The conservative movement, one year after the killing of Charlie Kirk

0:02WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Our political situation in the United States is simply worse because of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The right is less coherent. I think the left has become more radical. I think our politics has become much coarser. One year after his killing, conservatives mourn Charlie Kirk.

0:32It is Thursday, September 10th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBR Boston. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, Russian drones are buzzing into Eastern European airspace, and NATO is getting anxious. Is the risk growing for spillover from the war in Ukraine? Also, is Trump really going to give you five grand? The biggest problem with this is that it just smells of desperation because, first of all, it's completely, nobody believes that this is actually going to happen. I mean, this is sort of like Mexico is going to pay for the wall. But first, it's been one year since the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

1:18A memorial is scheduled tonight at Utah Valley University, where he was speaking when he was shot. Michael Knowles will be there. He's a conservative podcaster and a friend of Kirk's. We wanted to ask him about Kirk's legacy and the future of his conservative youth movement. Here's Michael Knowles' conversation with Robin Young. Tonight, I hope to do my level best impression of carrying on a message that Charlie would have agreed with and would have promoted when it comes to religion, when it comes to the personal way that we grieve, and also what that means for political action. But I think we have to grapple with the reality that our political situation in the United States is simply worse because of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

2:02The right is less coherent. I think the left has become more radical. I think our politics has become much coarser. And I think it's because Charlie engaged in politics in a very gracious way. He genuinely wanted to persuade people on the other side. And his assassination in that arena of debate means that that open marketplace of ideas is going to become more dangerous and it's going to become more closed. Well, and respectfully, especially on this day, I put forth that you know many people would disagree. Many people felt that it was Charlie Kirk's language that endangered their lives. Now, I'm going to rush to say an assassination is horrific.

2:43This one particularly so witnessed by so many young people. No one should be killed for their opinion. It's just horrific in every way. It still turns my stomach. I can't look at the video. But many feel that Charlie Kirk had views that were hateful, and here's a few. He said, happening all the time in urban America, prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people. That's a fact. He said that on the Charlie Kirk show. Also on his show, I'm dealing with somebody in customer service who's a moronic black woman. I wonder, is she there because of her excellence or is she there because of affirmative action of people who practice Islam?

3:21Islam is a sword the left is using to slit the throat of America. Muslims feel threatened by that. Is there any sense of softening that language, apologizing for it? I don't think so. Of all the examples you cite, they're all provocative. Charlie was a great broadcaster. But I don't think that even the left would disagree with the theses. The first one is that there's violence in the black community. Nobody denies that. The second one is that there is... I have to correct you. I'm sorry. That's not what he said. He said prowling blacks are going around for fun to go target white people. Your second point on DEI, does the left really deny that there is a diversity, equity and inclusion push?

4:03That's their very policy. But does it result in a moronic black woman not being qualified for a job? I don't know in the particular case, but it certainly could. Do you don't see that this is hateful language? I don't really see that it's hateful language. It's certainly provocative, but the theses that he's advancing are all true. And then you suggested on the anniversary of his assassination by a leftist, you suggested that other people felt that he was endangering them. I don't I fail to see how that's even remotely possible. Well, let's take an example. Two D.C. area college instructors who are on a list that Turning Point put out, which allowed people to flag what they thought were radical left wing professors.

4:41And two of them told NBC4 in D.C. that they received death threats. We heard that that list is ending. And that's my overarching question. Will there be changes because of a recognition that there are people who feel their lives are threatened by these things? You're suggesting that some radical professors receive death threats on the Internet. I don't know if they were radical. I don't know what that means. The two people you're referencing receive death threats on the Internet, as does basically every public person in public life on the Internet. Meanwhile, we know for a fact, even from the left-wing Atlantic magazine, that political violence is chiefly a problem from the left against the right.

5:18I'm not going to debate you on that. What I will say is I think you're right. Endangering language, no matter where it comes from, is wrong. But it's coming from the left, I guess, is what I'm saying. Then let the left take care of that. I'm asking you, is somebody not going to pick up what Charlie Kirk's role was, what he loved to do, which was go say those provocative things? Is someone going to do that? Yes, of course. All of Charlie's friends are doing that. But I think that you're conflating Charlie's provocative and accurate descriptions of American politics with calls for political violence.

