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Thank you for joining me at the Chris Cuomo Project. And boy do we need each other right now. And I don't even think we're sure about why Charlie Kirk is dead. Charlie Kirk was murdered on a college campus doing in Utah what he thought was part of the answer, which was getting people to prove him wrong, to try to defend or defeat ideas with ideas in dialogue. And he was killed for it. And I don't even think we know what the problem is. I know a lot of people are upset, but a lot of people are upset for very different reasons. And I watched it all happen the day before September 11th, and now I'm talking to you on September 11th, which has already been forgotten because sometimes it's all emotion and no signal, all noise, no signal. So I watched and I wondered and I wanted to see what would kind of boil out of this. And I've been up pretty much all night and here's what I see and I don't see. The problem is not that Charlie Kirk was murdered. The problem is not that a man was murdered for his ideas. In America, we're not new to the idea of people being killed for their ideas. Even here, Jesus was killed for his ideas. He was nailed to a cross because of his ideas. So we are very familiar with the reality and we are very familiar with the potential power in that reality. And my deep concern, my lament, my pain is not simply that Charlie Kirk is dead. Yes, I knew Charlie Kirk. No, I did not hate Charlie Kirk. Yes, I disagreed with Charlie Kirk. Meeting him, talking to him. I thought he was a sweet, earnest, tall young man of faith and family and conviction and tremendous early success. He was only 31 years old. But let me tell you what isn't being told to you that isn't being said. When we are in a place in America where there is no consensus about what is a tragedy, it means that we do not have shared values anymore. It's not just that we have a shared value, but you and I disagree about how it is manifest or how it should be applied or how it should be acted upon or how it should be articulated. We don't have the same values. I hear people saying which should be the right thing, if a little perfunctory. This is vile. There is no place for this in America. They're saying what you're supposed to say, but the words are empty because they don't really mean it. And I'm not saying they don't mean it because they wanted Kirk dead or they want more people dead because Kirk is dead. And yes, I heard on Fox News a major anchor say that they would avenge Charlie Kirk. Yes, I think that is one of the stupidest reactions to have to tragedy is to want more of it. If you see it as a tragedy at all. And that's the problem. I do not think. We all agree that Charlie Kirk being murdered was a tragedy. Will we all, if forced, agree that murder is wrong in America? Certainly, as a function of politics. Yeah, because you're supposed to. Because you lose your job if you say anything else out loud. Right. And that's not my barometer. And my barometer isn't who did this and why. I don't give a shit about the person who did it. I think they'll find them. I think you have to find them, because otherwise you just fuel another part of the energy of the problem, which is conspiratorial, baseless, stupid doubt. Just like we still don't know who shot at Trump. Deep state conspiracy. This is why the Kennedy thing lives on. Doubt creates delusion. Doubt creates delusion. Okay? So you got to find who did this just to end. You know, I wish you guys could see how I see, because I am not part of you. I am not part of your sides, of your teams. And I just see the sides. I see the stupidity. I see the banality. I see the uselessness of It. And I know I am right. And I know that you, if you believe in the sides, that you are wrong and that you are misguided. So that here we are in a moment not where we're dealing with the loss, where we're dealing with the fear, where we're dealing with the tragedy, but where we are dealing with this idea that people believe in America that they have a right to. To judge the worth of a man's death. There are people saying what should be said right now is, okay, we've had it, We've had it. We've had it enough. This is too much. This is a moment. I think it's a moment. I think we're living a major moment right now. And it's not going to just fade, but it is not conciliatory. It is not going to exhaust the divide and make us remember all of the virtues and the morality and the reality that we have learned again and again about what America needs and what humanity needs and what all our great people have told us. So many of them dead as a result of their wisdom. Only light drives out darkness. That's Dr. King, right? We are not there. We do not believe that light drives out the darkness. We believe that what we perceive as dark should be driven out. We are not in a moment where we will come together around what we all know is right. We are accelerating in the wrong direction. We have people who say he deserved it. We have people who say this is what he was about. He got what he was giving. And there are a lot of them, and they are not saying it in quiet. And you have people who are saying, you want to kill? Oh, we'll kill. You want to take one of ours or we'll take one of yours. There are more people sounding