Mona Charen and Jonathan Chait Discuss the Charlie Kirk Assassination and Authoritarian Threats to American Democracy
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Mona Charen and Jonathan Chait Discuss the Charlie Kirk Assassination and Authoritarian Threats to American Democracy
Mona Charen sits down with Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic to examine how the assassination of Charlie Kirk is being weaponized to justify an authoritarian crackdown on dissent. Chait argues that MAGA forces are exploiting this tragedy to cement a narrative that political violence is exclusively a left-wing problem, thereby justifying attacks on progressive nonprofits, media outlets, and critics. The conversation explores the religious iconography surrounding Kirk's death, the dangerous expansion of presidential power, and whether Democrats can find their footing in an increasingly illiberal political landscape. Charen and Chait also discuss the chilling effect on free expression, Trump's lawsuits against media organizations, and the Democratic Party's struggles with issues like tariffs and transgender rights that alienate working-class voters.
Mona Charen opens her conversation with Jonathan Chait by acknowledging the difficult position many Americans find themselves in following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. While MAGA forces and Republicans understandably feel upset—pointing to assassination attempts on Trump and now Kirk's murder—Chait warns against indulging feelings that aren't grounded in reality. He draws a parallel to 2020, when Trump supporters felt the election was being stolen despite no evidence. The key word, Chait emphasizes, is "feel." While everyone deserves equal rights and legal protections, feelings of persecution don't justify becoming president after losing an election—or, in this case, launching an authoritarian crackdown on political opposition.
Chait explains that the murder of Charlie Kirk has given the right something precious: a genuine martyr. Unlike Ashley Babbitt, whom only the most fanatical Trumpists were willing to canonize, Kirk's death is something the entire MAGA movement wants to discuss. This distinction matters enormously. Most Republicans wished the January 6th issue would disappear and didn't want to talk about Babbitt. But Kirk is different—he was admired across the right, and his murder was genuinely tragic. The problem, Chait argues, is what they're doing with this tragedy.
Creating a False Narrative About Political Violence
The right is attempting to establish that political violence is synonymous with the left and completely absent from the political right, Chait observes. This erroneous interpretation then becomes the foundation for a terrifying authoritarian agenda. If political violence equals the left, then the solution isn't to crack down on violence per se, but to crack down on the left itself. This represents a fundamental shift from addressing violent acts to targeting an entire political orientation.
Chait describes how Republicans with institutional memory—people like James Lankford and Katie Britt—tried to fulfill their traditional civic duty by denouncing all political violence and calling for unity. However, when pressed on Trump's inflammatory language, they couldn't bring themselves to criticize the president. Lankford almost subtweeted his concern, saying his staff should pour water, not gasoline, on fires, but he wouldn't directly address Trump's role in stoking tensions. The entire Republican Party, even members with the best intentions, is constrained by Trump's leadership from performing the civic hygiene this moment demands.
Most disturbing, Charen and Chait note, is that these responsible Republicans were viciously attacked from the right as apostates for simply denouncing political violence—something that was once completely uncontroversial. Publications like The Federalist attacked both Britt and Lankford for their measured responses. Denouncing political violence is no longer acceptable in large swaths of the Republican Party.
Religious Iconography and Christian Nationalism
The ceremony at the Kennedy Center revealed the extent to which Kirk's death is being transformed into something beyond a political tragedy. Speaker Mike Johnson praised Kirk as a man of deep faith and conviction, then declared that his movement was "a ministry rooted in the belief that our rights do not derive from a state or a king. They come from the king of kings." Tulsi Gabbard went further, claiming that protesters outside the Kennedy Center were "rejecting God" and had "made God their enemy." Members of Congress framed the situation not as a political dispute but as a cosmic battle between good and evil.
Charen expresses shock at JD Vance's explicit recitation from the Nicene Creed during his appearance on Charlie Kirk's podcast as a fill-in host, clearly attempting to inherit Kirk's following. Throughout American political history, religious invocations by leading figures were deliberately ecumenical—references to "the good Lord" or "providence" that could include Americans of all faiths. Vance's explicit Christian confession represented a departure from this tradition.
Chait sees this as part of a decades-long trend rather than something unique to the Trump era. The movement of the religious right into the Republican Party beginning with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the late 1970s and early 1980s started this trajectory. Over the Reagan and George W. Bush eras, this thinking gained incremental force. Now there's greater representation for the straightforward belief that America is a Christian country, where Jews can exist as "little buddies of the Christians," Muslims may not be entitled to live here at all, and people of other religions fall somewhere in between on a hierarchy of citizenship.
