Pod Save America on the Charlie Kirk Assassination: Political Violence and America's Dangerous Turning Point

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. >> I'm Dan Fefeifer. >> On today's show, we're going to get into the news that inflation and jobless claims are higher, the latest with the looming government shutdown, and Tommy's interview with Senator Chris Van Holland, who stopped by the studio on Wednesday. But we're going to spend the first part of the show on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist and media personality who was very close to Donald Trump and the White House. a killer who, as of this recording, has yet to be found, fired a single shot from a rooftop that hit Kirk in the neck while he was answering questions from students during an event at Utah Valley University. It was what he did for a living. He'd go places and hold events where he talked to people who cared about politics and tried to organize them. And uh among the many reasons I've been so shaken up by this assassination is admittedly the most self-interested, which is that's what we do, too. Um that's what other media figures and politicians and organizers and activists do all over the country every day to see if we can argue and persuade and and maybe change some minds. Um, Charlie Kirk did that for more than a decade. And he probably encountered hundreds, if not thousands of libs like us who didn't just disagree with his pretty extreme views, but found them odious uh, and even hateful. And do you know what they did? They debated him and yelled at him and probably called him some awful and maybe well-deserved names. But um, they didn't hurt him. They didn't commit political violence. this person dead and now a father of two young children is dead. And now some people might decide that participating in politics and organizing is not worth the risk. And some other people might decide that committing committing political violence is worth the risk. And I think that's a pretty scary place to be. So that's where I am today. Dan, uh, where are you at? You know, I went when I first heard the news, I it was a very 2025 experience where I was scrolling my phone. I saw a report. I I believed it might be misinformation because it's the internet in 2025. And then I saw the video and because it's the internet 2025, I wondered if it was a deep fake. And then when I heard the actual news, I had the same reaction you did. Right. Right. And there is self-interest there as well because even though I disagreed with every word that probably that Charlie Kirk ever said, uh, we've disagreeed with him vehemently. We just talked about him on this podcast two weeks ago for the things he said about Taylor Swift that we found odious. The the idea of anyone left, right, or center being gunned down for doing politics, for saying their opinions in public is a horrifying thing. And I was horrified because I also knew he had two young children and a wife that you know you can have empathy for his family without having to celebrate him in any way, shape or form and to agree with him in any way to have empathy that there are two kids who now do not have a father, a wife who does not have a husband. And I also was horrified because I knew what was going to happen. I knew what the reactions would be. I worried about what the right would do to use this as a pretext for something much worse. I knew that there was our president, who we will talk about later, was incapable of speaking to the moment in a way that you would always hope in something like this. And it's just it is a very dark day because it's not an isolated incident as we also talk about. It comes at this is of something that we've it says something about where this country is right now and where it's going. both the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the things that happened before it, and how so many people, particularly on the right, but not exclusively on the right, reacted to it. >> We're starting to get a clearer picture of what happened. Uh we're recording this Thursday afternoon, Pacific time. Uh here's what we think we know. Kirk was speaking as part of the uh Turning Point USA campus tour uh at the college, Utah Valley University. Some of the students had circulated a petition asking the school not to host Kirk. Others were supportive. The university went through with it. um around 12:20 p.m. Mountain time, Kirk was taking questions, had just gotten one about mass shootings in America when he was shot. So, in terms of where this investigation stands right now, uh we have been getting some mixed messages um from the podcasters running the FBI, Dan. Uh Cash Patel, who apparently loves to uh live tweet a manhunt, uh first posted that the shooter was in custody. Then two hours later, he posted again to say that the person had been released after questioning. That is unusual for the FBI director to update people on that. Then the FBI posted photos of a person of interest, a male figure wearing a black long-sleeved t-shirt with an American flag on it, a baseball cap, and dark glasses. The police recovered what they think is the murder weapon, a high-powered boltaction rifle wrapped in a towel and discarded in the woods. At first, there were also unverified reports that the ammo recovered with the rifle was engraved with statements quote expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology. And then a senior law enforcement official walked that back telling the Times that the report had not been verified by the government and quote did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted. This is why everyone should be very careful with uh information that comes out early, unverified reports. And I guess now we have to uh not take anything the FBI director says uh as truth because he might retweet you may tweet something else completely contradictory a couple hours later. So I guess we have to wait for that as well. Um, but the case will probably be solved soon because Cash Patel and Dan Bonino have flown to Utah to personally oversee the people who have decades more law enforcement experience than either of them. Uh, it doesn't quite feel like the the buttoned up operation we've come to expect from federal law enforcement, does it? >> No. It is extremely bizarre and frankly probably counterproductive for the director and the deputy director of the FBI to go to the seat of the crime for something like this. you know, this is, you know, I guess I guess in fairness, podcasters have solved a lot of uh mysteries over the years, and maybe maybe they're on the case. I don't know. But there is a, you know, we there is this competition within the right to to take this as seriously as possible. Not just the crime, but the but just the entire incident, right? You have you have the flags at half mass for a private citizen. You have JD Vance cancing his appearance at a 9/11 memorial ceremony to fly Air Force 2 to Utah to pick up Charlie Kirk's casket and take it to his home of Arizona. Right. You have the deputy director and the FB the director and the deputy director of the FBI stopping what they are doing. You know, there are lots of investigations happening all over this country that they are not involved in to focus on this. And I can't imagine that having these two guys there is going to do anything to increase the likelihood or the speed by