5:51But those are not the same thing. There has been a surge in interest in the group on college campuses. Morning edition here on NPR put together a piece. Our reporter was at Grand Canyon University. She spoke to people like Hazel Roberts, who said since Charlie's passing, there's been a lot of hate from the right. And it really showed that Charlie was the glue that held us together. Others said they disagree with things like the war in Iran, U.S. relationships with Israel. And Andrew Colvett, speaking for Turning Point USA, this is from Politico, said in a statement that the group is facing a confluence of challenges.

6:28Is one of them not as favorable a view of where the Trump administration is going? I'm not sure if it's quite that, but it is, I would say, identical with the problem that President Trump and the GOP is facing, which is that there are fissures over these issues. You mentioned some of them, the war in Iran, some of the affordability issues that the Democrats have made much hay on. However, Turning Point USA is as strong as it has ever been, certainly relative to the strength of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. You know, Charlie was a crucial figure in the rise and success of the Trump movement.

7:07Susie Wiles, the chief of staff of the White House, said that he made the winning difference in 2024. So as the political wins cause problems for MAGA, those are going to be felt by TPUSA because TPUSA is the young voter student engagement wing of the Republican Party for all intents and purposes. Michael Knowles, I want to go back to where we started, a very difficult day and another one tomorrow for all of America. And so I just thank Thank you for being here, and I'm sorry for your loss. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you for having me and for calling a little bit of attention to Charlie and this very significant day.

7:51Coming up next. New Russian drones are outpacing and overwhelming air defense systems in Ukraine. Drones have killed people at border crossings and delayed the return of Ukraine's president from a visit to neighboring Moldova. What does Russia hope to achieve with its incursions into European airspace? Indira Lakshmanan has that after the break.

8:17In a dangerous escalation of the Ukraine war, European officials say Russian drones are infiltrating NATO airspace. Just this week, concerns over a drone grounded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's plane as he was about to fly from Moldova to Norway. Suspected Russian drones have also recently flown over the Baltic states, all NATO members, and as far away as Ireland. For more, we're joined now by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myrie. Hi, Greg. Hi, Indira. So first, the prime minister of Norway said a plane carrying Zelensky was nearly hit by a drone as it was about to take off from Moldova.

8:55What do we know about the incident? Yeah, that account has been revised a little bit. It now appears that Zelensky's plane, Ukrainian plane, was on the tarmac in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, and then a drone unexpectedly crossed into Moldova's airspace. And Moldova is a very tiny country, so this was immediately seen as a concern, a threat. So Zelensky's plane was delayed on the ground for about an hour, and then the drone crashed about 100 miles away, and Zelensky was allowed to take off and fly to Norway. So the Norwegian prime minister may have gotten a little ahead of himself there. But, you know, just to note that there are no commercial or civilian flights from Ukraine for the past four years.

9:43So Zelensky has to do this every time he travels is take a train to a neighboring country like Poland or Moldova and then fly from there. Now, I'm curious. German officials say that Russia was behind a drone attack at a German airport last month. There was one drone laden with explosives that was found on the ground near a Ukrainian cargo plane. Another drone collided with a cargo plane in the air. When did these drone incursions into NATO territory start ramping up? And why would the Kremlin risk provoking NATO like this? Yeah, Indira, I mean, you could really go back probably a couple years, but they picked up pretty dramatically this year.

10:23We've seen these airspace violations, particularly in Poland and Romania with drones coming in. It's not clear if this is intentional or if they're just going off course, if they're intended for Ukraine and going off course. We've seen cyber attacks throughout the European Union, which have been blamed on Russia. We've seen GPS jamming to disrupt aviation services in a number of countries, sabotage on rail lines in Poland and Sweden. And collectively, these are being blamed on Russia. Now, Russia is denying it, but this is something that's been in the Russian playbook for a long time of trying to provoke countries often to see what kind of response you'll get and see if they give a strong united response or if they give a weak and sort of an absence of a response.

11:19Right. So, Greg, how are European countries defending against these unpredictable attacks? And has there been any indication that NATO would retaliate? You know, we've seen different responses from different countries. The three Baltic states and Poland have really been sounding the alarm for the past couple years. Some of the Scandinavian countries as well. And now, as you noted, we're seeing Germany publicly accusing Russia of acts with this drone at a German airport. So more countries are joining in. You know, and we should note that, you know, for all these provocations, it's hard to see how Russia could mount another major military operation in Europe.

