Brendan Nyhan: Measuring Political Violence Without Panic

Summary

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The Gist, September 19, 2025

Episode: Brendan Nyhan: Measuring Political Violence Without Panic
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Brendan Nyhan, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College; Co-director, Bright Line Watch

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the reality behind alarming statistics on Americans' support for political violence. Host Mike Pesca brings on political scientist Brendan Nyhan to challenge widely cited figures suggesting that a sizable portion of Americans support violent action against political rivals. Together, they discuss how polling methods shape our perceptions of danger, the dangers of misinterpreting data, and whether media and political elites are fueling unnecessary panic and polarization. The conversation highlights the need for measured understanding in a heated era.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Media Hype vs. Real Support for Violence

• Topic: Overblown statistics about political violence
• Discussion:
  • Pesca notes widespread panic over claims that nearly "a quarter to a third of your fellow citizens are pretty eager to execute their rivals."
  • Nyhan quickly debunks alarming statistics (e.g., "39% of Democrats support the use of force to get Trump out of office") as the result of poorly designed survey questions and inattentive responses.
  • Notable Quote ([08:27]):
    • Nyhan:

    "I knew it dramatically overstated the actual support for physical violence... When you screen for people who are paying attention, you make sure they're paying attention and you pin down the meaning of these terms, you find again and again that the percentage of Americans who explicitly endorse physical violence... is well under 10%."

2. How Polls Inflate Violent Sentiment

• Topic: Survey design and interpretation flaws
• Discussion:
  • Nyhan explains that "single item questions" often lead inattentive respondents to click the middle option, artificially inflating support for violence.
  • When following up with clarifying questions, respondents clarify their definition of "force," usually referring to nonviolent actions like protests or arrests, not physical violence.
  • Notable Quote ([09:28]):
    • Nyhan:

    "People who seem to endorse this, when you actually ask them what they mean, they say things like, well, he should be removed from office through protests... arrested. Is that the use of force? Yes, in a vague sense. But... it doesn't mean the people... are actually saying that the president should be shot..."

3. Dangers of Misperception and Media Amplification

• Topic: Effects of misinformation escalation
• Discussion:
  • Both worry that exaggerated numbers drive fear and fuel extremism, as people begin to believe "the other side" is plotting violence, which can encourage preemptive aggression.
  • Nyhan notes that elites (politicians and media) amplify anecdotes, making isolated online posts seem representative.
  • Notable Quote ([13:19]):
    • Pesca:

    "An assassination that dominates news coverage tends to concentrate the mind."

    • Nyhan:

    "There were Facebook posts written by a dozen or so people that seemed to explicitly endorse what happened. And those were all over the news... It's really important to keep [the denominator] in mind..."

4. Aftermath of High-Profile Political Violence

• Topic: Reactions after the Trump assassination attempt
• Discussion:
  • Contrary to expectations, endorsement of political violence decreased—likely because elites condemned it across the spectrum.
  • Broader point: Clear, unified elite rejection of violence reduces public acceptance.
  • Notable Quote ([14:01]):
    • Nyhan:

    "After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, endorsement of political violence actually went down rather than up... Elites came together and said support for political violence is bad."

5. Authoritarian Responses and Public Tolerance

• Topic: The Trump administration’s crackdown post-assassination attempt
• Discussion:
  • Nyhan compares current U.S. trends to those in authoritarian states, emphasizing that everyday life often continues "normally" even as repressive measures ramp up.
  • The "Kimmel" incident is discussed as an example of state overreach—in this case, the FCC calling for a comedian to be removed over controversial jokes.
  • Notable Quote ([16:54]):
    • Nyhan:

    "Life in authoritarian countries is mostly boring and tolerable... you walk around and it's mostly fine. And people are doing all the same stuff that we're doing here."

6. The Political Effect of Public Crackdowns

• Topic: The impact of government censorship on public perception
• Discussion:
  • Pesca argues that controversies, like the Kimmel situation, allow Trump and allies to dominate attention and benefit politically, regardless of underlying facts.
  • Nyhan cautions against assuming such crackdowns will always backfire or harm their initiators, as control of the narrative is often in Trump's favor.
  • Notable Quote ([20:51]):
    • Nyhan:

    "It's the use of government power to silence speech. That's what's so pernicious... The key element here is the role of the FCC chairman in calling for him to be taken off air... We'll see [how the public perceives that]."