which the local officials on the scene apprehend this individual. >> From a law enforcement perspective as well as you think about hopefully apprehending this person and then trying them just like telling people we got this person in questioning and then now we're releasing them and then there's this other person like it can't help the case. um or I mean it might not matter but it's usually risks that law enforcement don't take. Um so as you mentioned you know it's it's it's now obvious if it wasn't obvious already that we we are in a a deepening cycle of political violence. Um and the violence is targeting and it's committed by people on all points of the ideological spectrum. Some people who don't even have cohesive coherent ideological views. Um, in 2011, Gabby Gfords was shot at a town hall. Uh, that's when you and I were still in the White House. In 2017, Steve Scaliz was shot at a congressional baseball game. That was the same year progressive activist Heather Hire was killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville. There was the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The rioters who tried to kill members of Congress and the vice president and seriously wounded police officers on January 6th. The man who tried to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and nearly killed her husband in 2022. The attempts on Trump's life in Pennsylvania and in Florida, the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's house getting set on fire, the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers outside a party in Washington, the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the speaker of the Minnesota House and her husband, uh, and the shooting just the other week at CDC headquarters, uh, where a gunman sprayed 180 rounds and took the life of a police officer over the COVID vaccine. Um, any thoughts on why we're seeing the surge, what we do about it, where the country goes from here? Well, we've seen this before, right? I had a long conversation with Heather Cox Richardson on this podcast last this past Sunday about other periods in our history that felt like this. She mentioned too, the period right before the Civil War and the period of reconstruction. But obviously there's also the 1960s and 70s where we had the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mega Evers. We had the the Weatherman bombings. We had two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford. Um, and so we've been through this before. We had in the '9s there was the uh uptick in militia violence that ended with the Oklahoma City bombing. So we have been here before. I think that what makes this feel worse now or at least potentially more dangerous now is we have a couple other factors in place. What like we have never been more politically polarized. The idea of the parties coming together to jointly condemn political violence to work together in an even-handed way to combat it seems much less likely than at almost any other time with the possible exception of immediately prior to the civil war. the we are we are living in a social mediadriven ecosystem which doesn't just amplify but incentivizes some of the most outrageous, most outlandish and most dangerous um comments that people can make. We have we guns have never been easier to get in this country. So we don't yet know how the weapon in in this incident was acquired, but we know that just guns are readily available to people who may want to seek violence. Um, so all those things push us in a pretty dangerous direction and and and and this is the important point as we've seen in all the examples I give is that political violence begets political violence >> and we don't have as we'll talk about we don't have leadership right now who is willing to calm things down or try to calm things down but instead is actually trying to ratchet things up. Uh, and that's a huge problem and, you know, not something that we've we've dealt with at least at the presidential level. Um, so from the moment that uh the news broke that Kirk had been shot, it was it was obvious that this was uh a political act and uh it would generate intensely political pressure that has certainly borne out over the last 24 hours. Um, let's start with the reaction from the left. I don't know about you, I have yet to see a statement from an elected Democrat or media figure or prominent progressive that has not offered anything but condolences uh condemned political violence, urged restraint from Biden, Harris, Obama, the Clintons on down. I have seen a number of mostly anonymous uh social media accounts with barely any followers say some absolutely horrific things. And uh I've seen a few random people get fired uh for posting awful things only because right-wing influencers are finding those people and those anonymous media accounts and amplifying them which only stirs the pot. Of course, uh it is obviously impossible to prevent random mostly anonymous social media accounts from posting crazy I said this last night on YouTube when we talked about this, but um do we know how many are bots? We do not. Do we know how much AI is involved in some of this? We do not. Do we know how many are just not even American? They're just posting from somewhere around the world. We do not. Uh and that is not to say that that's what they all are, right? There are plenty of people who are actually people posting these things. But we just don't know. And social media makes it seem like we are swimming in it. Um when in fact uh that is not necessarily the case in the real world. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is not. Um and in a country of 330 million people, right? like there are going to be people who say and horrible things and react to this in a horrible way. Um on the other hand, it is pretty disturbing, right? It's just so like anything what what are Democrats supposed to do about this? Because you know, we get tagged with it. I mean there is this massive asymmetry here which is every single Democrat is being held accountable for something that some random person said whether like you said whether that person is a real person which in some cases they certainly are because these people who have been fired from various jobs at universities and elsewhere are those are actual people um and republic and there are very prominent MAGA media personalities Republican officials people with the ear of the president of the United ates saying truly horrendous things, calling Democrats domestic terror organization, things like that. Um, and so for every Democrat to be held accountable for every anonymous account seems quite unfair when Republicans are not being held accountable for what people they know and are advised by and consort with say. So that seems very unfair. There is I think a just maybe it's the world we live in now. Maybe it's something that was always there but is amplified simply by social media because the things that people would say privately are now being broadcast across the internet publicly is just in among some people and it's a small number of people. We've seen this in other incidents, right? We saw this around the the murder murder of the United Healthcare CEO is just an inability to find empathy, right? Or to think that having empathy is somehow showing weakness or consent to the or agreement with the the worst views of the