111. Charlie Kirk’s Murder and the Politics of Hate

0:00This episode is brought to you by Revolutbusiness, the all-in-one account designed for efficiency and built for business. Spend less time on financial administration and more on what really matters. Or in my case, Caddy, three calls at once and still ordering lunch. Well, whether you're scaling in Sheffield or consulting in Chicago, Revolut Business gives you everything you need to manage your business's finances in one account. Pay and get paid globally in over 30 currencies at great rates. There's spend management too, cards with custom limits, automated expenses, full control without any of the paperwork.

0:38Which means no more receipts crammed in jacket pockets. To save your company time and money, open a Revolut business account today via Revolut.com slash RB slash The Rest is Politics US, or by using the link in this episode's description and add money to your account by 31st of December 2025 to get a£200 welcome bonus or equivalent in your local currency. Feature availability varies by plan. This offer is available for new business customers in the UK, US, Australia and Ireland. Fees and terms and conditions apply.

1:21Welcome to The Rest is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Welcome back, Caddy Kay. Thank you. It was a very, very nice week. I had off in the middle of the countryside with my two boys and my husband and no cell phone. I left my cell phone at home in Washington, D.C. for the week, which actually, Anthony, was super easy. I did not miss it at all. I slightly missed being able to play music easily in the car because I'm too technically incompetent to figure out how to do that otherwise. But otherwise, it was great. I read without being distracted. You know how the thing you read a book and every two pages you reach for your cell phone?

1:59That didn't happen. I can actually still read. I was pleased to hear that. And actually, with all of the news last week, it was actually quite a nice week to put my head in the sand. But I'm back and clearly the news is not good. So let's bring everybody very quickly up to speed. We're going to speak about Charlie Kirk and the aftermath. And I'm particularly interested in what it means for America and how the country gets out of this spiral of political violence. So Charlie Kirk, online podcaster, influencer, very associated with Donald Trump, helped Donald Trump get elected in 2024, was shot at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

2:33Obviously, Charlie leaves behind a widow, Erica, and two young children. He was an incredibly influential and controversial figure here in the United States and had built up an enormously effective political machine on the right of American politics and did these outdoor debates at American colleges where he would invite people from all different political persuasions to debate him on stage. And it was at one of those debates that he was shot. Before we get into what this means for America and how it happened and how the country might be able to get out of this, Anthony, you knew Charlie Kirk.

3:13I knew of him, obviously, but I had never met him. Tell us a little bit about what you knew about him. I think it's important for people to understand at the age of 18, he didn't get into West Point and he decided to drop out of college. And then he started this Turning Point USA was backed by Foster Fries and a few, you know, I would say conservatives. I wouldn't say ultra right or anything like that. And so the whole point of Turning Point USA was to bring the conservative voice and the conservative philosophy to young people. And the thought being that a lot of people in this country assume that the young are to the left.

3:49And Charlie's point was, well, there's young on the right as well as the left. And he amassed over the 12, 13 years, they started in 2012, he amassed quite a power base. And so one of my clients introduced me to Charlie Kirk by text back in 2016. And then coincidentally, I was flying to Pittsburgh to see David Urban. I think you know who David is. He's often on CNN. David was running the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania. And so I met Charlie Kirk and Don Jr. out in Pennsylvania. and we did a several day tour through what I would call blue areas. These would be democratic areas, union areas. And the president in 2016 won those areas.

4:40And so Charlie Kirk was on the ground. He's a very articulate, very bright guy on the ground campaigning. And so I built a relationship with him. He was on my podcast. My wife and I had a podcast a few years back. She gave it up after we had our son James, but we had a podcast called Mooch and the Misses. Charlie was on that podcast. I listened to that and she was definitely the star, if I may say. Well, there was no question that she was a star because she was the smartest person on the podcast explaining to Charlie how dangerous the gun situation. As Charlie pushed back, it was a little eerie.