about fellow Americans the way we did after 911 than I've ever seen before. Today's 9 11. I lived it. I lost people I knew down there. I watched people die down there in horrible, ugly ways, and I watched what happened afterwards. And no, Charlie Kirk is not the same as thousands of people on 9 11. I'm not saying he is. I'm saying that it doesn't really matter except to Charlie Kirk's friends and family who Charlie Kirk was and what he means. That's not what we're battling over here. What we're battling over here is a very perverse sense of political entitlement to judge the value of someone's life, that you think it's okay for his murder to be okay. And even if you Say, no, no, no, no. Nobody's saying murder is okay. Everybody knows murder is wrong. No, they do not know that murder is wrong. They know that it is wrong when they care about who is murdered. And that is not the value, that is not the virtue, that is not the morality, that is not the law. And that is why we have law. We need law. Because people do not have a sense of inherent decency and morality. And we're seeing that right now. This guy got what he deserved. Hateful guy. Saying hateful things, making people doubt this and doubt that and feel like this about trans and feel like this and said that. He said, he said deaths were worth it to have the second Amendment. You know, this all exists. Support comes from one skin. One skin. You can tell when you use it that these are people who are putting science first, okay? It's not a fad, it's a fixture in your own hygiene and self care work. So one skin is known for like cult favorites, right? Os0,1 body, os0 one face, os0,1 eye. Why? Because one skin stands out. Because they're a science first approach, okay? That's what matters to me. To me, it's only that, you know, what people can show. And one skin, they really go all in on that. Oneskin is the world's first skin longevity company targeting cellular aging to keep your skin and scalp looking and acting younger, longer. For a limited time, you can try one skin with a 15 off bonus by using the code Cuomo at Oneskin co. Okay, that's 15% off at OneSkin Co with the code Cuomo. After you purchase, they're going to ask you, hey, where'd you hear about us? Hook up your boy. Please support the show and tell him, I heard about you on the Chris Cuomo project. Your future self will thank you and so will I. Now let me talk to you about what I think this moment means for all of us. Okay? Who do I blame? Doesn't matter. They'll find the person who did it. And by the way, we are in an environment where whether you're on the left or the right, you'll be just as much of a kooky conspiracist about whether or not it was really this person and whether it was more. It was conspiracy and it was this and it was that. There are two things that I want to say and that I think this moment warrants, okay? The first one is they're going to be more. Okay? And if it is like a Charlie Kirk counterpart from the left, we're going to have really, really big problems in this country. Because once we start the one of ours, one of yours, it's over. And the conspiracy theories about maybe Russia did this, maybe an enemy did this, because they know how close we are to civil war, that will have some bite to it. And do I know that the risk is real? Do I know that what I do is dangerous? I'm no lefty counterpart to Charlie Kirk, but some of you may see me that way. I'm not a lefty, I'm not a righty. I hate the sides. I think they abandon intelligence. I talked to Charlie about this, that I think that we and he have been conditioned to see things through a lens. Now, he would say, yeah, my lens is my faith. Okay? But I don't think Jesus would have been a far right conservative. And I also don't think it matters because I did not, I did not value Charlie Kirk's life differently because I disagreed with his ideas, even though I found some of his ideas to be dangerous and destructive. We are not able to make that separation anymore. So they're going to be more of this. This is who and what we are. You are not what you say you are. You are not the icons that you put after your name. You are not your little cross. You are not your Star of David. You are not your scales of justice. You are not any of those things. You are what you do repeatedly. That's what you are. And all the virtue signaling of how sad this is, how wrong this is how we need to remind ourselves, no, this is who we are. This is who we are. Is this us at our best? Is this us at our worst? It doesn't matter. This is who we are. Now what do you do with it? I have no idea. I know what I'm going to do with it, but I don't know. What we do with is not a threshold or watershed moment. I wish. I wish it were sure. I wish it were that we've had enough, that we come together, that we remind ourselves what it's really supposed to be about and what a battle of ideas is supposed to manifest as. And what our polity, what our politics, what our government, what our governance is supposed to be about, but we're not. That takes me to the second reason. You know what the culprit is here right now. I want to word this the right way because I have a tendency to get it wrong or to not represent it the way I truly mean it. Do you know the adage, the line, the quote, the aphorism from the 