The response to our coverage about the Charlie Kirk assassination.

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 the event and its aftermath with the country, I’ve been poring over that feedback. Some of it was frustrating to read and some of it was compelling; some of it, I thought, merited a response, while other pieces of feedback seemed to stand fairly and well 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 am taking, 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 this 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 said many detestable things, which drew many criticisms (including from me). He is, in simple terms, exactly the kind of partisan firebrand I created Tangle to counter. At the same time, Kirk could have said some of the nastiest, cruelest, most deranged things imaginable and still not deserved a bullet in the neck. The day after his death, I believed 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 have already lost our way. 

I am doing my best to resist that urge. 

In resisting it, I’ll accept the criticism that I think I overcompensated and lionized him or “whitewashed” 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 he often presented himself as (and the only clips social media algorithms showed to so many people). I do not think he was a simple person. I think he was complicated, like all of us. I plan to make that case in more depth in response to some of our reader feedback. 

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 targets of Kirk’s ire.

Also, a lot of people have reacted to a clip posted to our Instagram page of me breaking down in tears while describing Kirk’s death. 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 cohost, 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 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’ve 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 Iryna 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 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 wellbeing simply for having moderate politics that they think “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,” then any of us can frame anyone else’s views as “bad enough” and decide to kill them. And that part is really, really frightening. I think a little reinforcement of our humanity is a good thing. Thankfully, I did see a few reactions that seemed 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, that 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 Charlie Kirk’s death as a flashpoint warning to step back from the brink, 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 milquetoast joke about Trump not expressing empathy and for claiming 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, and more than anything, I am 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 into the world.

Now, on to the criticism. Below, I’m going to share thoughts from readers with my responses in bold.

The criticism.

I want to start by saying that I appreciate what you are doing at Tangle — discourse across political lines is even more important now than it has ever been before. I subscribed to challenge my beliefs and biases and have been impressed by the Tangle writers’ abilities to understand and present nuanced situations.

I fear that this take from Isaac did not succeed in presenting that nuance.

I fully support efforts to humanize Charlie Kirk because at the end of the day, that’s who he was, a human. Even if he didn’t believe that empathy matters, I do, and I will give him and everyone I disagree with the acknowledgement that we are human and do still live in a country with the right to choose our beliefs (although I worry every day about the trends toward a system that does not allow that). But as of today, we have that right.

Unfortunately, that’s where I stopped wanting to give Isaac the benefit of the doubt. I have no issue with takes that I disagree with (for mental health these days you have to learn when to let things go), but I do have an issue with takes that try to rewrite history.

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. Not only did Isaac misrepresent the majority of the left’s reaction and lack of empathy (there has actually been a lot of empathy? The whole point is that we don’t want ANYONE to die from gun violence?) but he also misrepresented what Charlie Kirk stood for and was trying to do. 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 about his life.

Yes, he was a father. Yes, he made millions off of bullying college students as a fully grown adult. Yes, he was a husband. Yes, he believed women should submit to men. Yes, he has family and friends and community to mourn him. Yes, he said hateful things about people of color and the LGBTQ community. Yes, he was human.

All of these things can be true. 

The last thought I want to leave with is that each of the people he “owned”, each of the people whose deaths he brushed aside, each of the people who he said should not have the right to live the life they chose — all of them are human, too.

Please reflect on your mission and what you have allowed to be published. I hope to see the same nuanced Tangle takes going forward that I and many of your subscribers have come to love.

Thank you for the work that you do,

— Kayla from Tampa, FL

Isaac: I appreciate this particular piece of feedback. I think it is probably worth just talking about the worst of Kirk, here and now, so we can get it on the record.