victim, right? And I think that that you know and that is another thing that spreads, right? that becomes a debate online that like political violence that that response to violence is begets moral responses like that because it creates this debate and and you know that you sort of get this oneupsmanship about how outrageous can you be you know what's the most aggressive stand you can take and it puts us in a very bad place but I do want to just emphasize this one thing that I do not believe that Democrats the American people elected Democrats everyday Democrats, people listen to the show agree with those comments. There are some who believe that, but that does not represent and I also don't believe that some of the worst comments that we're seeing from Republicans represents the view of most Trump voters. I think most people see this and are horrified whether it is the murder of the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House or a conservative activist and they think that is both of those things are bad and they both have to stop and that we have to do something in this country to get a hold of that. That's how I think most people feel. >> Yeah. I mean, the accounts that I've seen, you know, because people are picking them out that have have glorified this or celebrate celebrated this or said so and so is next or all that kind like I do not know any of those people. I've never heard from any like there just that is a tiny percentage of people. There is another category of people on the left and you know and I I have heard from these people. I've seen this this this posting which is like I'm sorry I don't condone violence. I don't want to celebrate violence but I don't feel bad. I don't feel sympathy for Charlie Kirk and he was a horrible person and he had said horrible things and I would just say for and and I get that. I would just say like you do not have to feel you don't have to feel sympathy for Charlie Kirk if you don't want like no I'm not I'm certainly not like calling for that. If if if you you can feel however you feel and you don't have to grieve him. You don't have to forgive him. You you actually just don't have to say anything about him at all. Um, I think if you are going to say something publicly, then because we live in this world that you just described, it is useful to think what do you want your words to achieve and who do you want to persuade and what action do you want people to take. And I think that for us on on our side, we are facing a very difficult situation right now because um we are a party or a movement or whatever you want to call us that very much believes in democracy and we are facing an opposition that has certainly acted for the last several years like they do not. And part of this is how do we define our values and our principles so that they are not just in opposition to them and that these are values and principles that we hold on to no matter what they do because if we don't they are not values and principles. I believe that we are all created equal that we all um have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think that we all deserve equal protection under the law. I think we all deserve an a basic standard of living. I think we all deserve the protections in the constitution, no matter what you look like, who you are, where you come from, what language you speak, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, or how you vote. If we believe that, do we stop having those principles because the other side is so terrible and because they want to violate those principles and because they want to take away our rights? Do we say, "Okay, because because you don't care about my free speech or you don't care or you don't see me as a full person, then I'm now not I'm going to change my principles so that I don't see you as a full person either because you don't want me as part of the American experiment. Now, I don't want you as part of the American experiment either because that means that those principles weren't real. They have to be universal to be principles. If that if this is what we believe as a movement, as a party, if we believe in democracy, we believe in pluralism, we believe that um we got to respect and treat everyone else with dignity, then we have to hold on to those principles even when people are not respecting us. And that's hard. It's really hard. And it's not fair. And it's not fair. And it's and it's just it's where we are. But if we go down that road, then I I not only we're not going to win, but I don't know what we're going to be as a country. This where we are right now is something I've been worried about for a long time, which is we were progressives, Democrats, pro-democracy people had enough faith in the system that we could lose an election and come back. And that was the as horrified as everyone was in their response to Trump when he won in 2016, what did people do? What was response? They engaged in peaceful protest at the Women's March. They started political organizations. They ran for office. They organized. They made phone calls. The this new president who we don't think should have won but did win. It starts to try to take away everyone's healthcare. Everyone goes to starts calling Capitol Hill. They go to Capitol Hill. They protest. They win elections to get power back. They take the House back. They take the Senate back. They take the White House back. And the way things have played out from the 2024 election to now have reduced people's belief in faith that's that the way to solve problems is traditional politics that you can do it through the system. And I understand that sentiment. I am deeply worried about the sanctity of our election system. I'm deeply worried about our ability to win elections when Donald Trump very well could deploy ICE agents to stand outside of pre precincts that they don't want Democrats to turn out to. That you could send the troop troops into cities to make it hard to get to the polls. Like I worry about that, too. But if we give up the idea that the way to stop Donald Trump is for us to organize, to vote, to be citizens, then we will be no then the whole system collapses. Like that is it. >> I know. I think some people think it's like we're trying to say we got to be as good as them or you know when they go low we go high and we're better than that. It's not about that. It's about it's about us, right? It's about the system that we want to live in. It's about the country we want to live in. We want to live in a country that is free from violence, where we can say what we want to say, where we can do what we want to do. Like that's that that's what this is actually about. And you're right, people have lost faith in that. And and I totally understand that. I go back to that that that tweet from Sean Illing that I mentioned on YouTube last night, which is it's either conversation or violence. And um I saw someone say, "Yeah, I don't know why we're still trying to persuade these people. This these people, we can't persuade any of these people. We just have to we have to mass deprogram them. >> I saw that mass mass deprogram them. And I was like, what do you think the mass deprogramming is? That's that's also persuasion. I don't first of all, you don't know what mass deprogramming actually is, and I don't think it's ever worked, but that's also persuasion. What do you think a