60s. A guy named Marshall McLuhan who wrote one of the early, seminal works on media. And he coined a phrase that is deep and layered and a little confusing, but true. The medium is the message. Now, what Marshall meant by that is that the way that things are reported and relayed can often fundamentally shape and even almost determine how they will be received and their level of importance and their context. A story in a newspaper that starts off with a picture that is horrific and a couple of lines that are juiced to evoke or provoke in a certain way. That said, it's over. The medium, how it is, how big it is, how much there is the urgency, the intensity, the, the, the ubiquity of it. That can be the power of it beyond whatever they actually say or write. Social media has become the message. It is no longer what I used to excuse it as. Oh, there's some great things on there. There's some bad things. You know, the democratization of media is going to be a mixed bag. More isn' how I've always explained it, and that's how I saw it. I don't anymore. I don't. Can things change? Yes. But where are we right now? Social media, the medium, is the message, and it is an instrument of destruction, of connivance, of manipulation, of deceit, of destruction and of division. That's what social media is in our society. Now. Can I give examples of it being something more and better than that? More? No, better. Sure, Sure. I learned how to tie my knots for fire school. I learned so much about how parents process pain and how they deal with kids and the universality of so many of our struggles. And there's so many helpful tips for hobbyists and information and histories and amazing things, incredible curated content. But that is not its net effect. Its real footprint in our society. It has become a tool of destruction. When the richest man in the world who controls the most powerful platform in our media writes that the left is the party of murder and then decides. Elon Musk. I'm talking about this. The stupidest genius I've ever been around. And no, I'm not going to excuse it because he's autistic. I know a lot of. I have a lot of autistic people in my life. They are not all morally bankrupt, okay? They. They don't all say the stupidest thing at the worst time, all right? I don't know what it's about with him, and I don't give a. To be honest, he is. He is, in my opinion, exhausted. His usefulness now, does that mean he should be murdered? No, because that's not how I see the value of human life. But would I be surprised? No, I wouldn't be surprised if it's me. I mean, that's where we are. It's who we are. That's who we are. But when he can write, the left is a party of this, and then he goes on this thing about why black is capitalized and why white is not the medium is the message we are about division and hate. Of what we oppose, there are not one or two. There are many people who do not see the murder of this young man as wrong. And there are just as many or more who see his murder as something to be avenged. Now, that word usually means, I'm now going to kill one of yours. Right? How do I avenge? Right? I'm not talking about justice. I'm not talking about investigating. I'm not talking about ameliorating, that's for sure. I'm not talking about making it better. Why would you even use that word? Because that's where and who we are. Support comes from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Why would I be about that? I'm anti religion. No, I am not anti religion. You want to believe it, that's great. I don't want your beliefs put on me, especially in the public square, especially by my government. Public money, religious agenda, zero accountability. That's what's happening in our schools. Ten Commandments on the walls. What if that's not your faith? School chaplains replacing trained counselors. Amen. That's for church. That's for my personal life. That is not for public education. And this is all being done with taxpayer dollars. What happened to the First Amendment? Funneled into private religious schools, many with discriminatory policies. If it sounds wrong, it's because it is. And it doesn't matter if it meets up with my chosen faith, it's that we don't have one in a secular society. The Freedom From Religion foundation is fighting this legally, fearlessly, relentless. Why? Because the Constitution is not a suggestion. That's why. It's our code. So visit FFRFFRF US School or text my first name, Chris to 511-511. If you text Chris, Chris to 511-511- you'll learn more. You want real freedom, you're gonna have to fight for it. Remember to text my name, Chris, to 5 11, 5 11, today. Text fees. Of course they apply. Now, I am saying this to you because I believe it's what everyone needs to get about this. I'm not going to tell you how to be or how to feel or to be better than this. That's not my place and it's not my inclination. I don't believe you tell people how to be with any kind of effectiveness. I believe that all you can do is manifest what you're about by how you are and by the way I fall short all the time. That's what I meant when I said I've been wrong. I wasn't talking about Trump or MAGA or politics. I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. I was looking back at being about to turn 55 and realizing that so much of what has