5:13I listened to the podcast this weekend. My wife Deirdre was telling Charlie that the gun situation is out of control. We're getting seven deaths per 100 ,000. In the UK, it's 0.9 deaths due to gun violence per 100 ,000. But anyway, I'm bringing all this up because I knew Charlie had a relationship with Charlie. And again, I condemn political violence and I condemn everything that's happened here in a bipartisan way, the same way I condemn what happened in Butler. And what happened in Minnesota. And what happened in Minnesota, exactly. So Charlie moved harder to the right. I think it's important for people to understand.

5:48He was organizing busing for the insurrection. He moved very hard to support the president in 2024. He's also, I think, the principal reason why J.D. Vance is at the top. I think it would be Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Charlie Kirk are probably the three reasons why J.D. Vance and, of course, Don Jr. got on the presidential ticket as vice president. Last point, but the most important point, is that Charlie's power in the Republican Party was rising exponentially. We're talking about billions of views on his stuff. We're talking about a three-hour radio show, podcast show, the Charlie Kirk show, listened to by millions of young people.

6:33A lot of people don't know who he is outside of the United States. Some people that are not totally tuned into social media may not know who he is. But I tell you, my kids knew who he was. And I think it was a very sad day for America that he was killed. What I really dislike, Caddy, and I condemn is this sort of joyous thing that goes on in social media now after assassinations. The healthcare executive was shot on 6th Avenue, and there were people joyously cheering his assassination. People are joyously cheering Charlie's assassination. I condemn that, but I think there's something very sinister going on in the country right now that you and I have talked about privately, which are these algorithms and social media where it's not even political anymore.

7:21It's almost like we've now decided that we're going to go after each other, not just with rhetoric, but we're going to cross over into violence. It makes me very sad to be totally candid. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think the way to look at what has happened almost is not through the prism of left-right. There are people on both sides who have tried to make this political and use Charlie Kirk's death for political gain. We've heard the president talk about the radical far left and how they are, you know, hateful people and use terrible means. I don't think that is helpful in this moment. You've had on the left on the Internet people celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

8:04I mean, I don't know how people celebrate an assassination of anybody in the political space. I spoke to Senator Raphael Warnock this morning, the Georgia senator and pastor. You know, he made the very simple point that it is totally anti-democratic. He said there is nothing more anti-democratic than political violence and that democracy, he said to me, was about creating space for opposite points of view and contravening visions. I think that's exactly the way to think about democracy and the idea that anybody could be celebrating this is a horrible indication of how we have lost our humanity in moments like this.

8:44Whether you agreed with Charlie Kirk or not, and he had certainly, I think you're right, he had taken a turn. Since you interviewed him with Deirdre, more to the far right, some of the things he said, I think a lot of Americans wouldn't agree with. He had said that he felt that the passing the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s had been a mistake. He said that if he gets on a plane and sees a black pilot, he thinks to himself, oh, my God, boy, I hope he's qualified. I mean, he had said things that I think are outside the mainstream of much of American political thinking. He felt believed in the great replacement theory that whites and Americans were being replaced.

9:25in this moment, his beliefs are not the issue. The issue is, how did we get to a position where somebody who is outside talking on a college campus, talking, not using political violence, can be shot? And you have people in the American public who think that's okay, or justified for any reason. I think that's the really worrying thing. And I think you've sent me this morning, Anthony, a couple of pieces of research about the internet and Governor Spencer of Utah referred to the algorithms, the evil algorithms, he called them. He called social media a cancer, using incredibly strong language by the standards of American politicians, and talked about these areas of the deep dark web that even he didn't know about, where the assassin was apparently radicalized.

10:23And I think that is where America now needs to focus on how, what can be done to help, and it is usually young men, young men not be caught in this nihilism of the kind of black pill acceleration movement, where the idea is not to create something. It's just to burn everything down. I don't know how we do that. I don't know how we rescue ourselves from this moment. Katty, I think this goes back to 9-11. And of course, we've commemorated the 24th anniversary of that sinister attack. But I want to go back to Osama bin Laden's writings prior to that attack. And I want to explain to people how this threads.

