Foreigners who celebrate the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk will have their visas revoked, the State Department says.
“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the State Department wrote on X on Tuesday, adding that it “continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”
The State Department went on to post a thread of screenshots it said were from six visa holders who had shared opinions on Kirk, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, which would have been his 32nd birthday. He was fatally shot at a Utah college on Sept. 10.
In one of the examples, the agency wrote that a Mexican national had said that “there are people who deserve to die. There are people who would make the world better off dead.”
The State Department’s announcement came the same day that Politico reported on group chats between leaders of Young Republicans groups, in which a dozen members shared racist messages and said things like “I love Hitler.”
But unlike the foreigners’ remarks about Kirk, Vice President JD Vance dismissed the Young Republicans’ leaked chats as juvenile humor. (MSNBC has not independently verified the messages.)
“They tell edgy, offensive jokes — like, that’s what kids do,” Vance said on an episode of the “The Charlie Kirk Show.” “And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”
The State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to MSNBC’s requests for comment.