7. Lessons from Previous Election Violence Predictions

• Topic: Forecasting failures and conditional predictions
• Discussion:
  • The media heavily predicted violence after elections, but it did not materialize—though, Nyhan argues, many forecasts were conditional on a Trump loss.
  • The low incidence of violence is consistent with better-conducted polls: most people do not engage in or support violence at all, but a very small group can cause significant disruption.
  • Notable Quotes ([23:28 – 25:01]):
    • Nyhan:

    "The overall expert track record of forecasting is not great... Many forecasts were conditional. You should think of as being essentially conditional on Trump losing and he won... The last time Republicans lost a presidential election, we had January 6th."

    • "Despite millions and millions of Americans endorsing the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, almost none of them engaged in violence to try to change the outcome... On the other hand, a couple thousand people went to the Capitol... It's not zero."

8. Shifting Narratives and Elite Influence

• Topic: How politicians and elites reframe political violence
• Discussion:
  • Pesca and Nyhan observe that initial bipartisan condemnation of January 6th quickly gave way to partisan revisionism. Trump’s pardoning and reframing of January 6th participants changed Republican attitudes.
  • Notable Quote ([25:31]):
    • Nyhan:

    "January 6th has been, you know, retconned in the jargon into something totally different... So we can, even if most of us don't support political violence, many of us can come to excuse it. And that's worrisome, too."

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On questioning alarming stats:
  • Nyhan ([08:27]): "I knew it dramatically overstated the actual support for physical violence... well under 10%."
• On consequences of panicked coverage:
  • Nyhan ([12:30]): "People perceive political violence as being widely supported... They may be vulnerable to thinking the other side endorses it widely. And that's very dangerous."
• On Facebook posts and news amplification:
  • Nyhan ([13:24]): "[A dozen] Facebook posts... seemed to explicitly endorse what happened... But you have to think about the denominator."
• On elite cues reducing violence:
  • Nyhan ([14:01]): "Elites came together and said support for political violence is bad. And those cues from elites matter."
• On public apathy under authoritarianism:
  • Nyhan ([16:54]): "Life in authoritarian countries is mostly boring and tolerable... but people are doing all the same stuff that we're doing here."
• On the perils of government censorship:
  • Nyhan ([20:51]): "It's the use of government power to silence speech. That's what's so pernicious about that."
• On shifting perceptions of January 6th:
  • Nyhan ([25:31]): "January 6th has been... retconned... So we can, even if most of us don't support political violence, many of us can come to excuse it."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:28 — Pesca introduces the episode’s theme: Are rising claims of political violence evidence-based, or panic-driven?
• 08:15 — Conversation with Brendan Nyhan begins
• 08:27 — Nyhan debunks "39% of Democrats support violence" statistic
• 09:28 — Nyhan details survey methodology and flaws
• 12:30 — Discussing dangers of widespread misperception
• 13:19 — The impact of media on perceived violence trends
• 14:01 — Nyhan on elite cues and public attitudes post-assassination attempt
• 16:54 — Life under authoritarianism and public complicity
• 20:51 — The Kimmel incident and government overreach
• 23:28 — Review of failed election violence predictions and their conditions
• 25:31 — Retconning January 6th and the malleability of public opinion
• 26:14 — Interview ends

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Tone and Language

• The tone is sharp, skeptical, inquisitive, and occasionally irreverent—true to The Gist’s "responsibly provocative" style.
• Both Pesca and Nyhan speak plainly but precisely, with frequent asides and explanations aimed at a lay audience.
• They emphasize nuance, caution against panic, and stress the importance of rigorous, contextualized interpretation of political data.