11:09So bin Laden said that he would bring down the empire of America. Well, how would you do that? He would attack us on the homeland and that we would wildly overreact. We'd send hundreds of thousands of troops into the Middle East. They would bomb our huts. They would knock us to the ground. We don't care about this life as much as they do. So it's no problem for us, but they would spill their blood. They would spill their treasure. They would blow a hole in their deficit spending. And then they would start attacking each other and start taking away these quote unquote civil liberties that they like, ergo the Patriot Act.

11:45And then the social media evolution started, right? So we got the global financial crisis, wild deficit spending, leads to the Tea Party, leads to Occupy Wall Street, morphs into this Frankenstein monster known as MAGA, and it intersects with these algorithms, Caddy. And so you have a combination of things that are going on right now that bin laden actually predicted about the united states he said that weak leadership would be in place and it would allow for this tribalism this lack of unity and again both sides are guilty of this it's not one-sided but both sides are guilty of this when i hear the president talk about this it's not a unifying or healing message uh when i hear some of the uh the hard left talking about this.

12:36There's celebration. So to me, Cady, I don't know how we fix this, but this is something that's been going on now for a quarter of a century in the United States, and it's getting worse. Yeah, I remember when you were helping Mitt Romney back in 2012, right? Yes. On his political campaign. And I remember Pew Research, for those of you who aren't in the States listening to this, this is a really, one of the very few non-partisan, I think you would agree, right? nonpartisan respected research groups left in the country. And Pew put out a kind of demographic survey back in 2012, around the time of that campaign, that showed that 30 % of Republicans believed that Democrats were not just some people they disagreed with on policy, but that Democrats were a threat to national security.

13:26And before Democrats get to kind of, you know, up on their high horse about this, the same Pew research also found that about 30 % of Democrats believed the same thing about Republicans, that Republicans were a threat to national security. So you'd got to a stage in 2012, where it wasn't just, I disagree with your views on taxation, or I disagree with your views on abortion. I actually think you are a threat to the United States. There's a very good woman called Rachel Kleinfeld, who I would encourage people to follow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who researches political extremism.

14:00And she points to that as the reason for the problem that we're in right now, that the loudest voices in our political world at the moment, whether they are in politics elected, or whether they are online and influencers and podcasters and people in the media, are the most likely to have false views about what the other side believes. And it's actually most prevalent amongst the progressive left. The progressive left is the group that is most likely to misrepresent what Republicans believe. Conservatives on the right are also likely to misrepresent what Democrats believe. And the trouble is those are the people whose voices are being heard.

14:45Those are the people who are driving the debate, who are driving policy in the country. And until we can get back to a place where you have a clearer understanding of what people actually believe on the other side, I think it's very difficult for America to get out of this spiral. And of course, this is why I think what Spencer Cox spoke about, the governor of Utah, is so important, because the algorithms of social media, the financial incentive for those companies is to drive people more and more into a position of hating the other side. I mean, America is making it so easy for China and Russia at the moment, because America's greatest weakness is the degree to which Americans hate each other.

15:25And China and Russia are feeding on this. It's so easy for them to cause divisions because we're already doing it and the algorithms are doing it even further. We're going to take a quick break and come back because I do want to talk about Spencer Cox and why he has been this kind of unique, sadly kind of unusual voice of lightness in this dark moment. We'll be right back.

15:50This is a paid ad for BetterHelp. In moments of stress, we tend to turn to whoever's in reach, that flatmate in the kitchen, the barista on a slow morning, the stranger who simply asks you how you're doing. It can help, but being heard isn't always enough. And the more confidently people speak, the more we mistake it for wisdom. But if you're dealing with anxiety or loss or something that's been weighing on you, what you need isn't noise, it's actual experience. Somebody who really knows their craft. BetterHelp has spent over a decade helping people find that match. A short questionnaire sets your preferences, and they'll connect you with a therapist who fits.

16:26It's completely online. It's fully flexible. And if your first counselor doesn't really feel right for you, you can switch at any time. There's no pressure, no extra cost. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp gives you access to credentialed mental health professionals with a wide range of expertise. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. That's BetterHelp.com slash T-R-I-P-U-S.