Creating a State of Emergency
Chait argues that the right is attempting to transform Kirk's assassination from a tragic instance of political violence—something that occurs periodically throughout American history—into a completely unique event comparable to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. He points out that Trump completely failed to mention the shootings of two legislators in Minnesota earlier in the year, because acknowledging that violence occurs across the political spectrum would undermine the narrative that it's exclusively a left-wing phenomenon.
All the displays of religious fervor and national mourning are intended to create a state of emergency that justifies an extraordinary agenda: cracking down on the left. Stephen Miller has been explicit about this, ranting about going after the left "by any means"—whether through RICO charges, tax investigations, or any other avenue they can find. The goal is simply to crush the left, and this has been the National Conservative agenda for some time. The Kirk assassination provided the opportunity to move forward on this agenda right now.
Another concerning shift Chait identifies is the changing standard for what's considered acceptable to say about Charlie Kirk. The bar is no longer simply opposing violence against him, but actively endorsing his legacy. The right has moved beyond finding people on social media who said "I'm not upset that Charlie Kirk is dead" to targeting anyone who said "he's dead, but let's not pretend he was a good guy or that his ideas were good." This represents an entirely different standard—one that demands praise or silence under threat of retaliation.
The Myth of Left-Wing Celebration
Charen describes spending days searching aggressively for evidence of the left "dancing on Charlie Kirk's grave"—the narrative that supposedly set off the right. She was prepared to find it, having witnessed the disturbing celebration when a health insurance CEO was murdered in New York. Leading Democrats from former presidents to secretaries of state and sitting members were entirely responsible in their statements. Even democratically-affiliated celebrities said appropriate things: they didn't like Kirk's politics, but his murder was terrible, they felt for his family, and they called for prayers for America.
As Chait documented in his piece, the right had to create this narrative by finding random people on Twitter and social media—unknown individuals in a country of 330 million—who had said offensive things. But these weren't leading Democrats or even secondary figures. They couldn't find a single Democratic state legislator endorsing the murder, despite thousands serving across the country. Articles featured "a school teacher in New Jersey" and "a florist in Oklahoma" as their evidence. The fact that they had to rely on such pathetic examples actually disproved the point they were attempting to make.
Moreover, in many cases the right lumped together genuinely tasteless comments with statements that merely said "let's not forget what Charlie Kirk stood for" or "let's not make a hero out of him." These more prominent sentiments—expressing regret about the murder while declining to whitewash Kirk's record—are not the same as saying he deserved to be murdered. But the right is deliberately conflating them.
A Multi-Front Assault on Free Expression
The attack on dissent is happening through multiple channels simultaneously. Trump is filing lawsuits against media entities, some successfully due to corporate spinelessness like CBS's capitulation. His lawsuit against The New York Times—perhaps the most risible ever filed—seeks $19 billion and begins with Trump praising himself as the most fantastic public figure in world history. While the Times can afford to defend itself, the real leverage comes from regulatory threats against parent companies that need government approval, as Paramount discovered with CBS.
Trump is also suing The Wall Street Journal over the Epstein story. Meanwhile, other elements of the administration are attacking critics through different means—the FBI showing up at John Bolton's home with potential trumped-up charges because he's been a critic. There are attempts to examine the tax-exempt status of left-wing foundations. The lawsuits, regulatory pressure, and potential prosecutions form a pincer movement designed to crush opposition.
Both Charen and Chait feel this has already chilled expression in America, though it's hard to quantify. People are watchful for potential retribution. At minimum, individuals and organizations are being careful and cautious, asking themselves "Do we have to say this? Can we run the traps on what Trump can do to us afterward?" This represents a fundamentally different mindset.
Media Capture and the TikTok Example
Beyond leverage and lawsuits, Trump has managed to place loyalists in charge of some media entities. He illegally ignored Congress's overwhelming bipartisan vote requiring TikTok's shutdown—clear law that he simply disregarded—so he could make a deal putting TikTok in the hands of an ally. Chait found it telling when Trump denounced NBC and ABC but not CBS, indicating he believes the sale to the Ellisons and Barry Weiss's supervisory role over news will defang CBS and turn it into a controlled organization.
Against this all-out frontal assault on free expression and the rule of law, Americans have the Democratic Party. And as Charen notes, "we got to do better." Looking at Democratic popularity and how people feel about the party, the picture is concerning. Recent polling on Hispanic voters shows Trump drastically unpopular among a group that gave him a big boost in 2024—he's lost significant support. Yet when focus groups of Hispanic Trump voters from 2024 were asked if they'd support Kamala Harris in a rerun election, nobody said yes. They'd either vote third party or stay home. Democrats remain radically unpopular.
