themselves the most extreme matters possible. They have no compunction about going out and killing whoever they don’t like,” he said.
Davis further blamed the rise of radicalization on America’s education system, which he described as a network of “Bolshevik madrasas” that indoctrinate students with extremist left-wing ideology.
“The universities here are Soviet madrasas, that is the incubation area for all of the most violent, deranged, lunatic, left-wing theories,” Davis said.
“We used to comfort ourselves on the right by saying, oh you know what, when they get their first job and they see that paycheck, they’ll grow out of it and they won’t be commies anymore. No, that’s not how that type of radicalization works. That is, especially at the university college age, such an impressionably important age where people are moldable and yet once they hit, at least in my experience, 24, 25, that clay hardens and you have a much more difficult time changing it,” he stressed.
Davis further pointed out how American universities have become the “biggest incubators of left-wing ideology and terrorism in the country” with the backing of billions of taxpayer dollars.
“What’s fascinating about universities, they used to be institutions of higher education. You went there to learn things and to be prepared for how to succeed in the world. They were used to make you a well-rounded person, help you understand your place in this world…They’re not educational institutions anymore. They’re indoctrinating institutions, and if that weren’t bad enough, they’re doing it with billions and billions of dollars of our money funneled to them and they’re not paying taxes on any of it,” he said.
Davis continued, calling for reforms such as requiring schools to co-sign student loans to share financial accountability.
“These universities, these Soviet madrasas, which are now effectively tax-free real estate hedge funds, you would think some of these schools have tens of billions of dollars in endowments, and yet they’re taking federally backed loans. They’re taking federal money, and at the same time, they’re making people who come in with the best of intentions doing what they were told to do into debt slaves for life,” Davis explained.
“Why on earth are we subsidizing tax-free institutions and hedge funds to do that to students? Universities should be co-signing all loans, every last one of them,” he added.
Davis emphasized that solving these national crises requires decisive leadership, and that only through such leadership can America confront the ideological chaos unleashed in the wake of Kirk’s death.
“All it takes is one man to do it. All it takes is the right leader in the right place at the right time to do these things. Now, whether it will be Trump who has time in the next three years he has of his term, it could be JD Vance, but it takes actual leaders,” he said.
Tune in now to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show – your AMERICA FIRST news talk!
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Charlie Kirk” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 4.0.