16:59What do you think about that, Anthony, about that idea that this is really about people misrepresenting and misunderstanding and holding kind of inaccurate views of the other side? and the degree to which social media is pushing Americans in a way that we are surrendering agency and autonomy to algorithms that make us hate each other even more. I mean, again, it's all tied into each other because I've got a lot of money. I'm an executive at the social media place. Let me light up the Congress to protect myself. And so they've got all these exclusions for these social media people where they can't be accused of libel or anything that's said on their platforms can't be held against them.

17:43And so look at the TikTok situation. The government said we got to ban and shut down TikTok. Donald Trump comes into power, signs an executive order to keep TikTok together. I mean, the Congress and the Supreme Court said that TikTok has to be, the plug has to be pulled on TikTok. Trump said no. Now he's talking about potentially having a deal with Xi related to TikTok, which again, I don't believe that the Chinese will ever give up that algorithm. But to me, I'm just wondering if we have to have a harsher moment in our society, meaning American leaders during the war said, okay, this is what's going to go down.

18:24And this is how we're going to treat the free press. And this is how we're going to hold the constitution. I'm just wondering if we're on the verge of something that's creeping into some type of a war, a result of which is their action necessary. Now, you can't yell fire in a movie theater in the United States. You can't spew certain hate invectives in the public square in the United States. So you do have free speech, but there's a limitation. I'm just wondering if the algorithms now have crossed the line, Caddy, into that, hey, man, this is creating a lot of hate. It's creating a lot of unnecessary garbage, and it's filling the brains of our young people with a lot of toxicity, like the governor of Utah is suggesting.

19:10I'm just wondering, will we have the political will in this country to do something about it? And so the short answer to that is no, because of the money, Caddy. Okay. And for our viewers and listeners outside of the United States, money is everything in this political culture in America. So if I've got the money, I make the rules. And that's been true for a very long period of time, but it's been exaggerated and gone exponential since Citizens United in January of 2010. Okay. So that's super depressing. There we go. But I'm not trying to be depressing. I mean, there's a way to fix it. There is a way to fix it.

19:50There is a way to fix it. There is a way to fix it. It's just they won't do it. They won't do it. I'm going to go up to the Hill tomorrow and talk to a couple of senators and ask them if there is any, you know, any desire to fix this. I had an interesting. So I think one of the you and I would both agree that one of the interesting people that has come out of this is somebody that most Americans had probably never heard of outside his own state. And that is the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. And he has really stood out for trying to do two things. He has looked at the facts of the case and been very clear eyed about them.

20:25And he has been tried to turn down the temperature by not using this to make political hay for himself or for his Republican Party. Not to interrupt you, but Charlie Kirk called for his ouster from the Republican Party about a year ago. And he is still treated this situation with this is a tragedy. It's a tragic death. In other words, he was too moderate for Charlie Kirk. That's the irony. A Republican commentator pointed out to me that Utah has a very different incentive structure for its politicians from other states. And you know this because you work for Mitt Romney, that it is a state where the voters reward politicians who are conciliatory and who do what the whole American system of compromise was designed for, who actually reach out to the other side and who are respectful and who don't turn up the rhetoric and who don't spew hate.

21:21That is exactly not what Utah Republicans want. They are conservative, definitely on the conservative wing of the Republican Party, but they are not on the hateful wing of the Republican Party. And just listening to Spencer Cox over the weekend, he did a whole tour on the Sunday shows, he was so clear eyed and honest about the diagnosis of the problem. But also he was bold, I thought, in his attacks on the social media companies, talking about these companies that are the richest companies in history that have created what he called these evil algorithms saying that social media is a cancer and why are we putting, you know, iPads in the hands of two year olds.

