The assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscape of American politics in an instant, inspiring a startlingly unanimous battlecry of vengeance from the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Trump White House. In this episode, Matt and Sam respond to this ominous moment, analyzing Kirk’s legacy, the politics of martyrdom, and the dangers that lurk ahead.
Two notes: (1) This episode was recorded on Tuesday 9/16, before some of the administration's specific repressive efforts — e.g. the FCC intimidating ABC into suspending late night host Jimmy Kimmel — had taken place. (2) Matt's sound quality is diminished toward the end of episode because of a technical problem with his mic.
I think in a healthy society with the basic rudiments of solidarity, decency, neighborliness, right, where people's basic needs are met in a political culture that's healthier than ours. Let's say, you know, there's a very tiny percentage of people who are going to become radicalized and try to assassinate someone. But as society becomes more and more like the one we're actually living in, where people feel desperate, where they're fed a steady stream of violent and racist or just like you're mind-numbing slop and video clips and you know, TikTok and Instagram and X and everything, right? An unhealthy society where people are bombarded with these extreme messages or images like just the number of people in that society. We're probably going to go a little crazy. That's what I see happening or at least that's one considerable factor I have in mind, just like we now have created a society that will sort of breed more and more of this because of like the circumstances people find them in. And whether they think there's a democratic path to having their needs met. Exactly. Some place where you know, political despair and personal defeat combined is at least one major kind of element in how you get people like this assassin and there's only one of them we can really do something about and that's the political despair. It reminds me of the conversation we're having with Osita about how like antagonism in politics is not a bad thing. It's normal, it's good. It just needs to have a vehicle. People need to have a vehicle which makes their antagonism feel even remotely efficacious. That makes it feel like they're actually participating in democracy and not just watching a spectacle take place that they have no control over that in most cases just like makes them feel disempowered and alienated from their fellow Americans. I do kind of feel like this gets to the sour note in some of the center left pains to certainly to like Kirk's mode of operating in politics but also to like asking the country to like heal in the wake of this. Ezra Klein and his latest piece said I believe this so strongly we have to be able to see that the bullet that tore into Charlie Kirk was an act of violence against us all. Now there's a certain way in which I really do aspire to that. Like I do really feel that you either have a conversation and do democracy or you shoot each other. Like I am a kind of old-fashioned liberal in that way and I know that you are too but that point at this particular moment it's a message to know where. I mean obviously every elected Democrat has said something to that effect. I feel that way, you feel that way. The right, the people who actually have power to respond using the power of the state and the coercive capacity of the state, they don't feel that way at all. They don't feel that the bullet was an act of violence against us all. They feel it was an act of violence against them and them alone and that the trigger is all of us. [Music]
Matt and Sam discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and where they think we're heading in its wake.
