Charlie Kirk and the Long Shadow of Political Violence

0:06Antonia Hitchens:Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hi, guys. Hi, Evan. Hey there. Nice to see you. Hey there, so good to be with you both. This week, the nation is reeling from yet another act of political violence, and this one is seismic. By now, as most of you know, Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and close ally of Donald Trump, was shot dead while speaking at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. The attack was brutal, and it was tragic. This kind of political violence is, of course, shocking, but also sadly no longer surprising.

0:52Antonia Hitchens:In recent years, American politics has been beset by an accelerating drumbeat of horrifying violence. From the January 6th attack on the Capitol that injured some 150 policemen, to the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, to the shooting in June of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, one of whom was killed along with her husband, political shootings are becoming more common. And at each turn, there's a scramble to make sense of the violence and an attempt to try to predict what it means for the country's future. So today, we want to set this moment in context. How does this act of political violence fit into the longer history of law and order in America?

1:41Antonia Hitchens:Will it be invoked to justify further violence and repression? And what does it mean for our democracy? We're taping this on Friday morning at about 9 a.m. Just before our taping, Trump said a person was in custody in connection with the killing of Charlie Kirk. So the first question for the group, when you first heard the news about what happened to Charlie Kirk, what were your initial reactions?

2:07Susan B. Glasser:It felt immediately different on top of even the litany of horrors that you described a moment ago, Jane. This one feels different, like a threshold moment for this country, meaning at the risk of terrible cliche, a fork in the road moment about how we will respond to it, how our political culture, how our leadership responds. We have over the last few years, people who pay close attention to trends in political violence have often said, this is the direction we're traveling. But as you've often heard, at least it's not the 1960s when you had the assassinations of one leader after another, Medgar Evers, JFK, MLK, RFK, you can go down the list.

2:50Susan B. Glasser:Or the 1970s, which we often forget had patterns of political violence in which you had at 1.2500 bombings over the course of 18 months. That is not the conditions we're in, except that the political culture around it, the conditions that have been building over the last few years are exactly what experts will tell you is the tender for a potentially downward spiral. And so this moment, these next few days, weeks, months are crucial.

3:21Antonia Hitchens:Susan? Yeah, I mean, it's an inflammatory age in our politics and a divisive time, a polarized time. And I think you're right, Evan, that that's the big difference from the violence of the 60s or the 70s is that in some ways we're already broken. So if the goal is to divide us, well, we're so divided. And that for me is the striking thing is that, you know, this event is being processed and received in a completely different way in our increasingly completely bifurcated and separated worlds. But I want to say I had a sense of dread, of course, because this is a terrible thing and you don't know where it can lead.

3:59Antonia Hitchens:And it's anathema to even, by the way, some of the values that Charlie Kirkus held profess, the values of free discourse. And I just I feel like there's something so broken that I don't know if kids today get a sense at home or in their schools that like we have to be able to solve our differences peacefully when we have people fanning the flames. And frankly, I also had this sinking feeling in my stomach that, you know, once again, we're going to hear these sort of painful cliches from politicians that are so wildly inadequate to the moment. And sure enough, I feel like that's what's played out over the last couple of days is sort of the, you know, the gasps of the traditionalists in both parties, Democrats and Republicans, saying, let's all come together.

4:46Antonia Hitchens:Let's dial it down. And then what do you have? You have the president in the White House saying, oh, there's a fire. Let me, you know, pour some gasoline on it. And we can talk about that, but it just it felt like we're on the threshold of yet another moment that reveals not only the horror of this individual act, but a gap that's a gulf between our two countries.

5:12Susan B. Glasser:Yeah, we're going to scope out in a whole variety of ways. But, Jane, before we do, I'm curious. You covered Charlie Kirk and his organization quite extensively over the years. What were you thinking about?

5:22Antonia Hitchens:Well, I mean, for me, because I actually felt I knew him a bit and have talked to Charlie Kirk over the years, among other things, I felt personally stricken. I mean, honestly, I felt horrified. And seeing the video, which maybe I shouldn't have watched, but I did, it was just horrible gut punch to see someone you kind of know assassinated. And then politically, I immediately thought, this is going to be exploited. And I think to what you two were both saying, you know, I'm a little older and I lived through those 60s assassinations. The difference really is exactly, for me anyway, what you're saying too, we have a different leader.