Democratic Party Challenges and Potential
Chait is more optimistic than Charen for two reasons. First, opposition parties often appear more unpopular in polls than they actually are because significant numbers of their own partisans are simply upset about having no power. This happened to Republicans during Obama's first two years, when they were catastrophically unpopular in polls—yet they swept the 2010 midterms. Second, while Democrats do have an overhang from the Biden administration's positions that were left of much of the country, people are actually dealing with it now.
After Trump's 2016 victory, Democrats showed absolutely no desire to acknowledge defeat or do anything except move further left. The dominant view was that Hillary Clinton hadn't moved left enough despite being pushed by Bernie Sanders. The entire 2020 Democratic primary was a race to the left, with candidates raising their hands for toxically unpopular positions while Chait screamed into a void. Now the atmosphere is totally different. There are people on both sides of the argument—some wanting to move further left, others believing the party needs to return to the center. This debate is healthy and necessary.
The Tariff Question and Economic Policy
Trump is doing potentially catastrophic damage to both the American and world economy through tariffs, yet Democrats have always been weak on this issue. Biden didn't repeal Trump's tariffs and the party lacks a principled objection to them. Chait admits he doesn't have a principled objection either—just a pragmatic one. Generally speaking, tariffs are an inefficient tool for raising revenue or accomplishing policy goals, with few exceptions.
Biden tried to co-opt Trump's blue-collar support by keeping tariffs in place and taking other pro-labor measures. None of these things worked—there's no evidence they had any effect. Some Democrats want to say they didn't go far enough and need to go even more in that direction. But others are questioning this approach and will likely run on a "roll back the Trump tariffs" platform in 2028.
The pro-free trade side has an enormous advantage: they can be the anti-Trump side. When the pro-tariff faction says "our tariffs are totally different than Donald Trump's," the free traders can simply respond "you just want to do what Donald Trump did" and likely prevail. Importantly, Biden had a tool to fight inflation that he refused to use—reversing tariffs actually brings prices down. He had the "lower prices button" but wouldn't press it because of union pressure.
The Transgender Issue Trap
Democrats have gotten themselves into a mess on transgender issues by trying to appease or please a constituency they feel is belleaguered. Trans people are genuinely belleaguered and have been outright attacked, dehumanized, and discriminated against by the current administration—which is horrible. However, Democrats found themselves taking positions that alienated crucial voters: endorsing the idea that there are six genders, supporting natal boys playing on girls' sports teams, and other stances that working-class union voters strongly oppose.
The biggest problems are the sports issue and youth medicalization—the speed and processes for giving life-altering, irreversible chemical or medical treatment to minors. While there's no question among Democrats that adults should be able to do whatever they want, questions arise with teenagers: how much diagnosis is needed? Trans activists, like all activists, push allies to go all the way on their agenda rather than breaking issues into pieces. They insist on 100% support, not 75%.
The movement has aggressively smeared and destroyed reputations of people in liberal spaces who contradict even unreasonable positions—like the claim that trans women have absolutely no athletic advantages under any circumstances, or that Lia Thomas was purely a civil rights hero. Democrats need to say they want to stand with trans people against right-wing attacks and support civil rights, but don't need to take the most unreasonable positions across the board in every instance.
A few Democrats have spoken out but been viciously attacked. The rest are leery after watching Kamala Harris go on camera supporting free gender reassignment surgery for prisoners and detained migrants. They won't do that anymore, but they also won't come out and clearly say "sports are different" or "we need to be careful with teenagers." They must move back several notches because they're so outside the mainstream and alienating voters. As Charen points out, you can compromise on sports and youth medicalization while still supporting 90% of the pro-trans rights agenda—all the popular and important things like treating adults with dignity, respecting chosen names, etc.
Illiberalism on Both Sides
Charen and Chait agree that America lives in an age of illiberalism. There was tremendous illiberalism on the left that made people afraid to say what they really thought, particularly in academia. Charen spoke to numerous people while writing her last book who said "I can't say this publicly, but..." There was a definite chill imposed by the left. Now there's a backlash, plus homegrown extremism on the right that both agree is worse—much worse. This illiberalism is now in the saddle, riding over everything on the right with no internal argument. While people like Charen and Chait spoke out against left-wing illiberalism for years, no one is willing to speak out against what Trump is doing on the right.
It represents total capture of an entire movement and political party. All the intellectual organs have folded. The Claremont Review, once a serious publication, is now "a rag." The conversation concludes with grim humor—they've solved all the problems, and everybody just needs to be reasonable and liberal like them. But beneath the irony lies a serious concern about American democracy's capacity to withstand this authoritarian moment and whether the opposition party can rise to the challenge.
