If you're not already in the habit of watching Philip DeFranco, today's news program is worth watching in full:

It's tempting to add my own editorials to all of this, but I think the video actually speaks for itself fairly well.  The only things I might add are:

* I worry a little about the performative aspect of denouncing political violence, since I feel like it's assumed (and should be assumed) that all normal people oppose political violence.
And yet, since we are living in particularly contentious times, maybe it doesn't hurt to communally remind ourselves of our values.  We as a society denounce political violence.

* That being said, I think if you look at the history of political assassinations in America, it's about a 50/50 chance whether the guy who shot Charlie Kirk is an ideologue, or whether he is just some nutcase causing random violence.  As was the case with the 2024 attempt on Trump.  As was the case with the attempted assassination on Reagan (W).   A lot of the gun violence in America doesn't actually have a rational reason to it.  The school shootings are a perfect example of this.
And in fact, any ideologue with half a brain must know that killing Charlie Kirk accomplishes nothing, since Kirk is just one of many voices in the right-wing movement.  And in fact, killing him would just invite a conservative counter-reaction.  (As we are currently seeing.)  I mean, we'll have to wait until we eventually get more information about the shooter and we know for sure, but I'd be surprised if this was a purely political assassination. 

* Speaking of the right-wing counter-reaction, Laura Loomer's statement that "more people will be murdered if the left isn't crushed with the power of the state" is particularly revealing. 

Charlie Kirk wasn’t even controversial. He was moderate. He was conservative but by no means controversial.

Imagine who else the Left is going to hunt down and murder on the right if they wanted to kill a guy who said “get married, have kids, there’s 2 genders, vote for Trump.”…

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) September 10, 2025

Wanting the government to "crush the left with the power of the state" is about as close to the definition of fascism as you can get, and it's particularly troubling given how much influence Laura Loomer has at the White House.

I know the right hates it when the left calls them fascists, but, come on, guys, read a history book or something.  You're acting like fascists.

* In other news mentioned in the video, the blatant corruption at Trump's FBI is...well, I guess I can't say it's surprising, but it's certainly depressing.

But then, as I moaned about in an earlier post, another part of me thinks, "What's the point of even getting upset about this anymore?  After all, everyone knows how awful Trump is, and he still won the 2024 election.  I guess this is just what the American people want.

Further Thoughts: September 12, 2025

Having had another day to think about it, I've decided that what's so infuriating about this discourse is that the Right is simultaneously trying to convince us that Charlie Kirk's inflammatory rhetoric had no consequences at all and also that the Left's inflammatory rhetoric was directly responsible for killing Charlie Kirk.

The Right has also been trying to remake Charlie Kirk out to be some sort of reasonable political commentator.  Which he never was in his lifetime, and which no one ever pretended he was during his lifetime.  Charlie Kirk was an Internet troll.  Charlie Kirk followed the same model that has made so many other trolls famous in this Internet era--He intentionally said outrageous things in an effort to provoke extreme reactions from people, and then he used the publicity from those reactions to get more fame and attention.  His comments and statements over the years are a matter of public record, and can be easily Googled.  I won't list them all here, but a couple examples will suffice to give a flavor:

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

or

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately. 

This is obviously not speech aimed at healing America's divisions.  This is speech designed to inflame hatred against Democrats and the LGBT community.  And it's no surprise that people vocalized responses to this.  This is rhetoric that's designed to evoke a response.  That's how Kirk built his fame.

Now, I'm a free speech absolutist myself.  I believe that you should be able to say whatever you want to say, and not get shot for it.  But then if we extend that right to Charlie Kirk, we'd have to extend it to his opponents as well. 

And to be fair to Kirk, I don't believe he ever directly advocated for violence.  He spread plenty of hate, but he didn't advocate for people to translate that hate into physical violence.

But then, to be equally fair, nobody on the Left ever advocated for Kirk's assassination.  I don't know, maybe you could find some random Twitter accounts.  But certainly no one prominently.  And no elected members of the Democratic party, despite Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna yelling at Democrats that "You all caused this" and "You fucking own this".
But if Democrats never advocated for Charlie Kirk's assassination, then how did they cause it?  I'm assuming she means by using rhetoric that demonized the other side.  But then, Charlie Kirk made a whole career of rhetoric that demonized the other side.  

Donald Trump and other Republicans say that the Left is responsible for Charlie Kirk's death because they compared him to the Nazis.  But Charlie Kirk himself regularly made Nazi comparisons against the Left--he said abortion was worse than the Holocaust, he said that we need a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.  

You can't have it both ways.  If Kirk had a right to his rhetoric, then the Democrats have a right to theirs.  You can't argue that Kirk's rhetoric had no implications, but that the rhetoric from the Democrats was directly responsible for causing his death.