21:59And he was very, he didn't pull any punches, I thought, in putting blame where blame needed to be put, but not using it for kind of cheap political gain by attacking the left or the Democratic Party or whatever it is that he could have attacked. I think he has just been a remarkable voice. I kind of sat there and thought, my God, I wish that Spencer Cox could run for president of this country because that is the kind of unifying voice that we need. But it also made me think, so there's a political incentive for votes to be extreme for people who are running for Congress. But in the media world, particularly in the extreme kind of podcast world and influencer world, there is a money incentive to be extreme as well.

22:46So you've got two powerful areas of society at the moment, the media and politics, where the incentive for different reasons is to be extreme and whip up hatred of the other side. I don't know how we get more Spencer Cox's in America. I mean, maybe it has to get worse before it gets better. Maybe the country has to get to a darker place before Americans decide, okay, we actually do need a unifying voice like that that pulls us out of this. Do you see a root out? I don't want to follow up with a question, but think about this. What are your thoughts about J.D. Vance doing the Charlie Kirk show this week?

23:22You mean doing it as host? Yeah, he's hosting the Charlie Kirk show. He's going to be in the old executive office building, hosting the Charlie Kirk show. Of course, they sell advertising on the Charlie Kirk show and they're fundraising for Turning Point USA. Well, look, if he does that and he gives the same kind of message as Spencer Cox, I think actually that could be a powerful thing. You think he's going to do that? That may not be what he's going to say. I mean, to say, okay, I'm going to pick up the baton and take on, you know, and use this as a way to attack in the way that the president has people on the far left is not a helpful thing at the moment.

24:03In this moment, Pete Buttigieg said this over the weekend on one of the Sunday shows. In this moment, you can divide people into two categories. Are they hurting the situation or are they helping the situation? Anything that inflames divisions. And it's, again, I hate to say, put this in between left and right, because I don't think this is a left-right issue. I think this is a dangerous internet community issue. But anyway, anyone who tries to inflame tensions between any groups of Americans at the moment is not being helpful to what is needed. I think you have to look at the moment for the voices that are being helpful.

24:43and then you have to look at how do we get to a stage in America where voters decide to elect those voices. I'm with you, Kay. I just think that this is going to get worse before it gets better. I'm not a pessimist in life. No, you're not. I mean, it's interesting. You are not a pessimist by nature. You believe in the country. I believe in America. I believe in the adaptability of the country. I believe in shared frustration up against everything that we're discussing. There's shared frustration, and there might be an opening. I've heard, and I can't confirm this, but I've heard, but this is a podcast.

25:19I'm allowed to share my views. I've heard that J.D. Vance met with Elon Musk. They met privately. It was outside of the news realm, outside of the news cameras. And he basically was told, Elon was told, hey, cool out on the America party. Give me a chance here to be your guy in the Republican Party, of which, of course, Musk said no problem. And so there's been a moratorium on the party. But what Musk did point out, which I think is important, 80 % of the Americans are dissatisfied with the two parties. 80 % of them. Go do the polling. Go ask Pew Research. So I do believe there will be a break in the action.

26:01I do believe that things don't go linearly in the American society. We have these abrupt changes. People expected, you know, you and I are doing this miniseries, which I'm enjoying on Ronald Reagan. People expected America was heading down. Jimmy Carter called it a malaise. America was heading down. Eight short years later, we were bringing down the Berlin Wall and there was a systemic economic boom in the West, which led to the George Herbert Walker Bush presidency. So I'm not here ready to write the country off, but I'm here to say there are alarm bells ringing and who in political leadership is going to answer the call and forget about the partisanship and try to do the right thing for the country in terms of national healing and pushing back on some of these social media companies in terms of how these algorithms are devised.

26:54Okay. Spencer Cox for president. Let's see if he takes up that call. He doesn't have enough hair for that job, Katty. I'm just letting you know. You're obsessed with hair. He can run for president without hair. By the way, I barely made the height requirement for my roller coaster life. You also need to be tall for that job. Barack Obama didn't have a whole ton of hair when he was president. By the end, all of it was gray. What he had cut very short was very gray, which may be a warning to Governor Cox. That's what happens to you if you try to run for president. Talking of Ronald Reagan, we have a wonderful series out that we're super happy with.