mattered most in my life has been how I've responded to up and being over, you know, how I've been, how I've learned and been shaped so much by what I was wrong about and whether that was here's how to train and that I wasn't training that way, you know, something as meaningless as that. But what would work and wouldn't work professionally, personally, as a parent, as a partner, as a friend, as a sibling, it's being wrong that is often the gateway to anything better. And that's all I control, is what I do. That's all each of us controls. So on one level, the value of the moment, if there must be one, is what you do with it and what it means to you. I think collectively, until we figure out how to better control, and I don't like that word. I'm not going to say censor social media is killing us right now. I'm not blaming social media. I'm blaming the people who are dominating it. I'm blaming our collective conscience and what we are receptive to and what seems to win out. Because, yes, there are all these different values at play on social media. There are good things. There is value, organization, community, ideas, education, edification, conditioning. There are a lot of good things. But that's not what's winning. Do you understand what I'm saying? And I know this will be twisted. That's part of what I'm saying, is that a little piece of this will be taken and twisted out of context to make some point that furthers an agenda that is almost always finding power and profit in you, fearing or hating someone else as a function of an emotional provocation or mis or disinformation. That's what is winning. And as long as that is the truth, Social media, the medium is the message, and the message is division, desperation and more violence, verbal, intellectual, emotional, and physical. For us to have a president whose instinct is to blame in an explosive situation. It's not that Trump. Smart. Trump not smart. I think he's obviously smart. He's not polished, educated in the way that we traditionally value in a president, but that doesn't matter. It's that this is who we are right now. And by the way, you guys who hate Trump and believe he's the problem, why are the words from your chosen ones so hollow? Bernie Sanders. I haven't even heard from aoc, and I want to, because I think she matters. I think she's part of the solution if she wants to be, not just part of the problem. The same way all of us have that agency about what to do. She's absolutely a divider. Bernie Sanders is absolutely a divider. Now, you can argue they all are. Jeffries, Schumer, all of us. All of us. All of us who have been given power under the banner of a side. That's what they're spending their time doing, is pointing at the other side and saying, we got to stop them. This is where that gets us. And more of it. This, because think about it. What's different with Charlie Kirk versus the Minnesota lawmakers? You don't think it's about the same thing? Now, for most of you, there's like a check valve. Oh, both sides. Oh, he's doing both sides. Not supposed to do both sides. Oh, this is bad. Charlie was bad. It's bad that they. That's it. Let's just stick with this. And that's why the other side won't stick with this. He's not their guy. So either this is what he gets for spreading what he was spreading, or I'm not really sure what happened. It may have been the right that took him out. That's why you got to get it right. That's why I criticize Cash Patel for tweeting instead of just doing the job of getting it right. Okay? We do not need to hear about the FBI bringing someone in only to release them because they got the wrong guy. We need better than that, transparency. I don't want transparency when the communication gets more commitment than the dedication to the actual exercise. You know what I'm saying? I don't want a football player who's spending more time telling me why he's running than just running as fast as he can do the job. Find out who did this, and then we'll figure out how we feel about it and what it means. Social media, we have to address what it is used for and how it is used. And I don't know the answers. I don't. Because I'm a free speech guy and I'm a free speech guy to the extreme. And I don't know what the answer is. But I know what the problem is. And I am not surprised, as many of my business are about the mixed reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder. The only part that I'm getting wrong, I'm pretty sure is. And I really. I hope for my family's sake that this is not the part of this that survives. But I'm probably missing how dangerous the environment is for people like me. I'm probably ignoring it. I'm probably underestimating it. I could see it in the faces of the people where I went to speak on the same day that Charlie was murdered and the extra security presence and the messages of people. There were too many people. There's no connection between me and Charlie Kirk as far as most people in my life know. Yeah, I knew him better than most people suspect I did. And. And Charlie actually joked with me about how people were giving him shit for being nice to me and how that bothered him and it confused him about his impact because it's not what he wanted. And we were going to do more things together. Not because we agreed, not because I even