12:05It's really fully extended in Ukraine. It suffers massive casualties daily and burning through vast amounts of weapons and equipment. So Russia certainly has the ability to carry out these smaller provocations or actions and perhaps even something larger. But just as a sort of common sense observation, hard to see how we can conduct a major open ended operation given the demands of the war in Ukraine. This week, President Trump sent his son in law and his special envoy to Russia and Ukraine for negotiations. Are the two sides any closer to ending the war? The short answer is no. Putin is showing no signs that he'd make any compromises, despite the fact he's not getting far on the battlefield.

12:47I think it was interesting that Kushner and Whitcoff went there. Putin is much more comfortable talking to them. The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, went recently apparently to deliver a tougher message and didn't get anywhere. That's NPR's Greg Myrie. Thank you so much. Sure thing, Indira.

13:20Some more stories we're following today. You may have seen the news that Trump said he'll give out 5 ,000 bucks to Americans if Republicans retain control of Congress in the midterm elections. If so, you might be wondering, really? Regardless of whether he would actually do that, we wanted to know what it says that he's even saying it. That's one of the questions Indira asked Republican Mark McKinnon, who was an advisor to President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, as well as a founder of the centrist political group No Labels. The biggest problem with this is that it just smells of desperation because, first of all, it's completely – nobody believes that this is actually going to happen.

14:03I mean, this is sort of like Mexico is going to pay for the wall. First of all, there's – no matter what happens, it's almost certain that there will be a Democratic Congress. They're not going to vote for it. that Republicans may hold the Senate. But the big question is, you know, first of all, I thought it was a pretty good idea to have a convention when they announced it a while back, a good time to get the faithful together, get on the same page, get on the same message. But it's problematic for a lot of reasons. One, whenever I did convention planning and I did a bunch of it, we would always pick a place that we needed to shore up our votes.

14:38If Republicans need to shore up their votes in Texas, that's a really bad sign because Texas should be off the map. That should be solid Republican country. And they've got a very tough Senate race. And so it's sending a signal of weakness that the Republicans and Trump have gone to Texas. So that's the first problem. The second problem is that Trump is underwater in terms of how people are feeling about him and the economy and inflation and the war. And so the last thing Republicans want to do right now is be reminded of Trump's record and what he ran on because it's just not a good record right now.

15:13They want to distance themselves from Trump. And Trump wants to make it all about Trump. Right. And that's what the convention's all about. And as you said, he's putting himself squarely on the ballot when his approval ratings are in the low 30s. It's a strange approach to take Trump-centric strategy when Republicans are in tight races. They're also having a hard time coming up with a convincing message on the economy. Doesn't that give Democrats the advantage? It's a huge advantage. Andrew, I mean, James Carville said years ago, and it still holds true, it's the economy stupid. It's always about the economy at the end of the day and how people are feeling about their pocketbooks, because that's the most important thing in their lives.

15:51And the reality is right now, people don't feel good about the economy. And here's the problem. I did a lot of communication strategy in my day. And you could spin a lot of things and kind of distort things, but you can't distort how people are feeling about their own economic outlook. Right. And so Trump is trying to say, everything's fine. You know, the economy's doing great. The way to handle this is the way Bill Clinton did it, which is to say, I feel your pain and I'm going to do something about it. Not what Trump is saying, which is you don't have any pain. Your pain's not real. Right. Mark, I want to ask you about a red meat moment last night.

16:31Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate, gave a speech that seemed to be channeling Kimberly Guilfoyle's the best is yet to come speech from the 2020 RNC. Let's listen. This is a battle for the heart of our nation. I said the heart of our nation. The Democrats, extreme candidates, won't rip that heart out of our chest. All right. This may appeal to the MAGA faithful, but what about independent voters that the GOP needs to win. Well, I mean, I think if you were out of context and you just saw a clip of that, it sounded like, you know, it looked like his soul was leaving his body.

17:10But, you know, I'll give him credit. At least he woke up the convention, which until that point had been pretty sleepy. There's more to that at hereandnow.org. Also, kratom is a substance widely available in many states, banned in some others. There's a public health debate about its safety, and one of Kratom's big defenders has not disclosed long-standing ties to industry lobbyists. It's kind of violating the spirit of transparency and ethics. It's not giving people the full picture of what's happening. You can listen to that whole conversation, as well as more from the Republican National Convention, and a lot more right now at hereandnow.org.

17:53But that's it for today's episode of the podcast. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jill Ryan, James Moush-Chamarino, and Lynn Menagon. Our editors were Todd Munt, Mikaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Matt Reed and Nick Dussault. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We will be back with you tomorrow.