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Summary Takeaway

While headlines trumpeting a spiraling wave of political violence make for compelling (and panic-inducing) news, the actual underlying support for violent action in America is far lower than most media reports suggest. Brendan Nyhan demonstrates that better polling methods consistently show very modest endorsement of violence—even if a small, not-zero minority can still pose serious risks. Crucially, exaggerated fears can themselves become a danger, inflaming partisanship, undermining trust, and, ironically, increasing the risk of real conflict. The solution? Rigorous skepticism, careful survey design, and a refusal to stoke hysteria for clicks or partisan gain.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

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I mean, it's true that we are worried, but worry is an expertise. Worry isn't data. So we turn to our experts for the data. Enter Robert Pape, UChicago professor When I say enter, enter your consciousness, or at least mine, via abc, cnn, fox, cbs, the New York Times this cuts from npr. We are living through a watershed moment that I call the era of violent populism. We are living through an era of historic levels of political violence. Pepe's been on the just before I challenged him a bit over his dire predictions of societal decay in general and certain conflicts in particular. But don't listen to me. This is Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth. He's the director of the Polarization Research Lab. I love those guys. And he looks at that very quote unquote you said, which Robert Pape has said in many contexts and says an era of violent populism. Respectfully, Westwood says of Pape, please stop overinterpreting a few survey questions. The world, including those on the edge of committing another atrocity, is listening. Don't give them cause to assume they have broader support than they do. We need to turn the temperature down. So I would add it's a question of broad support and rational preemption. So what Westwood is saying seems sensible to me. Westwood and his fellow researchers have been doing the work to better interpret the public sentiment than the survey that Pape is citing, which would indicate that Americans are fairly receptive to a civil war. And so today I bring you Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth to talk about the surveying and scholarship that has been used to convince us that a quarter to a third of your fellow citizens are pretty eager to execute their rivals. Now I shall spiel on the concept of giving your enemies ammunition. But first, Brendan Nyhan, professor of Government at Dartmouth Hymns cannot solve some of the more common bedroom problems. 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And there is a similarly shockingly high statistic about the percent of Republicans that's a quarter quarter Republicans think it's justified for Trump to use military to crack down on protests on his agenda. And in interviews with Face the Nation and NPR and in the New York Times, one of the main professors who has come up with this statistic has been interviewed and has pretty much convinced anyone. And why wouldn't he? It's from he's from a prestigious school that we are. The phrases are sometimes different. But in the middle of a spiral of political violence, here's my problem. It's that I've talked with Brendan Nyhan very much over the years and he has convinced me. And I'm bringing the Dartmouth professor on to convince, or at least talk to all of us about how these survey questions are asked, how these statistics are generated, and what might be the truer sense of just how on the precipice of the things he studies, like a breakdown of democracy, we might be government. Professor at Dartmouth Brendan Nyhan, one of the authors of the Bright Line Watch was a very important semiannual survey that they do. Welcome back to the gist.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Great to be back.

[Mike Pesca]

So you heard this 39% statistic. They made it impossible that you didn't. What did you know about it immediately that maybe Face the Nation, NPR and the rest didn't elicit.

[Brendan Nyhan]

I knew it dramatically overstated the actual support for physical violence, which has been shown to be much lower both by myself and my colleagues at Bright Line Watch and other survey researchers. When you really pin people down on what they mean by terms like violence or use of force, it turns out that many people who are seemingly endorsing those claims are either kind of responding without paying very close attention, or they actually mean something different. And when you screen for people who are paying attention, you make sure they're paying attention and you pin down the meaning of these terms. You find again and again that the percentage of Americans who explicitly endorse physical violence, the kind that would be a violent felony under our legal system, that is well under 10%. Now, that's still too many. And that still can be dangerous, very dangerous, as we've seen in a country of 300 plus million people. But it's nothing like those numbers that are being bandied about. And I really do worry that hearing those will only encourage a further spiral.

[Mike Pesca]

What's the best way to ask the question?

[Brendan Nyhan]

Well, the way we did it, building on some research by political scientists in the field, was first to ask a question about whether people supported violence or not, and then in a follow up question, really pin them down on what they meant and made sure. So in that way they had to go through two steps because it seemed like what was happening in some cases was with these single item questions, people were just kind of clicking the middle option. And in that way they were seeming to endorse violence, but they were really just kind of not taking the survey very seriously. And the second question then pins them down on what they mean, because in some cases people who seem to endorse this, when you actually ask them what they mean, they say things like, well, he should be removed from office through protests or. And actually the survey you're describing, they actually did follow up with people and ask them what they meant and a substantial number of them said things like, well, he should be arrested. Right. And is that the use of force? Yes, in a vague sense. But it doesn't mean the people seeming to endorse that claim in the survey are actually saying that the president should be shot or however it's being interpreted in the current media coverage.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, let me ask you without getting into an academic knife fight, cuz we don't wanna endorse that kind of violence or academy violence was there. Are you saying that this survey actually had the more responsible and accurate lower number but just chose not to publicize it?