6:07Antonia Hitchens:This is a total character test of our leaders. And in that period, there were some heroes who rose to the top and calmed people, most famously Robert F. Kennedy, who got up there when Martin Luther King was shot and gave a beautiful off-the-cuff speech about how we have to not go in the direction of hatred and revenge and how he personally understood. It was a very empathetic statement. And that statement, if you compare that to what we are hearing right now from the White House, I mean, this is an opportunity for a leader to do the right thing. Can I just, in fact, point out, because I think it's worth listening to this.

6:51Antonia Hitchens:And I think it got lost a little bit in the news cycle because Donald Trump weighed in with this, I think, very striking video, four minute video statement. But not until late in the evening on Wednesday after this had happened. And I don't think that his statement got the attention it deserved because Donald Trump released this video. He didn't speak to the nation on television. He spoke directly into a video and put it out on social media. And a few minutes into it, he made some remarkable comments. He said, for years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

7:30Antonia Hitchens:This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today. And it must stop right now. He said that, and then he offered a list of other victims of what he called, quote, radical left political violence, including himself. He promised swift action to take down the perpetrators of such violence as well as, quote, organizations that fund and promote it. As well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. He did not, as you might understand because it's Trump, mention any victims of right-wing violence, including those Minnesota lawmakers who were shot in their homes just a couple months ago.

8:21Antonia Hitchens:And I think this was amplified and expanded on by a number of Trump's allies who are calling, as Laura Loomer is, to shut down, defund, and prosecute every single leftist organization. We must shut these lunatic leftists down once and for all. The left is a national security threat. So there we have it.

9:14Susan B. Glasser:tremendously important work on this is that it matters enormously that the leaders come out immediately, emphatically and repeatedly denouncing and renouncing what has happened, violence in their name or in the name of their movements. And it's not, Susan, to your point, it's not enough to use the old cliches about thoughts and prayers. You have to use the same power of your rhetorical technology, the ability to talk to your base, which politicians know how to do. You have to do it in that way. But what we're seeing right now is that these politicians are using their powers not to do what some politicians in history have been celebrated for, which is reaching out to people to be persuaded, but are in fact using their rhetorical powers to glorify themselves by channeling the worst instincts of the base.

10:07Antonia Hitchens:I mean, it's an old playbook to waving the bloody shirt and radicalizing people with it and blaming the other side. And that, I mean, it's not, of course, a surprise that this is what we're hearing from Donald Trump since pretty much from the start, this is the position that he has taken. And as the name of Susan's and Peter Baker's book, The Divider, this is why you knew that it was going to be potentially a terrible moment, even beyond the horror of what happened to Charlie Kirk. We may be mourning more than just him, but what's happening in this country. So there's still the opportunity to do the right thing.

10:43Antonia Hitchens:But I think, though, well, a couple of points that are important. Donald Trump, it strikes me here, is doing actually a little bit more than waving the bloody shirt. And, you know, what we've seen in the transition from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 is the flood of words that one expects from Trump is now being met with a series of very, very disruptive actions. And so what set off my antenna was not just, you know, Trump sort of coming in hot because we would expect that, but this very specific threat against organizations that's then picked up upon, that's amplified by people who have a record at this point of actually generating action by the Trump administration.

11:26Antonia Hitchens:Now that Trump is surrounded by a very different cast of characters in key leadership positions. That's a good point. They seem to be signaling that what they'd like to do, we'll see if they do it or not, is to go from step one, terrible thing happens, our friend Charlie Kirk is killed, rather than just eulogizing him, let's use this as an opportunity to launch a very specific campaign against the organizations and groups that support and fund the American left. Remember, when Donald Trump talks about the radical left, he calls the entire Democratic Party the radical left. So essentially what he's saying is the entire Democratic Party is responsible in some way for the death of Charlie Kirk, and therefore we should go after them because they are a violent group in our society.

12:16Antonia Hitchens:So they have tools at the Justice Department, the IRS, the FBI, that could be used and mobilized to launch a campaign like this. So for me, it's become more than just the rhetorical response, which, you know, continues to generate this kind of friction and potential for further violence in our society. But also, are there specific government actions being threatened there? Well, can I just say those actions preexisted this moment. What they're doing is exploiting this moment to put into action some plans that I've been hearing about that preexisted this. There have been meetings taken place secretly about how to completely defund and attack the entire nonprofit structure on the Democratic side.