thought that there was value to some of his political positions other than to easily counter them. But I'm probably getting that wrong. I do know we'll see more of this. That's a guarantee. But I don't know what it means for me. It's hard for me to do that. I'm not that narcissistic. I can't really look at Charlie Kirk's murder and his two kids who are barely old enough to remember him and his young wife whose life will forever be shaped by this loss. I just, personally, I just, I can't get past that because personally, that's all that would matter to me, is what my fate did to my family. But I know that there are much bigger implications here. And I know that there are more people in the media who are at risk because of this. And the only thing I see that ties all our problems together is social media. Now, what is the difference between social media and a gun in terms of our analysis of allowance versus proscription? What does that mean? Well, when someone shoots somebody like yesterday, there's a tendency for their sales to say, if we had less guns, this wouldn't happen the same way. Now, I think there is something true about that and There is something misleading about that. Yes. If there were no guns in society, or very few, you would not have as many shootings. You wouldn't have as many suicides by gun. I don't know that you wouldn't have as many or close to it through different methods. But whether it's the gun or whether it's social media, it's not. Social media doesn't make people kill people. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. I know. And that is true in both of these. It's not that social media could be an amazing thing. It could be an amazing you. I remember when it first happened, when it was first created. That's what we thought, that, oh, wow, globalization is possible. We can all be brought together. I can be talking to a guy in Bangladesh like this and sharing an affinity for something and working on problems and connecting and breaking down all the barriers of phobias that are a function of ignorance. Well, we'll, like, know each other now. Man, this is amazing. But it's made us more distant, more isolated than ever. Why? Because it's not the medium, it's us. Charlie Kirk's murder isn't about the weapon. It's about why that guy, in all likelihood, wanted to use it. Twitter, X Insta, tick tock, YouTube, whatever it is, none of them are good or bad. And I don't think they're a button away from being what we need them to be. It's us. It's us. And there's too much profit in division. There's too much profit in animus and anger, and it's too easy to be successful. And that's why we're seeing such a low grade of talent get such immense traction in our society. That's why you keep scratching your head and you're like, why are people so into her? Why are people so into him? It's because the bar is so low, our appetites are so pronounced, we're feeding on negativity in such new and different and big ways, and it's not stopping. Charlie Kirk's murder, unfortunately, in the truest sense of that word, is most likely not a moment where people change for the better. Now, if you believe in anything bigger than yourself, I hope you think on it, ask it, pray to it, that you are the exception and that it does change you for the better. It does make you see and do differently than you did, even if that means that you're one of the ones who've been getting it right, that you reach out to those who are not in A different way and figure out how to create some kind of difference. Because if you're getting it right, there's still so many who are getting it wrong that need somebody or something to change their course. And I'm not saying we're a bunch of murderers in the making. I'm saying that Charlie Kirk's murder has no meaning beyond what each and all decides to do with it. I don't believe that Charlie Kirk was any kind of, you know, look, I'm sure he'll be lionized and death, and that's what we do. And I don't feel one way or the other about it. I'm not doing that with Charlie because I don't believe there's a need to. I believe that what made that happen is what needs to be addressed, not who had happened to so much. I do feel for his family, though, and I think Charlie was a nice guy and I think some of the ideas he had were not so nice. But I personally never wanted anything bad to happen to him because of it. And even in that world of kind of nasty, righty, fake, masculine pod bros, he was really one of the nicest ones. Even in his disposition. He would have been very low on the list of people I thought that would be targeted this way. Our president has been shot. And there were more of you who thought it didn't happen or was fake or didn't count, then saw it as a moment to maybe change how you talk about what and who you oppose. Now you have Charlie Kirk, who's 31 years old, and I can't tell you, I've never had more people reach out when a non consensus evil person, like if it was Osama bin Laden, okay, I expect people to be like, I'm sorry, I can't feel bad about this guy. But I've had more people reach out to me saying they don't feel bad about this. That has led me to believe that we've really gotten to a place where I. And again, I think it's a big. I think the biggest part is that the medium has become the message with social