MSNBC's Coverage of Charlie Kirk and the Backlash It Drew

Showing 96 MSNBC videos from Charlie Kirk's video collection.

MSNBC surfaces across the site's coverage mainly as a foil, the network commentators cite when arguing that establishment media badly misjudged Charlie Kirk and the reaction to his death. The clearest example is Matthew Dowd, an MSNBC contributor fired within hours of the shooting after remarks widely read as blaming Kirk's own rhetoric for what happened to him; commentators return to that firing repeatedly as proof the network itself recognized how far its own coverage had drifted. Joy Reid's MSNBC segment celebrating a wave of prosecutors as encouraging news for Democrats drew a direct response from Kirk himself, who argued Reid was racializing the justice system even while praising it. After Kirk's memorial drew a five-hour audience of over 100 million online, commentators like Matt Walsh singled out MSNBC's coverage as visibly bewildered by the crowd's open displays of Christian faith and forgiveness, framing the network's confusion as evidence of a wider cultural gap between its hosts and the country it covers. Across these threads, MSNBC isn't really a single storyline so much as shorthand for the cable-news establishment conservative commentators believe misread both Kirk and the public response to his death.