13:03Antonia Hitchens:It sounds like you're absolutely right. I think it's a very astute thing to note that this could be, you know, utilized as the excuse.

13:10Susan B. Glasser:This is what Steve Bannon refers to as a predicate. He talks about these kinds of moments that something happens and it lays in effect a kind of cultural and organizational foundation on which then further plans are possible before we get too far down the track. I want to say that it is worth pausing about Charlie Kirk because he is the person that is at the center of this moment. Jane, you've been paying attention to what a guy named Joe Walsh, former Republican congressman who was close to Charlie Kirk, has been saying. What attracted your attention?

13:46Antonia Hitchens:I mean, Joe Walsh was he was a mentor and practically a surrogate father to Charlie Kirk. So it was interesting to me because he is actually someone who knew him incredibly well. And while everybody from left to right was celebrating the idea that Charlie Kirk was, you know, the model of free speech and he was open to debate and going to campuses and saying, you know, listening to all sides. These really weren't conversations or debates. Charlie was a very divisive guy. He wanted to be provocative and get in people's faces. And look, again, a lot of people like him. He's got a right to do that.

14:23Antonia Hitchens:But yeah, that won't generate good feeling across the divide at all. I found him fascinating. I really enjoyed talking to Charlie Kirk. He was incredibly personable. He had a filial aspect to him that made him seem unthreatening and appealing to older men, especially, I think, you know, donors, the Trump family. He sort of attached himself to them. But the thing that I've seen that's missing in at least the obits that I have seen so far is what I got from him was that there was a turning point in his own life. And this was that he had wanted—his dream had been to go to West Point. And he felt he had and owned that slot.

15:06Antonia Hitchens:And what happened was evidently, as he said it in speeches, a woman got what he considered his slot. And he was so angry about this. He felt that his place in line had been jumped by somebody who he felt was unworthy. And he refused to go to college any other place after that. He later kind of backtracked from that a little bit. But I actually think that was the turning point in Charlie Kirk's life. And it started attacking colleges as left-wing organizations and, you know, Marxist citadels or whatever. And the kind of resentment that he expressed, I think, spoke to many, many people in this country who feel resentful that their futures have been – they feel unfairly blocked by others who they consider undeserving.

15:56Antonia Hitchens:So when he spoke about the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and all kinds of affirmative action, he often sort of found flames of somewhat racist rhetoric. It resonated with people and it was personal with him, I think. But yet at the same time, he was very agile politically. So he knew where to not go. So there's a difference between Charlie Kirk and the others of his generation like Milo Iannopoulos, for instance, who went over the edge. And ended up essentially falling away from promise. And he gets canceled. He's a pariah. Charlie Kirk knew how to just walk up to the edge of pariah but not become a pariah.

16:37Antonia Hitchens:And part of it was he truly was personally very charming. And he changed over time too. His later period, he became very religious. And so he became much more of a Christian nationalist in this later period. And I think we'll see that as part of his movement.

16:55Susan B. Glasser:What I think is so fascinating about that, Jane, is that what we're talking about is not just the actions of the leaders, the political people at the very top, the strategists and the elected officials. We're actually talking about the seedbed, too, the culture, the people. They are – this whole phenomenon is both a reflection of and outgrowth of and ultimately bounded by the culture around it. And we'll be talking a bit more about that.

17:22Antonia Hitchens:Yeah, they're leaders, but they're also followers. And I think, Evan, that's a point you're making, you know, that they go where the audience is. We've seen that with Donald Trump himself. And that's the final point about Charlie. I think you captured him really well, Jane. The other aspect of his own transformation that's made this this signal event, you know, the reason that we got that feeling in the pit of our stomachs is because to convey to people outside of Washington how deeply integrated and enmashed Charlie Kirk was in this second Trump administration. administration, his close personal friends with Donald Trump Jr., the vice president of the United States, decided not to go to the 24th anniversary of 9-11 in New York City at Ground Zero and chose instead, after this horrific assassination, to fly to Utah to be with Kirk's family and then to bring the body back to his home in Arizona on Air Force Two.