media and that we are in a place of constant provocation of what and who we're against. And what I'm going to do with it is try and I'll fail. I'll fail to remember that and how I use it and what I say about it and how I do what I do. Last night I was getting a lot of pressure to focus on the manhunt and I was resistant. Why? Because it's Hype, they don't know who did it. Talking about that and teasing it and hyping it and playing to the drama of it, that's part of the pro, the provocation paradigm. That is the problem now. It's not the problem the way it is when you allow someone to say something ugly or stupid or insulting. But it's all. Part of it is that we are so desperate for attention because that's how we get paid, that's how we're relevant. I have to keep you watching if I can. And the way to do it is by making you think that there is an urgency, that there is something that could be about to happen, that there is a dangerous, unknown manhunt. Is he going to do it again? Will there be more? How did they miss him? How did they get it wrong? Why did they get it wrong? And I bring people in who've done the job before who just so happens hasn't have an unspoken agenda. Well, I have to tell you, I have a lot of questions about this and I don't know why they haven't found them yet. And that kind of enclosed space and I don't know how they say it's 200 yards, but I don't know that kind of shot. All this empty nonsense from people who know nothing, just to keep you thinking, oh, yeah, I should be worried about this. I, I should pay attention. It's all related and none of it is stopping and I don't see any improvement. But all I control and I am worried that in the actual moment when everything that you've ever been told if you were raised by warm blooded mammals is time to be nice. It's time to be nice. It's time to say nice things. It's. It's time to not look for a fight. It's like we are at a wake right now. People don't usually walk around those places saying, yeah, I'm all right with it, I'm all right with it. You know the guy, that's who we are on social media though, and that's part of the problem with it. And I don't know the answer except for what I control and I do with myself. But if you're looking around for takes on Charlie Kirk and trying to figure out what it means and how to use it in your own life, almost everything I've seen is because the people who are telling you, you know the guy who was honest and got beat up for it and I get it, is Dowd, Dowd said what he actually thought at A time when people are conditioned to say the right thing, the nice thing. He said Kirk asked for this with the shit that he was putting out. Now is he wrong? I don't care. It's that what he's feeding is that anything is okay. Because there's never any requirement to be better than what you oppose. You just have to beat it. You just have to expose it as worse. You do not have to be better endowed. For all his Buddha, you know, awakening Woo Woo was just a nasty piece of who said something that was even. It doesn't matter if it was true that he was asking for it. Because of course, Charlie wasn't asking to be martyred. He wasn't asking to be murdered. He was very excited about the life he was leading and where it was going to go and his kids and what they would be. He was not looking for an exit. 31 years old. I don't even remember being 31. And I don't believe in these stupid coincidences. But you know, when I was 31 was when we had 911 and it changed my life. I probably should have started with this thought when I was Charlie Kirk's age, I lived 911 and it changed my life. It changed what I wanted to do with my platform as a journalist. I got married because of 9 11. I got engaged 11 days after 911 because I thought it was going to keep happening. And I needed to do what mattered now. And I wanted a family and I had found somebody who was stupid enough to give me a chance to do it. Best choice because it led to my kids. And that's what makes it the best choice for Christina as well. But she could have done a lot better than me. And that was Charlie Kirk's age when he was killed. 31. And what will I do with this moment? I told you that. What will you do with this moment? I don't know. But I hope you do something that is different than what we've all done until now. May Charlie Kirk rest in peace. May his legacy be an awareness among many that what got us here has to change. Thank you for giving me an opportunity. Thank you for choosing me when I am not choosing to do what works on social media. If I had come on here and said it's time to kill somebody else or whoever did this and whoever likes it is evil and should this and this is why and trump this and that, I'd get 10 million views. That's the problem. Thank you for subscribing and following. I'll see you on news nation. No matter when you're seeing this. I made it on a day when we were supposed to never forget how fragile life is, how present evil is, and how we are all in this to try to get to a better place. And I hope you use whatever you get from this to do that with your own life, online and off. Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way With Expedia. She bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia Made to travel flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.
