|
Thursday, September 11, 2025 |
|
|
|
This morning, as people grieve for Charlie Kirk and express fears about what his death might portend for the future of American politics, his own words are bringing comfort and starting conversations.
Many Kirk fans have re-upped an old clip of Kirk talking with a woman who asked about his "Prove Me Wrong" events on college campuses. Fox News has been showing it too.
"When people stop talking, that's when you get violence," Kirk said in the clip. When people stop talking, "that's when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil and they lose their humanity."
The New York Post's sorrowful front page is dominated by a similar quote from Kirk: "What we have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option."
On social media, people are also resharing one of Kirk's last X posts where he commented on the Charlotte train stabbing and said, "America will never be the same," and his appearance on Mark Halperin's show where he talked of America being a violent country. "We need more prisoners, and we need more prisons," he said.
If you weren't a fan of Kirk, my humble advice is to absorb some of what his friends are posting and sharing today — like these X blog posts by JD Vance and Michael Knowles — to better understand where they're coming from.
>> We covered many of the initial reactions to Kirk's death in a special edition of the newsletter last night. You can read it here. Check CNN.com for the latest updates on the manhunt.
|
Taking the country's temperature |
"In some corners of the MAGA ecosystem, heartbreak over Kirk's killing turned swiftly into rage," Axios pointed out this morning. According to WIRED, some extremist groups are calling "for civil war and violent retribution." Yes, that's happening in some corners, but not all. The tone on "Fox & Friends" has been mournful, and the hosts have pointed out that Democrats have joined Republicans in condemning the shooting.
As Kate Bolduan and I discussed on "CNN News Central" just now, I think it's important to lift up responsible voices in this moment, and not just linger on the provocateurs who loudly sow discord.
>> On ABC last night, Jon Karl described his past interactions with Kirk, saying, "He was always willing to engage and always pleasant in those conversations." That was my personal experience as well.
>> Political reporter Molly Ball: "Whether or not you agreed with him, he was proof that one person can change the world by fighting for the ideas they believe in."
>> Stephen Colbert opened "The Late Show" by saying, "Political violence only leads to more political violence, and I pray with all my heart that this is the aberrant action of a madman and not a sign of things to come."
>> "For the first time in my life, I’m genuinely frightened about being a newspaper columnist," British writer Jeremy Clarkson commented.
|
Rhetoric professor Matthew Boedy has a book coming out later this month, "The Seven Mountains Mandate," that focuses on Kirk as the "new face of Christian nationalism."
"We crossed a line in our nation yesterday and I can only think we will cross more," Boedy told me overnight.
Boedy's book is highly critical of the movement Kirk represented, so I asked if he fears blowback. "My family certainly brought that up," he said. He called President Trump's overnight comments about the "radical" left "disturbing."
Meantime, many MAGA media leaders are pointing out the threats that they regularly receive, and multiple media organizations are reevaluating their security plans in the wake of this shooting. I hate to use the phrase "both sides" on a day like today, because it's more complicated than that, but the fears are palpable on both sides...
|
Standing up for free speech |
"Prove Me Wrong" were the three powerful words that Kirk used to challenge college students and others. "He created platforms not just for himself to express his political opinion, but for others to express theirs as well," FIRE's Nico Perrino said on "CNN This Morning." And Kirk "paid for it yesterday with his life."
"Free speech is what we do instead of violence," Perrino said. "I think we should all hope that we live in a society, an open society, where we can have our debates and our disagreements out in the public and not from behind bulletproof vests and bulletproof glass." This is a great day to check out FIRE's fine work defending speech on campuses here...
|
These horrific videos are 'warping us' |
Hadas Gold writes: One thing that has really struck me over this past week is how the video of people’s deaths — the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on the train and of Kirk's shooting; the fact that we can so easily see these moments of death and they are often foisted upon us by the algorithm — I seriously worry that it’s contributing to our societal numbing to violence.
>> Thomas Chatterton Williams agrees: It "cannot be healthy, individually or societally, to be exposed to endless footage of people being gruesomely murdered in graphic detail on our phones," he wrote on X. "The horrific videos of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk are not healthy to watch. We should not be seeing all this. It is warping us."
|
MSNBC cut ties with political analyst Matthew Dowd last night after Dowd appeared "to blame conservative activist Charlie Kirk for his own death,"
Justin Baragona reports for The Independent. Dowd had told host
Katy Tur on-air that "hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions." The backlash was immediate, leading MSNBC president
Rebecca Kutler to issue an apology Wednesday night, and then for word of Dowd's dismissal to leak.
>> Mediaite's Sarah Rumpf reports that A.G. Gancarski, a reporter with a Florida political website, was suspended after texting a Republican congressman to ask if the Kirk shooting "affects your position on campus carry?"
|
Liam Reilly writes: According to Logan Topham, the executive news producer of Utah Valley University's independent student paper, there was initial discord among the student body, with some blaming protesters for Kirk's slaying, CNN's Dakin Andone reports. However, Topham said, "on social media afterwards, what we saw was actually mostly unifying people, saying that no matter what your political views were, if you were on either side of this, the action was wrong and it should never have happened. So it is good to see that after there was a lot of unity that was found on social media."
|
The 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks adds to the somber feeling this morning. There are two excellent new articles about how we remember that day.
CNN's Melissa Gray wrote about the 9/11 Media Preservation Group, "a volunteer group of digital sleuths, tech experts and information-seekers" who archive images, video and information from September 11. They say some new, previously unseen images are still coming to light, decades later.
And the NYT's Jennifer Schuessler wrote about filmmakers Steve Rosenbaum and Pamela Yoder's labor of love — collecting hundreds of hours of 9/11 video from New Yorkers. It was a crucial act of crowdsourcing in the pre-YouTube age. Schuessler says the videos "captured both the devastation of the attack and the collective mood of the immediate aftermath, when children chalked drawings of flowers next to mangled cars, and strangers gathered to process and, sometimes, argue."
The filmmakers are now donating their archive to the New York Public Library. Read all about it here.
|
NPR just appointed an editor in chief: "NPR's newsroom will be led by Tommy Evans, a new managing editor for the network who's a veteran CNN foreign news executive," David Folkenflik reports. I know from firsthand experience that Evans is a truly top-notch journalist and colleague. Here's is Folkenflik's full story...
|
David Ellison is considering naming Bari Weiss CBS News' editor-in-chief or co-president "as part of a broader deal to buy The Free Press," though no deal is final yet, the NYT's Lauren Hirsch and Ben Mullin reported yesterday. "Even the consideration of Ms. Weiss for such a prominent role at CBS News is the strongest sign yet that the network’s new owner, David Ellison, intends to make major changes at the news organization," the pair wrote...
|
Lachlan Murdoch touts 'clarity' |
The resolution of the family trust dispute is "great news for investors," he said at Goldman Sachs' media conference yesterday. "It gives us a clarity about our strategy going forward, it shows that our strategy will be consistent, it's clear and it's very sustainable."
>> Other news from the GS conference: David Zaslav said the Warner Bros. Discovery split will take effect by April of next year. "Everything's on track," he said.
|
A tip of the cap to Howard Kurtz |
|
|
|
