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Executive Producer Isaac Saul this is Tangle.

Isaac Saul (2:21)

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, your very host currently, Isaac Saul. It is Friday, September 19th. I am going to sound like crap today. I apologize. Unfortunately, also, we are also at a team off site. Well, that's good news. We're at a team off site. The Tangle team is all together. I'm not going to say Where. But we're in a cool spot together. We're doing a team retreat this week. So I'm recording from a non studio room and I'm very sick, which is a huge bummer to be sick for the team retreat, but making the best of it. And we're gonna talk about some of the Charlie Kirk feedback today. So here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna read an intro, I'm gonna just kind of set the table for some of this stuff and respond broadly to some of the feedback that we've gotten in the last week. And then I'm gonna get into some specific criticisms from readers and listeners which we're gonna read on the air here. Will and Ari are going to jump in. They're going to help me out as well, reading some of the feedback that we got. I'm going to respond to some of it, I'm not going to respond to some of it. And then we're also going to include some responses and feedback that we got that were positive or were sort of mixed, like maybe not outright criticism, but also not outright positive feedback either. There were some people who had really mixed feelings, which makes sense. So we're going to just share a bunch of that feedback today. That's going to be the podcast. I'm excited to do this. We love doing these kinds of shows because, as we always say, this is not just about us. It's not just about me, it's not just my views. The tangle ethos is that we're elevating viewpoints from across the political spectrum, which means we share views from all across America, and people feel really differently about these issues. And this is a great way to do that with these sort of reader, listener, mailbag, feedback editions. So I'm really excited about doing stuff like this. I hope my voice holds up for the whole show. Pray for me. All right, we're going to jump in. So I've watched with a lot of interest and trepidation as readers and listeners responded to my initial thoughts on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Over the last week, while I've been processing this event and its aftermath with the whole country, I've been poring over that feedback. Some of it was frustrating to read, some of it was compelling, some of it I thought merited a response, while other pieces of feedback seemed to stand fairly on their own. Today, I'm going to share a wide range of opinions from our audience about Kirk's assassination and my response to it, the criticism, the support and the unique perspectives. But before I do. I want to address a few things in broad strokes. For starters, I think it's important to clarify the most fundamental stance that I'm trying to take, which I don't want to get lost in the debate about Kirk's views. I do not accept physical violence as a reasonable response to speech. Full stop. This isn't a small footnote in the story. To me, it is the story. As for Kirk himself, I think he has been caricatured into a far more evil person than he was. He had many detestable views and has said many detestable things, at least to me, which drew many criticisms, including from me when he was alive. He is, in simple terms, exactly the kind of partisan firebrand I created tangle to counteract. At the same time, Kirk could have said some of the nastiest, cruelest, most deranged things imaginable and still not deserved a bullet in his neck the day after his death. I believe that by far the most important thing to do was to hold the line on this principle. If we give an inch, if we say he didn't deserve to die, but we are already losing our way, I am doing my best to resist that urge. In resisting it, I'll take the criticism that I think I overcompensated and lionized him or tried to whitewash who Kirk could be at his worst. He has certainly degraded the discourse by constantly trying to own opponents. Yet I have to insist, I think many liberals would also be surprised to see some of the clips of Kirk where he looks so different from the demonic, rabid, hateful right winger they see him as, and the only clips social media algorithms presented to so many people. I do not think he was a simple person. I think he was a complicated person. Like all of us. I plan to make that case more in depth in response to some of our reader feedback today. Indeed, when news of the shooting broke, my instinct, which I followed, was to humanize him. I wanted to remind people that this was a person with a family and friends who loved him, who is now dead. Some critics might say, Charlie wouldn't have done that for you, me, us. And you might be right. But I don't think that's a good reason for me not to do that. It felt important to humanize him. I felt good about humanizing him. I think it was right. I think it is right. But I can understand how this seemed insensitive to people who were the target of Kirk's ire. Also, a lot of people have reacted to a clip posted on our Instagram page of me breaking down in tears while describing Kirk's death. That came from our podcast. So if you're a listener of the show, you've probably heard it already, but I'll play it now. And it just broke me. It's like I was sitting there holding my son in the dark and he's asleep in my arms and it's the best fucking thing in the world. And I just started crying. And it's like you hold it in all day. You consume this shit all day. It's like you're going from dead kids in Gaza to fucking Charlie Kirk's head getting blown off on a live stream. So, yeah, some days you want to quit it. It sucks. While I think shedding tears for Kirk alone would be perfectly appropriate, I also want to be clear that they were not just for him. In that clip, I was responding to a question from my co host, Ari Weitzman, about something I had written, which was that all this news made me want to quit my job. In my reaction, I was describing what it's like to do this work and to mainline the horrors of the world into your system every morning. Those tears were for Kirk, his family, his friends, and the future of the country. Yes, but they are also for the kids and parents in Gaza, whom I mention in the actual clip, whose deaths I have been bearing witness to for more than two years. They are for the Israelis murdered on October 7, whose deaths were streamed across the globe. They are for the Ukrainians, for victims of school shootings, for Irina Zarutska and all the people who have faced political violence in the last few years. They are the product, the toll of having to cover this stuff over and over again and again. This moment is also disorienting because people who don't know anything about me have accused me of being a Jew hater, or an Israel apologist, or a genocide supporter, or a fascism enabler, and have threatened my well being simply for having moderate politics that quote, unquote, enable bad people. Some have even accused me of being responsible for Kirk's death, given my warnings about the Trump administration. I get these threats a lot. I speak in public at live events like Kirk. I'm in my 30s, like Kirk. I have a young son like Kirk. So, yes, it hits home. It is genuinely scary. I just think once we allow ourselves to underreact or numb ourselves to violence against someone whose views we consider bad enough, any of us can frame anyone else's views as bad enough and then decide to kill them. And that part is really really frightening. I think a little reinforcement of our humanity is a good thing. I did see a few reactions that seem more like mine, even from some of Kirk's biggest critics and rivals. What I fear most in the end is that we are all consuming this stuff together. It is warping our minds in ways we don't fully understand, and we are becoming so desensitized to the violence around us that shedding tears for a person who's been murdered can provoke rage and anger. Worse yet, rather than seeing Kirk's death as a flashpoint warning to step back from the brink and many right wing influencers and political actors are instead pushing for civil war, for violence and destruction toward the left, for more consolidation of power, for the President to seek vengeance. On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel lost his job over a rather milkatoast joke about Trump not expressing empathy and for claiming that Charlie Kirk's suspected shooter was maga. People across the country are already being targeted for their reactions, all while the President is filing lawsuits against media companies for coverage he doesn't like. We are in a very, very dark place for free speech. There are going to be some rough roads ahead. More than anything, I'm begging the people who read my work to step back from the brink, to answer the higher calling of their better angels, to resist the urge to dehumanize the people we loathe, and to absolutely reject political violence in all its forms. That's the hope I have and the thing I want to put out into the world. Now I'm going to move on to the criticism. I'm going to share some thoughts from some readers, and then I'll respond to those thoughts. We'll be right back after this quick break.