protest is? A protest is a form of persuasion. You are trying to send a message by having your bodies in the street. A strike, a mass strike is a form of persuasion. Sitting outside a congressional office is a form of persuasion. It is all forms of persuasion until you get to violence. And there's a lot of people who I know do not want violence and do not think it's the answer, but also think that persuasion and politics is too difficult and too hard and too unfair when the other side has done what they've done. And I get that, but there is no other option. I someone sent this in our Discord uh this morning and I watched it. It's one of my favorite or most memorable speeches from Robert F. Kennedy. Um this is not this is the speech he gave after Martin Luther King was called. It's not the speech in Indianapolis where he tells the famous one where he tells the crowd that >> the next day the mindless menace of violence speech which >> is I would encourage everyone to read it, watch it. Well, I guess you have to listen to read it or listen to it because I think there's only audio. I I listened to it on YouTube. But just the way he talks about the dangers of this cycle, right? The danger when violence becomes the norm, the way in which we solve problems in this country, either political or personal in any other way. This the deeply dangerous downward spiral that is and that the only solution here is the ballot, not the bullet is. It just is a very powerful remark and it is you listen to that and and it just does make you wonder like who could make in this moment could make that argument in a way that people would believe because I do think that's what people want. I re maybe maybe I am the naive one. >> No, you're I I I'm with you. >> I do believe the vast majority of the American people do not want where we are. They hate that we are this divided. And there are certainly political partisans and we are among them who live in that divide. And we have very strong feelings about it. But the vast majority of the country wants something better than this. And the question is, is there someone hopefully from our side who can speak to those speak to that desire? Who can make people actually believe that there is something better than what we're in right now? Because what we're in right now sucks. >> Here's a one of the many statements about Kirk's death. Um uh the statement calls it a wound to the soul of our nation. Whether we disagree, whether we agree or disagree with the words a man speaks, we must never lose sight of his humanity. Not for nor forget the sacred dignity that lives within each and every person. We must not allow righteous anger to harden into hatred, nor trade the dream of America for the nightmare of division. That was a statement from Martin Luther King Jr.'s children that they put out. Uh Charlie Kirk called their father an awful person and said that the passage of the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. They surely knew that. That is the statement they put out. That is grace. That is a hard thing to do. And you know, it's a lesson. Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe home security. Most security systems just sit back and wait for the worst to happen, but Simply Safe's active guard technology is proactive, using smart cameras and live agents to actively deter intruders. It's the difference between just having an alarm and having a real guard on duty. Love it. set up Simply Safe, as you all know by now. >> So, he could doom scroll while they dealt with all the security needs for his home. >> Win-win for everyone. Uh, here's how it works. 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We've had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania. and we had an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate. We desperately need leaders in our country, but more than the leaders, we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. To ask ourselves, is this is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? Unfortunately for all of us, uh, many of the most influential figures on the right have struck a much darker tone in their posts. Uh, Elon Musk posted, "The left is the party of murder." Libs of Tik Tok founder Chia Raichic, "This is war." Andrew Tate, "Civil war." Laura Loomer, "It's time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization. The left is a national security threat." Mike Chernovich, congressional hearings now. every billionaire funding far-left-wing extremism, Soros, Bill Gates, Reed Hoffman, massive RICO investigations. Now, and Steven Miller, who called the Democratic Party a quote, domestic extremist organization even before Kirk shooting multiple times, uh, added, quote, "The fate of millions depends upon the defeat of this wicked ideology." What ideology? the one that quote hatates everything that is good, is at war with family and nature, that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth. Okay. Um and and things weren't much better off social media. Let's look. >> The Democrats just killed Charlie Kirk today. They're desperate. They're losing. They want to intimidate you and me and everybody else. >> Charlie Kirk's a casualty of war. We're we're in this country. When is the Democrats going to stand up and and apologize for the hatred and the lies that they have fed their base that's led to these actions. >> They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. >> Luckily, all of this was moderated by the video message released on Wednesday night by our commander-in-chief, National Leader Donald Trump. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Uh, when you clicked on that video, did you have even the even the smallest bit of naive hope that maybe he would try to be even somewhat presidential? >> I did not, John. >> Yeah. >> And it was actually worse than I thought. >> Me, too. >> It just says so much about how what low regard everyone in the country, Democrats, Republicans, Trump supporters, the media, has for Trump's humanity. that no one, not a single person expected him to do what any other president would do at this time or frankly any other human would do which is to try to unite the country. He could not admit to, as Spencer Cox very eloquently did, the fact that political violence is happening on both sides. That a Democratic legislator was murdered in her home just a few months ago. that someone tried to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan, tried to burn down the home of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. It's happening on both sides and he can't say that because it doesn't fit his political narrative. And so he couldn't like there are times when Trump has just simply failed because he lacks any sort of gene for empathy. But this was actually worse. He poured gas on the fire by using the term radical left. And it just Donald Trump enabled and then pardon the perpetrators of the largest mass incident of political violence in recent American history. And because he has no capacity for introspection, he just glosses right over that. And it's it's just it's very bad. It's very dangerous. And I left that feeling so dark and so frankly so concerned about what comes next. I mean, he gave that speech with absolutely no knowledge. They didn't have a suspect. They don't have a motive. Um, it seems like it was, for all we know right now, it