[Brendan Nyhan]

There's a survey from the Chicago project in 2024 that asked people in an open ended way who seem to endorse violence what they meant. And you can actually read the responses and many of them are describing things that I would not equate with the violent felonies that people have interpreted these responses to mean. And again, when you incorporate this into a more well designed framework like what we used in our survey, you're just getting really different numbers, you know, under 10% every time across the board. We did this in 2021, we did this in 2025. Other researchers using similar methods have done the same thing. And I just want to say importantly, because you mentioned academic knife fight and those can get contentious, that when we did this research at Bright Lawn Watch, it was precisely because we had no dog in the fight that we thought was important for us to administer this experiment. We tested different ways of measuring this question and we found convincing evidence that when you did it in this more careful way I've described that you got these lower numbers in precisely the way that recent research has suggested. And why this matters is because it's not just that people perceive political violence as being widely supported. They may be vulnerable to thinking the other side endorses it widely.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Brendan Nyhan]

And that's very dangerous. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

The perception of the perception is what causes preemption, is what causes the threat of risk to be perceived. And that brings violence into the world. I think studies and history have shown.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Exactly. I'm very worried about those misunderstandings we have of each other and how they could fuel further violence or other kinds of problems. Now, elites are still the prime movers here, but we know that there are ways that people are being exposed to information that may reinforce these misconceptions. Elites may be telling them the other side is out to get you. And they may be seeing extremely unrepresentative anecdotes from social media that make it seem like lots of people are endorsing violence. Right. There were a handful of people who also.

[Mike Pesca]

An assassination that dominates news coverage tends to concentrate the mind.

[Brendan Nyhan]

There were Facebook posts written by a dozen or so people that seemed to explicitly endorse what happened. And those were all over the news. Right. But you have to think about the denominator there. There are hundreds of millions of people in this country, almost none of whom went to social media to endorse what happened. So it's really important to keep them in mind and not just this handful of examples, because it can reinforce the misperceptions we've been talking about.

[Mike Pesca]

When you do your surveys, do you see an uptick, even if it's from 2 to 4 or 4 to 8? Is that something you've been seeing? So we could say increase, even though your base levels are much lower?

[Brendan Nyhan]

We have not done this frequently enough to answer that question. But I'll tell you, my colleagues at the Polarization Lab, it's called, have done this. And interestingly enough, what they found was after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, endorsement of political violence actually went down rather than up. And the interpretation they offer is because elites came together and said support for political violence is bad. And those cues from elites matter. They didn't pour gasoline on the flames. And that's precisely what we need right now. And it's also why I'm worried that instead of getting that consensus oriented, everyone saying that violence is bad, we're getting escalatory responses from elites that could take us to a much more dangerous place.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And I'll give you my theory, which is at the time, by the way, elites playing a role is true, but at the time, the constituency that maybe had the potential to be the most violent after Donald Trump was shot. So this would be people who, who are fans of Donald Trump wanting, quote, unquote, revenge. They had another very salient action item that they could concentrate on, which is the election of Donald Trump. And that is not the case now. In fact, the next election, you know, judging by all of history, is trending towards the Democrats. So I think that played a major role. I don't know how you study for that or control for that.

[Brendan Nyhan]

I agree. The incentives are different. The Trump administration is engaged in what's been described as an authoritarian speed run. And in that context, we've seen historically that regimes grasp for precipitating events they can use to legitimize further crackdowns and repression. That's precisely what we've seen. So instead of a kind of consensus oriented response, we've seen the aftermath of the Kirk shooting being used as a kind of pretext for suppression of speech, claims of prosecutions against liberal groups and so forth. That's not just about political violence as such, but it takes us further down the road of a destabilized, illiberal and potentially authoritarian country, which is the road we're heading down. And it's a very dangerous one.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, in other societies that you've studied or that your colleagues have studied, and I know that even in comparative Western democracies, there is in many surprising countries that we would say really they have a bigger taste for political violence. In fact, they do. But is such a crackdown possible, given that in America we don't have this bloodthirsty viciousness? If your studies are to be believed, and I think they are, this may.