Date: September 11, 2025
Host: Chris Cuomo
In this deeply personal and urgent solo episode, Chris Cuomo responds to the shocking murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus. Cuomo uses the moment to reflect on not just the tragedy itself, but what it reveals about the current state of American society—the decline of shared values, the dangerous roles of social media, escalating partisanship, and how the meaning of such moments is ultimately shaped by individual and collective reactions.
“When we are in a place in America where there is no consensus about what is a tragedy, it means that we do not have shared values anymore.” (03:30)
“They're saying what you're supposed to say, but the words are empty because they don't really mean it.” (05:10)
“We are not in a moment where we will come together around what we all know is right. We are accelerating in the wrong direction.” (10:50)
“Social media, the medium, is the message, and it is an instrument of destruction, of connivance, of manipulation, of deceit, of destruction and of division.” (32:40)
“Bernie Sanders is absolutely a divider. Now, you can argue they all are. Jeffries, Schumer, all of us.” (48:00)
“All you can do is manifest what you’re about by how you are... That’s all each of us controls.” (44:05)
“I did not value Charlie Kirk’s life differently because I disagreed with his ideas, even though I found some of his ideas to be dangerous and destructive.” (42:30)
“Twitter, X, Insta, TikTok, YouTube—none of them are good or bad... It’s us.” (01:00:40)
“That’s why you keep scratching your head and you’re like, why are people so into her? Why are people so into him? It’s because the bar is so low, our appetites are so pronounced, we’re feeding on negativity in such new and different and big ways, and it’s not stopping.” (01:03:10)
“If you’re looking around for takes on Charlie Kirk and trying to figure out what it means and how to use it in your own life, almost everything I’ve seen is because the people... are conditioned to say the right thing, the nice thing. But... there’s never any requirement to be better than what you oppose.” (01:14:40)
On the American Response:
“I do not think we all agree that Charlie Kirk being murdered was a tragedy.” (08:12)
On Social Media:
“Social media, the medium, is the message, and it is an instrument of destruction, of connivance, of manipulation, of deceit, of destruction and of division.” (32:40)
On Tribal Retribution:
“There are more people sounding about fellow Americans the way we did after 9/11 than I’ve ever seen before.” (13:40)
On Law and Morality:
“We need law, because people do not have a sense of inherent decency and morality. And we’re seeing that right now.” (16:20)
On Both Sides:
“All of us. All of us who have been given power under the banner of a side. That’s what they’re spending their time doing, is pointing at the other side and saying, we got to stop them. This is where that gets us. And more of it.” (48:35)
On Self-Control:
“All I control, is what I do. That’s all each of us controls.” (44:05)
On the Power of Social Media:
“It’s not the medium—it’s us.” (01:02:12)
End of summary.