was just one person, not a radical left, not organizations, not one person who shot Charlie Kirk, just like it was one person who killed Melissa Hortman and her husband. and one person who went and and and beat the out of Paul Pelosi and one person who tried to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler and another one in Florida. And this idea that there is an assassination attempt or an assassination and he he doesn't even know who the person is. There's no suspect in custody. They don't have any leads that the president would know about last night because clearly that we we recording this Friday, Thursday afternoon, we still don't know. and he would just give that speech at a time like that and then start to threaten left-wing organizations that funded What are you talking about? Is what what is he accusing them of? Like I thought, don't we all have the protections of free speech? Didn't he run to protect free speech? Wasn't that a big part of the movement? Because free speech is protected unless you directly incite someone to do something. uh urgently right away. That is the standard for what is not protected under free speech. Other than that, free speech is protected. So, is free speech protected for all of us or is free speech just protected for um MAGA folks when they want to say stuff, but if anyone else says stuff, then we're going to find you and fire you and arrest you. and and the State Department says they're not letting immigrants in who might have uh said something bad about Charlie Kirk's assassination on Twitter. Like what this goes back to my like what are the standards here? Is it is free speech for everyone or is free speech just for the the regime in power? >> Well, that it's been very clear since the moment Trump took office that this whole idea of freedom of speech that they ran on, this ending of cancel culture is They just wanted to be the ones in power who could do the cancelling, who could dictate the speech, who could police the speech. That is why they are that's what's happening with the law firms. That's what's happening with universities. It is what it is why they the president directed his Department of Justice to investigate people who spoke out and said that the election was won legitimately in 2020. I mean, this is it's like it's it's absurd that but this is what is happening. And it's just it's like we everyone has such low expectations for Trump, right? That he gets away with so much. Like this is a deeply dangerous, deeply irresponsible thing that he did last night. Like you're right. He had no information. None. And you and I have been in meetings about when a president can speak and what we know and the dangers of going out before you know anything. And he did not wait, did not care, and just only did this in a way that advanced his chosen political narrative. The country be damned. Moral political violence be damned only to help himself and and his political allies is what this was about. And is just so deeply cynical and deeply dangerous that like he like I mean I I just don't even know what to say about it. It's so bad. >> And it was very planned, right? It wasn't one of his off-the- cuff comments either. And look, like I I you know, you read some of the coverage today and and and Charlie Kirk was like, you know, family to the Trumps and a lot of people in the White House and that movement and he was a very big deal in that movement. A lot of people were very JD Vance, they were very very close to him. And you can imagine, like I can imagine if if we were in the White House and someone like really close to us who we've been in politics with for a long time was assassinated like that that I I could see myself saying something where I like flew off the handle and said something in public that I wish I could take back. So like this is not that, right? Like I I would I would give them the grace to say a few crazy things because they're angry. This is like a much more we're going to defund these organizations. We're going to go after them. We're going to prosecute. We're at war right now with the whole with the whole This is like you don't want to sound like a a crazy person, but like what this is not what you a a horrific assassination happens to someone that you're ostensibly close to and care about and like the reaction is not even if the reaction is pure we must avenge his killer. We must bring justice to this killer and bring this person to justice. You understand that? But like we're gonna now go to war with the entire Democratic party and the left like millions and millions of Americans who just happen to believe differently than you do. And this idea that what what they've been doing too is if you call them authoritarians, if you say that he's consolidating power like an authoritarian would or that it's a fascist regime or a totalitarian regime or any of this kind of stuff, then it is um you can't do that because then you are inciting violence as well. Well, no. We have to because then that means that uh you can be an authoritarian regime and no one can oppose you because if they oppose you and call it out, then you can just say no, you're inciting violence and you're dangerous. Like that doesn't work. We all happen to believe that yes, he is engaging in authoritarian consolidation right now. He's acting like an authoritarian and the way to oppose that is not violence. It should not be violence. Not only is it morally repugnant, it's ineffective. So it's like we yes we're going to be able to say that this administration what he's doing is lawless. It is against the spirit of the constitution if not the letter of the constitution. It looks like other authoritarian regimes in the past and that the way to oppose it is through electoral politics and peaceful non-violent protest. the I mean if you'll remember in 2024 after the first attempted assassination on Trump uh in Butler, Pennsylvania, there was this whole effort from the right, the Republican party, the right-wing media to try to police everyone's language, which is you if you correctly said that Trump wanted to be a dictator, you were inciting violence. If you correctly said that Trump wanted to use the government to go after his political opponents, you were inciting violence. And it's a it's an attempt to cow Democrats into silence, to not make the case, to cow citizens into silence. What is different now is that they have the entire full force of the federal government to police language, right? They have the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate the people they want to investigate. They have the IRS to go after these organizations. They have the bully pulpit of the White House to shape the narrative as they see fit. Like that's why this is so dangerous. It's a bunch of like red hen civility before and it's up to Democrats to decide whether they're going to fall for that or not. But now it's real and we have seen this. We we through ever since basically ever since January 6th, you are looking in the prosecutions of Trump. You were Republicans are there people on the right, many of whom now work in the White House who are looking for a pretext to use the power of the government to shut down political opposition in this country to lock in power. And that is that that is the language that people are using right now. And that is something that Trump could have disabused