[Guest or Caller]

Be.

[Brendan Nyhan]

A case where the lessons of history suggest that people will often go along with authoritarian repression. I mean, kind of a key question you can think about right now, Mike, is whether what we're seeing, for instance, with Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air last night makes this more real to people. Sometimes these things can seem quite disconnected from people's everyday lives. And that I think is important in terms of why authoritarianism is tolerated. There's a kind of famous for political science essay by one of my colleagues about how life in authoritarian countries is mostly boring and tolerable. Americans tend to imagine it's secret police and tanks in the streets and all this stuff, but you go to an authoritarian country and you walk around and it's mostly fine. And people are doing all the same stuff that we're doing here.

[Mike Pesca]

And by the way, my friend Joel Stein, who writes for Time, has his own substack and he, I don't know why he went to Hungary, which is authoritarian, ish, at least. And that's what he found. It's like, this is nice mall, they have good wine. This is authoritarianism. But the answer is yes, it very well could be.

[Brendan Nyhan]

And under those circumstances, lots of people will kind of tolerate repression and crackdowns, especially when they don't seem to affect their lives. And other people will kind of find pretextual reasons to go along. And that's certainly what I worry about here. The people who pay close attention to politics, the ones on Trump's side, are mostly going to believe him when he says that there are these left wing networks fomenting violence, even though there's no connection to this 20 something year old enrollee in a technical college in Utah.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, I'll ask you this because this is where the conversation takes us, even if it's maybe a bit outside your exact ken. But I would assume that there's some percentage of the population who might hear the arguments about extreme leftism or whatever the far left means to them and not know the truth. Not Have a real grasp of it and maybe think, okay, you know, and chief is a real thing and they do damage and so maybe buy it, more or less. But I also think the Kimmel thing brings it home, makes it salient, and very much the median American is saying, what in the world are you talking about? Now, what I'll add to that is, I don't think so. You would say, oh, so this is a loser of an issue for the Trump administration. There is something about the Trump administration that benefits from just controversy and debate and debate on things like a comedian. And I find that people will give him excuses and say things like, yes, well, maybe that's not right, but think about his other point and still he wins. I don't know, is there some political science, some scholarship or analysis or an interesting paper you've read that talks about that phenomenon?

[Brendan Nyhan]

No, it's, it's a great question. It's one we've been, we've been thinking about, to be honest. So let me just make two brief points. The first is the direction I was suggesting before that Kimmel makes more real, how this is not something you can escape. Right. It's not that his audience was huge, the late night audiences have been dwindling, but nonetheless, he's a famous person who many people are familiar with. He's clearly Democratic aligned, but he's not some sort of MSNBC primetime host or something.

[Mike Pesca]

And to interrupt. And people very much understand what he was saying. People very much can get their head around. There is no secret information or. You don't have to figure out what the definition of a griper is. You just watch the monologue. And I'm not saying everyone's going to say acceptable, unacceptable, but people get it. Late night comedian cracking wise and perhaps being a bit insensitive. This is within the context of. No context. I always think it's important if it's so understandable to the average person without having to do a lot of homework. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Yeah, I think the one, the one question I have about how complicated this is is, of course we've seen other people go off the air for saying things that were controversial or upsetting. The key element here is the role of the FCC chairman in calling for him to be taken off there. It's the, it's the use of government power to silence speech. That's what's so pernicious about that. Do people understand that? It's more complicated. We'll see. The second point, does this still redound to Trump's benefit? I wonder. I think you could argue Democrats have paid a price politically for seeming to be the kind of more censorious party in recent years. This is one story people have offered for why young men in particular have trended away from supporting Democrats. It's possible this changes those dynamics in a broader sense, though, in terms of Trump, what I would say is one challenge that his opponents have always faced is it's very hard to get attention to anything they're doing or saying because everything in politics revolves around him. And so even when events aren't helping him in a direct sense, he's dominating attention in a way that just makes it hard for any competing message to really get sustained attention. So that would be maybe the hesitation I would have about prognosticating this as an obvious loser for him.