18:21Antonia Hitchens:And some of the commentary was very striking to me about how much Kirk was not only a personal confidant, advisor, and just buddy of the most senior people running the country right now, but that he was helping to make key staffing decisions in the Trump administration, that he was involved very closely in political and policy debates. And this kind of moment where he's being returned home on Air Force Two, I think, is part of the image of this moment for me, that this was as if a senior official of the Trump government had been killed in this way. We are going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk more about the history of political violence in our country and what are the dynamics that lead to moments like this.

19:14Antonia Hitchens:The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.

19:26Susan B. Glasser:Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, the Global Fashion News and Features Director and co-host of Vogue's podcast, The Run-Through.

19:33Antonia Hitchens:Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass to the world of Vogue with the latest fashion news and the most exciting voices in the industry. On Tuesdays, join me to hear interviews with influential leaders in the industry like Calvin Klein, Daniel Roseberry, and Jonathan Anderson. On Thursdays, join Head of Editorial Content at Vogue, Chloe Mao, and Head of Editorial Content at British Vogue, Choma Nadi, as they explore style and culture through the lens of fashion with guests like Martha Stewart, Kamala Harris, and Tracee Ellis Ross. The Run Through with Vogue, new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

20:22Antonia Hitchens:Evan, you have done some reporting on the history of American political violence. I'm curious what we can learn from the past about this moment. What are the dynamics that lead to moments like this? And have we seen it before?

20:39Susan B. Glasser:Yeah, it's fascinating when you look at the work of Richard Hofstadter, who we think of mostly as the historian who gave us the idea of the paranoid style in American politics, meaning the persistent fringe of kind of conspiratorial thinking. Towards the end of his life in the 1970s, in fact, right around that time that we were talking about a moment ago when there was this rise in assassinations and bombings and so on, he co-authored a book, a big study of political violence in the history of the country. And one of the things that comes away very clearly, whether you look at bombings and riots and assassinations, is that what comes first is what he called verbal and ideological violence.

21:19Susan B. Glasser:That's the technical description of what we've been talking about over the course of this conversation. That is the necessary precondition. As I thought about it over the last couple of years working on this, that there's been this ongoing contest over the life of the country between what has been America's superpower, which is a kind of rhetorical eloquence, a sort of moments in the 19th century, for instance, When you had people through the sheer power of their words, Abraham Lincoln being the great example, who were able to crystallize and motivate and define what this country was at the same time that it was in contest, this seesawing battle with the forces of violence, the instinct to force your opponent to agree with you.

22:05Susan B. Glasser:Ultimately, of course, Lincoln's life is defined by that.

22:08Antonia Hitchens:I mean, you talked in your piece about the great debates, the Lincoln-Douglas debates and how they were the absolute height of sort of rhetorical debate in this country. And we think of that as a safety valve that will keep this on a reasoned plane. But it did not stop the Civil War.

22:25Susan B. Glasser:No, I remember I had a fascinating conversation with somebody who has looked at case after case of this historically. I said, how is it that you have these moments when at the very moment that you have very powerful speakers in politics, you also have very powerful expressions of violence? How do these coexist? And in the end, they come from the same taproot, meaning that they are two different ways of distinguishing yourself in politics, two different ways of demonstrating your commitment to the public, that you are the most passionate, the most pure. And they either ebb or flow depending on what the culture wants and what the culture accepts.

23:04Susan B. Glasser:Absolutely. Let me just add one other fascinating thing. I just this part really stays with me. When you sort of look at this phenomenon of how ideas take flight, there's a very memorable observation by a guy named Edward Bernays. He was one of the founders of public relations, a great propagandist in his way. And he said that the key thing he's a guy who had sold, you know, ivory soap, but he also helped sell America's foreign policy over the years. He said the key moment, the thing you're always looking for as a political leader is the moment when the public, the customer essentially begins to do the work for you.

23:42Susan B. Glasser:When you've gotten them ratcheted up to a point of such ideological fervor that it is, as he said, it is almost like as if actuated by the pressure of a button, people began to work for you. And that's frankly the scary moment when it comes to political violence. That's when people begin to take it on in their own hands.