if he was a different person in those remarks. And he did not. He actually enabled it. >> And I I don't have the answers to what to do about this if this this starts. But I would say that if you are someone who opposes Donald Trump and opposes his movement then and they go after someone even if you don't agree with that person even if it's some organization you haven't heard of like we all got to speak up and stand together on this because they are they have already been doing this they are counting on um you know picking on and targeting people who are unsympathetic characters right John Bolton we've talked about this or some organization that people or or they'll go after uh pro Palestinian in protesters, right? And um so they're they're looking for to target people where there are wedges within the anti-Trump movement and we can't let that happen. They go after someone, we all stand up for that person. That is that's that's the only piece of advice I have right now. I don't know if you have anything else. >> No, I agree that. And I think this is particularly true when it comes to the trans community. >> Yeah. >> Right. we've already seen in these first reports is attempt to turn this into yet another justification for you know governmentwide discrimination and hatred towards trans people and for whether we have all all these conversations about what role trans policies played in the election all that the point is is the president of United States and his allies are trying to dehumanize American citizens and we stand up for them no matter what the poll says and you do that because it's the trans community now it's someone else next, right? And so like just it's absolutely essential. >> Okay, best we can do for a lighter topic today uh is the deteriorating state of the economy and the impending government shutdown. Uh I'll start with the former. On Thursday, we learned that uh consumer prices climbed higher than expected in August, raising inflation to 2.9%. The Labor Department also reported a surprise increase in weekly unemployment claims, the highest it's been since October 2021. Uh both pieces of data make the Fed's job harder. Uh though reports suggest that they're still likely to announce an interest rate cut when they meet next week, though it's unclear how large it will be. Uh Trump of course has made his position known through post threats in a scheme to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and secure a Trump friendly majority on the Fed. On Tuesday, a federal judge said Trump didn't have sufficient cause to fire Cook. The administration appealed that ruling on Thursday, asking the appellet court to remove Cook from the board by Monday. So, we'll see. Uh, that's also the same day Senate Republicans are hoping to confirm Steven Moran, one of Trump's top economic adviserss, to the Fed board. Moran said he plans to keep his White House job while serving as temporary Fed governor because we love and respect the Fed's independence in the White House, don't we? Um, so my sense of this, we don't know what's going to happen with the rate cut, but my sense is that the political impact of a rate cut, even even if it's a big one, like Trump wants, uh, is probably short-lived or even non-existent. What do you think? >> I think that's probably right. The increase in interest rates was an underdis discussed topic in the 2024 election because it we talked a lot about inflation and and food prices and gas prices and housing prices. That's all incredibly important. But higher interest rates lock people into their homes. It makes it hard for people to if they have if they bought their home with they have a mortgage with a lower interest rate, they're not going to sell their home and get a new one if the newest interest rate is going to be higher. makes it so it affects housing prices, affects housing stock availability, affects credit card credit card payments, getting a new car, all of the be all the above. Having said that, a small rate cut that is just sort of an isolated incident is going to have be dwarfed by the rapidly increasing price of groceries um in in terms of political impact. And the bigger risk here is that Trump is going to get his rate cut against the better judgment of the Fed, which could lead to more inflation. So he would be much better off, because I know long-term thinking is his skill to put wait until inflation has come down more and then get a series of much larger rate cuts at subsequent meetings to really boost the economy. Instead, he's going to get this short-term thing he wants now, which could make it harder to get more rate cuts down the line. And by the way, this is tends to be what happens in or what has happened in countries where um the uh the ruler decides to take over the Fed or >> this is why the Fed's supposed to be independent. >> This is why the Fed is independent because when that happens, usually they are looking for short-term political gain, which a rate cut could get you, but then long-term you're And um you know I saw I saw our old colleague Jason Ferman react to some of the the uh numbers today and say like we are we are heading into stagflation territory which is which is that's you're going to get high unemployment and high inflation. So >> that's the two great tastes that taste great together. Yes. >> Not good. Um one move that's also great for a deteriorate a deteriorating economy uh shutting down the government. Uh we talked about this a bit on Tuesday's show but I want to get your thoughts on the latest. Republicans seem to be coalesing around a short-term extension that so October 1 is the is the deadline and they are thinking about trying to go try to move a short-term extension that gives them time to figure out a budget sometime in November or December. Um Thun Senate Majority Leader John Thun has basically closed the door on including an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies in such a plan. Schumer told reporters this week, quote, "What the Republicans have proposed is not good enough to get our votes." Um though not all Democrats are on board. John Federman, no surprise there, said shutdowns are wrong no matter who triggers them. And Tim Kaine said he's open to a short-term extension that lets them figure out the ACA subsidies by the end of the year. What do you think about the current state of things? And what's your take on Ezra Klein's piece, which is reportedly all the buzz among Senate Democrats, um that Democrats should just refuse to fund what Ezra is calling Trump's authoritarian consolidation. So, I want to say this unequivocally. Morally, politically, strategically, I think Democrats cannot vote to fund Trump's authoritarian takeover of our government. I simply think you can't do it. If you believe as as all these Democrats claim to say, claim to believe that Trump is gathering power. He's he is violating the people's freedoms, he's abridging the Constitution, he's doing all the things. If you believe that, you cannot simply vote to keep his government going in the same way. You simply cannot do it. That is it is politically there are two reasons why you cannot do it. One is you're telling everyone that Trump is this huge threat to our democracy, that what he is doing is wrong, that our government is being corrupted, that our democracy is in danger. And your response is then just to do what you would