[Mike Pesca]

Correct. Okay, so I'm going to read to you. This is a press release. I think it's a press release put out by the University of Chicago Division of Social Sciences, dated within a couple days of the 24 election. The Economist, they're quoting a magazine. The risk of election violence in America is real. Professor Robert Pape, who is the professor, is quoted widely about that 36% statistic. Professor Robert Pape predicts a season of political violence based on his research on America's opinions on the matter. But what's not said, because this is not how time works, is he was wrong. We have to realize this. I think we do. We look back at the last election, there was no political violence. But people like you were also picking up that the appetite for political violence has changed. The past is not always prologue. But how much credence should we give what happened a very close dry run to this instance. And also taking into account this weird phenomenon where I can go back and find hundreds of articles of people worrying about and predicting the violence, and two from a couple months later where they quote people saying, yeah, that didn't happen. That was weird.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Well, I'll just say public discussion of forecasts is rarely helpful. There's lots of people making prognostications.

[Mike Pesca]

In.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Advance and very little accountability, exactly as you describe. And I'll just say the overall expert track record of forecasting is not great. There's a whole research literature on this. It turns out it can be problematic. What I'll say, though, is I think a lot of those forecasts were conditional. You should think of as being essentially conditional on Trump losing and he won. And so they weren't tested in the way that we're potentially going to be tested in 2026, and especially 2028 if Republicans lose. The last time Republicans lost a presidential election, we had January 6th. Now, and I want to make sure we get both sides of this, Mike, because it's really critical for people to think about. On the one hand, you could say despite millions and millions of Americans endorsing the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, almost none of them engaged in violence to try to change the outcome. That's consistent with the polls we've been talking about. On the other hand, a couple thousand people went to the Capitol. Right. That's consistent with these polls, too. It's not zero. And those people could have killed the speaker of the House. They could have killed the Vice President. They sought to overturn the result of the election. What we saw on January 6th was genuinely unprecedented. It didn't take that many people to overwhelm the Capitol Police. So we have to hold both those ideas in their head at the same time.

[Mike Pesca]

Donald Trump managed to effectively change the minds of Republicans about that within a couple of months. Right. Right afterwards, every, almost everyone was condemning it. And look at all the senators who changed their votes about certification of the election. And all of those senator Republican senators are now, now say things about, well, I think the election wasn't on the up and up. So that's. That says two permission structure. And it says to the power of Trump to shape perceptions and narratives.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Absolutely. January 6th has been, you know, retconned in the jargon into something totally different than the way it was understood afterwards. We barely talk about the fact that one of the first things Donald Trump did when he came into office was to pardon all the January 6th offenders, drop all the pending cases, and fire the prosecutors who worked on the cases. This was something that was condemned by virtually everyone in American politics back in 2021, which is not that long ago. So we can, even if most of us don't support political violence, many of us can come to excuse it. And that's worrisome, too.

[Mike Pesca]

Brendan Nyhan is a Dartmouth political science professor, government, if you want to be specific. He is co director of the Bright Line Watch. Thank you so much.

[Brendan Nyhan]

My pleasure. Great to be here.

[Mike Pesca]

And I do have a couple more questions of Brendan Ihan. Just things that have been on my mind. Maybe on your mind if you listen to the gist. I asked him about worries and suppositions that I have voiced in the past. Not exactly perfectly germane to what you just heard. The tersest and most efficient version of the interview. I want to bring to all. But if you want to listen to a couple more very interesting Q&As, subscribe to what we have on offer for Pesca plus listeners. Go to subscribe.mikepeska.com to hear all about our audio offerings including ad free segments and bonus segments. And this one will be with Brendan Nyhan. Let's map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Guest or Caller]

Honestly Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.

[Mike Pesca]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Guest or Caller]

Well, I'm departing from AT and T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

[Mike Pesca]

Bon voyage.

[T Mobile Advertiser]

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[Brendan Nyhan]

No, no.

