Podcast Summary: Tangle – The Friday Edition: The Response to Our Coverage about the Charlie Kirk Assassination

Host: Isaac Saul
Date: September 19, 2025

Overview

This episode of Tangle is dedicated to the intense and diverse feedback received following their coverage of the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Host Isaac Saul, despite being under the weather and recording remotely with his team, seeks to directly address criticisms, reflect on his approach to covering Kirk’s death, and share a spectrum of reader and listener reactions. The episode emphasizes Tangle's core ethos: elevating perspectives from across the political spectrum, fostering empathy, and unequivocally rejecting political violence in all its forms.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Context: Why This Feedback Episode?

• Isaac Saul sets the stage (02:21): Acknowledges his illness and that the Tangle team is on retreat.
• Purpose: To react to the "wide range of opinions" about their coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—including negative, positive, and mixed reader feedback.
• Format: Isaac will read and respond to feedback, with contributions from team members Will and Ari.

2. Isaac’s Central Stance on Violence and Speech

• Reinforces the principle (04:41):

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul

• Refuses to justify violence, regardless of Kirk’s rhetoric or ideology.
• On Kirk’s characterization:
  • Argues Kirk was not as evil or simplistic as portrayed in social media; acknowledges Kirk as a "complicated person."
  • Recognizes Kirk’s harmful rhetoric and negative impacts on public discourse.
  • Stresses the need for humanization—even for figures he and others strongly oppose.

3. Personal Reflection & Emotional Toll

• Addresses viral clip of him breaking down (08:25):
  Plays the segment where he cries, describing the emotional burden of reporting on relentless tragedy.

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul (09:08)

• Clarifies: His tears are not solely for Kirk, but for all who suffer violence, including victims in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, and various recent tragedies.

4. Responding to Criticism & Misinterpretation

• Pushback received:
  • Accused of being both too empathetic and of whitewashing Kirk.
  • Receives personal threats, including being (absurdly) blamed for Kirk’s death given his moderate political stance.
• Warns against desensitization:
  • The danger in dehumanizing adversaries and in becoming numb to violence, especially when it befalls those with unpopular views.
  • Notes the troubling response of some right-wing figures calling for more violence in retaliation, rather than reflection.

5. Broader Concerns About Free Speech and Escalation

• Examples of chilling climate (11:08):
  • Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel fired for jokes about Trump and the shooting.
  • The political environment grows increasingly repressive, with lawsuits targeting media and suppression of dissenting voices.
• Call to action:

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul (11:55)

Highlighted Audience Feedback

1. Kayla from Tampa, Florida (13:19)

• Overall tone: Respectful criticism.
• Positives:
  • Appreciates Tangle’s usual commitment to nuanced, cross-spectrum discourse.
  • Supports humanizing Charlie Kirk:

    “Even if he didn't believe that empathy matters, I do and I will give him and everyone I disagree with the acknowledgment that we are human and do still live in a country with the right to choose our beliefs.”

• Key issues:
  • Feels Isaac failed to present nuance in his take on Kirk.
  • Isaac misrepresented the "left’s" reaction as lacking empathy and downplayed the dangers and real harm of Kirk’s rhetoric.
  • Points to her own lived experience:

    “Isaac is lucky enough to be a white man married to a woman. His rights are not the ones that Charlie Kirk had an issue with, and Isaac's take really showed that.”

  • Argues Kirk was a bully, propagated racist rhetoric, and directly threatened the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
  • Warns against rewriting history or ignoring the harm Kirk caused.
  • Stresses that, like Kirk, his victims were human too.
  • Pleads for a return to Tangle’s signature nuance and balance in future coverage.

2. Isaac’s Immediate Response

• Expresses appreciation for Kayla’s feedback.
• Acknowledges the need to directly discuss “the worst of Kirk.”
• (The episode preview ends here, but Isaac prepares to explicitly address Kirk’s most harmful words and actions in the full version.)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On emotional exhaustion:

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul (09:14)

• On the principle of nonviolence, regardless of ideology:

  “He could have said some of the nastiest, cruelest, most deranged things imaginable and still not deserved a bullet in his neck.”
  — Isaac Saul (05:55)

• On threats to moderate voices:

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul (10:23)

• On the need for empathy and rejecting escalation:

  “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.”
  — Isaac Saul (10:55)

• Listener Feedback - Kayla:

  “He was a bully. He did not believe that I as a woman have the same rights and independence as Isaac. He participated in racist rhetoric and I wish that this take had more accurately portrayed those aspects of his life.” (14:23)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & episode setup: 02:21
• Isaac’s stance on violence and Kirk’s complexity: 04:41 – 06:40
• Emotional toll and viral moment explanation: 08:25 – 10:00
• Reflection on threats, polarization, and free speech: 10:23 – 11:55
• First major audience feedback (Kayla): 13:19 – 15:54
• Isaac’s response to Kayla: 15:54 – preview ends

Tone & Takeaway

The episode is emotionally raw and earnest, with Isaac oscillating between conviction and vulnerability. His main thrust is the moral necessity of rejecting violence as a response to expression—no matter how offensive—and the societal peril of dehumanizing even our harshest adversaries. The feedback segment ably surfaces the challenge of balancing empathy for controversial figures with rigorous candor about the harm they may have caused. Saul ultimately strives for a higher standard—one of both truth-telling and shared humanity—as “the hope I have and the thing I want to put out into the world.”

This summary covers all principal discussion points and major quotes up to the end of the publicly available preview. For further listener feedback and Isaac’s deeper reckoning with Kirk’s legacy, the full episode is available to paid Tangle subscribers.