normally do and just let the government keep going and without a fight? >> Yeah. that the dissonance between those two positions is why people would would fuel the distrust and anger at the Democratic party. More importantly, we have been trying for nine months, Democratic Party has been trying for nine months to grab the country by the lapels and say, "Here is what is happening. This is bad. There were mass ICE agents taking disappearing people off the streets. there are politically motivated investigations happening in the in the Department of Justice that people are Trump is violating court orders that these things are if you we need people to understand why this is dangerous and this is the one moment where we might possibly be able to grab the country's attention to make this case and if you let that moment pass there will not be another one between now and the midterms and maybe not until between now and 2028 and so you I think you absolutely have to do it I think there is this is high risk I listened to your guys' conversation on Tuesday where all of your feelings were on the table, right? They're very like and I get it. I've been you and I had this conversation off mic last week. Like I wrestled a lot with I have a piece sitting in my inbox or in my drafts folder very much like Ezus and I can't finish it because the hard part is what's the endgame? >> Yeah. >> Right. What are you demanding? And I have all the same concerns you guys had about I don't I think that in Ezra's piece he's perhaps a little naive about how the press would actually cover this. I think they would blame Democrats. I think I have real concerns about Democratic the who our messengers are. Can the Senate Democrats and Senate Democratic leadership really go out there and make a case of the country? And this could blow up in our face. But here's what I think is we are in a dangerous situation. And when you're in a situation like this, you have to be willing to take on high-risisk strategies. So the choice is either just keep losing or to actually have a chance to win a fight. And if you don't have the fight, you don't have a chance. And so like I get it. It could be very bad for us. Like there could be and we should not one should look should dismiss the dangers of a shutdown both to the economy and to the people who depend on government services. Like there's very real things here. But having but just like that is real. that we like you have if you think that things are going the way we think they are, then you have to be willing to have a fight even if you might lose that fight. >> I I do think you're right. I've been thinking about this too about the uh the way the press will cover this. Um because I think what if I was Trump, what Trump will do is especially if they get the there's any kind of rate cut next week, then he'll be like, you know, everything was on the everything was going great, finally got the rate cut and now the dem now the economy is doing bad because the Democrats have shut down the government. and that's his message. And the Democrats are rooting everything and they're radical left and they've comm they're committing all this violence and now they're shutting down the government and you can see the political press, you know, just going along with that one. >> Here's the good news, Sean. >> Yeah. No one reads it. >> I mean, that's one thing we learned before election. It's not the problem we thought it was. >> Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Um, but I I do think you're right. It's the it's about I mean it it's about people in the party going out and communicating a forceful message and locking arms and making sure they're all you know not saying the same thing so they sound like robots with talking points but like basically on the same page um and being forceful about it and creative and how they break through and I do I do worry about that. I do worry about that and and and what what are you asking for? I do think that is a kind that's kind of a baseline you have to you have to answer that. This is where I've had the most struggle because there are lots of things you could ask for. All of them individually seem small to your complaints where you're like, "We're doing this because democracy is in peril because there's authority takeover." And the response to that is we need additional premium support for the affordable care act, which is a very important thing. That is a very like that is in a >> month extension. >> Yeah. in a with you know in a normal I think you you uh very accurately in the Tuesday pie described how this place how this could play itself out and in a normal world where you're just you're having a typical budget fight then that's a great thing to ask for right it's the I mean the Republican this was dumb and it they paid a huge steep political price but Republicans shut down the government because they wanted to defund the Affordable Care they were going to vote to fund it and so this is sort of the inverse like a small board inverse of that I I think I can't come up with a single thing that is worthy of it. So I think you can come up with 10 things. Have a long list of things that you want and it should be uh everything from restoring USA ID to the ACA to reopening the Department of Education. Like have a bunch of use use your demand list as a way to communicate what's happening, right? A new set of you know due process for ICE or whatever. Like you you're not going to get all of it. You may only get one of those things, but it makes it easier to at least I think it that is one way to solve the problem of every individual thing feels small in this moment, which is which is where I sort of been really struggling for weeks on this. >> Yeah. No, I think that's that's probably right. Um, okay. When we come back from the break, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Senator Van Holland about the assassination, his visit to Gaza, his fight for Kilmargo Garcia, and lots more. Um, before we get to that, there is a new episode of Polar Coaster out. Dan, what did you guys talk about? >> Caroline and I talked about the new polls that came out over the weekend that show that Trump's political position is actually quite poor. When you really look at these polls, it makes you wonder why so many people are so are preemptively surrendering to Trump. He is in a very historically poor position. His uh his approval rating is down. His ratings in the economy are putrid. twothirds of the country think he is raising their grocery prices and they are rejecting his views on sending the National Guard places and vaccine policy. And so we really dug into that. We also talked about the new polling in the New York City mayor race and what and why it helps explain why Donald Trump is doing so much to help Andrew Cuomo win that race. All right, if you want to hear the full conversation or ask Dan a question yourself, subscribe to Qriket subscription now on Substack, YouTube, Apple Podcast, or visit cricut.com/friends to learn more. Today's episode is sponsored by Strawberry.me. Let's be honest, are you happy with your job? Like really happy. The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown or one we've never wanted in the first place. 