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[Mike Pesca]

And now the spiel Jimmy Kimmel was cancelled because. Well, the best, most straightforward explanation was that Trump and Trump allies either took offense or wanted to take offense at what he said. What did he say? We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. Now, Kimmel was wrong. It wasn't a MAGA aligned assassin or it very, very much seems to not have been a MAGA aligned assassin. Given the indictment, given the text messages that were released, given Tyler Robinson's recovered discord exchanges, which we have to, as of now, take the government's word on. And then there was the writing on his bullets, his rounds, or his casings. Remember when I cited the phrase the best, most straightforward explanation? Not everyone offered that explanation. Some prominent people did not. The day after the bullet etchings were accurately reported, the LA Times ran a story where they interviewed Boston University disinformation researcher Ann Donovan. Listen now to the expert analyze the words. Hey, fascist, catch on a bullet and the lyrics to an anti fascist anthem. What might they mean? The first voice you will hear is the reporter and then Donovan the next.

[Guest or Caller]

Casings had some lyrics on it from an old song. Oh, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Chow, Chow Chow. An Italian resistance song. And it's. It's very old, but Bella Chow. The song was remixed and recirculated through playlists online, one of which is available on Spotify with the Groiper label. The American left are not the only ones that have called Charlie Kirk fascist. Even within the more far right fringe, even more further right than Charlie Kirk, for these types of people, he's not far right enough, especially when he's doing things like defending Israel. We're talking about people who are, you know, anti gay, anti lgbtq.

[Mike Pesca]

Donovan, who is described in the Chronicle of Higher Education as a lesbian punk anarchist who embedded in the Occupy movement and emerged with a sociology dissertation, was dismissed from Harvard and filed a whistleblower complaint, which was covered in that Chronicle of Higher Education article titled the Distortions of Joan Donovan as a world famous misinformation expert spreading misinformation in this case the Charlie Kirk assassination case. The best, most straightforward explanation is yes, she was spreading misinformation. The shooter hated Kirk, evidence says, because Kirk was hateful towards LGBTQ people, not because he was a hateful member of an anti LGBTQ movement. In Vox, Eric Levitz gets it right. Robinson. The shooter seems to have despised Kirk on progressive grounds, not griper ones. There is no point in lying about this. The case against Trump's crackdown on progressive groups does not hinge on this killer's motives. To dig in on the griper theory is to suggest it does. End quote. Let's pick up that point. Is it the case that getting it wrong about the MAGA motivations of the shooter, that's what opened the door for the crackdown? Clearly they were eager to crack down, no matter the reasons. And also quite clearly, a comedian gets to set up the premise of a joke, perhaps slightly inaccurately, and not be taken off the air, I mean, in a free and functional society. So I agree with all that. But it's also worth noting that the phenomenon of getting it wrong and then grasping onto explanations that flatter your worldview or putting those explanations into widespread circulation is a prominent feature of not just the benighted right or far right, but of human beings. A prominent writer for the Atlantic, Jamel Hill, linked to that and Donovan explanation and wrote, quote, the L A Times spoke with an expert, imagine that about the markings on the killer's bullet casings. And it turns out Charlie Kirk likely was the victim of a white supremacist gang hit. Well, well, Hill has since deleted that post. Kimmel made a forgivable but misguided remark. Prominent historian Heather Cox Richardson said the shooter appeared to have embraced the far right and then when more information emerged, only went so far as to say his motives were unclear. Aren't they always so I say some humility, especially to the Cassandras of the corrosive power of disinformation. But also it does not matter. Tyler Robinson was unwell and angry and arm and convinced that violence was the answer. And all of those qualities are positively correlated with being dangerous. And I am here to tell you that being what they say he was a leftist does not in any meaningful way positively correlate with being dangerous. I mean, you could argue it makes you a bit angrier, but you know what? There are plenty of people further to the left or more, more coherently on the left than this alleged assassin who would never do anything like this, wouldn't even want to, literally did not cheer and felt nothing but disgust at the results of this left leaning person's actions. So the left or some elements on the left being incorrect about the facts in this matter really did not give Trump the opening he needed to strike out against his enemies. That is what is known as a pretext. But in this case I also think that the incorrect left bears some blame for the degradation of the information environment that makes a crime like this a bit more likely to happen. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Ashley Kahns, our production coordinator Kathleen Sykes writes the gist list with me and Michelle Pesca is the COO of Peach Fish Productions. Improve Jeep Peru Do Peru and thanks for listening.