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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. Helixleep.com/crooked. >> Uh I'm excited to welcome to the show Maryland Senator Chris Van Holland. Senator, thank you for joining us today. >> Tommy, it's good to be with you. >> So, I I know you just recently got back from a trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank, and I'm very excited to talk with you about, you know, what you saw, but I did have to ask you first about a couple of breaking news stories. Um we're talking at 2:40 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday. Uh we just learned that TPUSA founder and conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered um at his own event in Utah. This is obviously horrific, unjustifiable. It's an an evil act. Um as of this recording, the shooter is still on the loose. We don't know who it was. We don't know their motive. But a lot of people are worried, you know, myself very much included, that this is just the latest example of what feels like kind of constant escalating political violence. And so my question is like how do you think we can calm things down and how do we keep this this evil from spreading? >> Well, it is another horrible moment for the country and this really is evil and we have to get back to the place where we as a country can have robust disagreements on political issues without violence. I mean violence is just unacceptable. It's never the answer. And all of us um no matter where we are on the political spectrum need to make clear that vigorous debate is one thing. Violence is unacceptable. Period. And all of us have a role to play in making it clear that it's unacceptable. >> Yeah. And also I I think I would add dehumanization to that list. You know, because I think it's really easy to demonize your opponents to to call them names. And look, I I'm I'm talking to myself here, too, but God, then you see a picture of Charlie Kirk with his two little kids. Um, and it's it's hard not to imagine yourself in his shoes uh and the impact on that family and and kind of what this will mean for them going forward. >> Well, look, that's exactly uh right. Um, at the end of the day, all of us um are peoples and all of us need to make sure that we remember our common humanity. And in the midst of political battle, uh I agree it's too easy to demonize people. And when you demonize them in different ways, then it becomes too quick a road, I think, to the dehumanization that you've talked about and from dehumanization um to the kind of awful uh killing we just saw. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I I just thinking about his family right now. And of course, we'll keep covering the story as we learn more. Um, I also wanted to ask you about, you know, there's this incident overnight on on Tuesday night where more than a dozen Russian drones entered uh Polish airspace. I believe NATO had to scramble uh a number of air assets to shoot them down. There was this reaction from Trump on on Truth Social that was kind of odd, like a passive voice observation. He wrote, "Uh, what's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? here we go exclamation point. Um, do you think this was a deliberate provocation by the Russians? And and if so, like what do you think happens next when it comes to sort of the NATO response? Well, I know they're claiming that it wasn't uh deliberate, but um they lie through their teeth all the time. And so I think this is a consequence of the fact that they don't see the US response um as any credible any longer with respect to protecting and supporting the people of Ukraine. Right? We've made it clear from the beginning, we're not going, we the United States, we're not going to put our own boots on the ground. I agree we should not. But we have had this commitment to provide them with military support and economic support. Um, as a country that's under attack, uh, whose freedom is under attack, whose democracy is under attack. And from the very beginning of this administration, from the Trump administration, he has thrown the Ukrainian people under the bus. He's coded his up to to Putin. And let's just be real. I mean, Putin has played him like a fiddle. uh Putin got the meeting summit meeting in Alaska and instead of calming things down and making progress or opening up a meeting uh between Putin and Zalinski um we've seen increased aggression, increased Russian attacks inside of Ukraine and now we see this um so this is an unfortunate result of the fact that Putin has no respect for the president of the United States despite the fact that he He he says otherwise. >> Um, >> also on Tuesday, the the Israeli government conducted air strikes. I've seen reports of, you know, 10 different air strikes on a gathering of Hamas leaders in Qatar that were meeting. They were there to discuss Trump's latest ceasefire proposal, hoping to, you know, begin a process to end the war in Gaza. Um, there's some debate over what the Trump administration knew or maybe when they were notified. I was wondering what what your reaction was to to seeing this. Well, my my reaction is that um if you're taking out the folks that are gathered to review the latest uh proposal to release the hostages and enter into a ceasefire, um clearly you're not interested in achieving a ceasefire or the release of the hostages and and the Netanyahu government has not really been interested in ending the war. Um, and I met recently with hostage families actually who who said the same thing that Netanyahu was prioritized his own political uh survival over the survival of their loved ones. Um this was as we've seen one case where I don't know what the backstory is but at least the Trump administration you know said publicly that you know it's a very bad idea Netanyahu to attack Hamas on the soil of Qatar because they are the mediators um in this in this negotiation as well as you know uh being um a country that hosts lots of American military uh folks. Yes. Up to 10,000. So, uh look, this was a this was an action that again demonstrates that u Netanyahu has no interest um in ending the war in Gaza and is only putting his own political survival first and not the not the people of Israel or the people of Gaza or anybody else. It's only Netanyahu. >> Yeah. Last question before we get to your trip. So, um, the administration, as you know, has moved a lot of military assets to the Caribbean. I've seen reports that there are now eight destroyers there. Uh, 10 F-35s were moved to the region. Thousands of Marines, thousands of sailors. There's reports that a submarine was moved uh to the Caribbean. Um, the Trump administration claims this is about drug interdiction, but that's a lot of firepower to take out a a speedboat, right? Um, and so I'm just wondering, do you worry that this preages something larger like a a direct conflict with Venezuela? >> Uh, well, with Secretary Mark Marco Rubio, um, it's it's very possible. This is part of a long-term plan to get us into a much bigger conflict uh with Venezuela, including armed conflict. Um whether that's the goal or not, um the fact that they simply shot this boat um out of the water, you know, thousands of miles from the United States, 11 people killed, this is an extrajudicial killing. I mean, this is an illegal action. U the Trump administration has not yet put forward their legal justification. But beyond that, if you're really interested in interdicting drugs, what you do is you stop the boat, you b