Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump Stokes Divisions As Charlie Kirk's Killer Is Turned In

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

BREAKING: Charlie Kirk’s killer has been turned in. Trump stokes division on Fox News. Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer react. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I want you to look at how Utahans reacted the last two nights. There was no rioting. There was no looting. There were no cars set on fire. There's no violence. There were vigils and prayers and people coming together to share the humanity. And that, ladies and gentlemen, I believe, is the answer to this. We can return violence with violence. We can return hate with hate. And that's the problem with political violence, is it metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side.

And at some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse. But see, these are choices that we can make. history will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. Dan, what did you make of Cox's speech this morning and just sort of what he's had to say over the last couple of days? It's similar to what he said at the press conference on Wednesday. John and I talked about a little bit on the podcast out this morning on Friday. He is saying the things that you want leaders to say in this moment. He's saying things that are said by a lot of Democrats who are out speaking right now.

Obviously, not a lot of people on his side are listening to him. particularly one person of significance that we will get to. But he is right. Like to end the he is right that political violence begets more political violence. And if you want to end it, you need people on both sides to condemn it no matter where it comes from and to call for something better, right? For better outcomes, for better processes for, I hate to use the term civility, but to, but you really have to denounce the violence and do it strongly and passionately and morally. And I think he did do that here. Yeah, I mean, I've been really impressed by Cox and what I've heard from him in the last few days.

I don't know if that's because he is good or because after a decade of Trump, I'm like really hungry for this kind of message, especially in this fraught moment, like you just referenced. I literally know nothing about the guy or his political view, so no one yell at me like I'm sort of in doing him. Yes, I was going to say the same thing. Yeah. But like, look, at least he seemed like a human being. He was trying to bring people together and he was emotional. And it was just a contrast from what we'll see from Trump. in a minute. Also, Dan, I'm not sure if you caught it, but the next speaker up after Spencer Cox

was FBI director Cash Patel, who just looked like a deer in headlights. Like, he was trying to act in charge and take credit for what happened. And he, like, read out this timeline of, like, ostensibly key events, one of which was when he and Dan Bongino, his deputy, arrived on the scene as if, like, that was what cracked the case. And then he bragged about personally walking through the crime scene. Again, this guy has no law enforcement experience. Like, do we think that he was like Dexter out there, like figuring out who the killer was. It was just, it was very weird. He, yeah, it's, he, I mean, there's a devastating New York Times story that came out last night that talks about just what an absolute shit show.

His leadership of the FBI has been, but particularly in this case, he was looked totally not up to the job. When he was doing his readout, he says, like the FBI agents, the local, I assume the local ones arrived, 16 minutes after the shooting, which is, that's great. That's impressive. And then we immediately began, we deployed fixed-wing. aircrafts. And I thought he was going to say that was to like search, you know, like surveillance flights and look for the killer. It was to transport people. He just, he arranged. East coasts. Yes. He arranged flights. Congratulations. Yeah. Well done. So we learned some more information about the shooter at this press conference. Robinson apparently wrote messages on the shell

casings that were found, I think, near the gun, near the school. Some of those messages include, hey, fascist, catch. If you read this, you are gay, LMAO. up arrow, right arrow, and three down arrow symbols, which is apparently a reference to a video game. And then O. Chow, O Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, which is either a reference to an Italian song or like a song used in memes. Again, a lot of this is... It's also a video game song. Yeah, video game song. Yeah, so a lot of...

There's a lot of ambiguity here. And then notice the bulges OWO, what's this? Again, it's apparently another online roleplay gaming reference. So again, look, let's just say for the... I'll say it infinity times. What this guy did was evil. and indefensible, and I condemn it no matter what the motive. But I do think we need more information to try to understand if there was an ideology behind it.

Because what we know, based on those facts, is that he is a super online, kind of like meme-loving gamer. But as Charlie Wardsell and other smart reporters who track this online world have noted, recent shooters often seem like they're performing for one another, and they're leaving these trails of like online breadcrumbs that are, you know, amusing to each other in a sick way, but also confused normal people. For example, the Minnesota Catholic school shooter wrote a bunch of stuff on his gun. There were references to Waco and Ruby Ridge, which are foundational events in the anti-government, like, militia movement world.

But he also wrote, kill Donald Trump. And then also just some weird, like, meme shit, like skibbity or Lenny face, which is like deep cut meme stuff. So, you know, Wartell described the writings as irony, poisoned nihilism. So all of that is just a way of saying, like, I know Trump has blamed the radical left and did so before there was anyone. captured or apprehended. And I'm totally open to this being, you know, a radical left, Antifa, whatever person, and I will condemn them again. But I think we need more information before we actually really know the motive here. Yeah, there is this race online right now before the left, sorry, for the folks on the right to say this is absolutely a left-wing radical

Democrat. They're using that, that fascist comment on the bullets to prove it. There are people on the left who are rushing to say that he's actually a Republican. because he comes from a Republican family. He was very much into gun culture. And there's a lot of information going around. It's that I've not yet seen verified about whether he did or did not contribute to Trump's campaign. We don't really know that right now. We want to have that confirmed.

But the most likely scenario here is that this is, like in most of these cases, is a lot of violence like this is someone who is deeply confused and disturbed. oftentimes has been radicalized, not politically, but towards violence and deep online communities. And so we don't know. And even with, you look back at the attempt to assassinations of Trump in Butler, the one was ever able to figure out what the actual motivation there was. It's always more, it's more complicated and also more simple than you think is it's not necessarily about politics. We don't know. Like we're waiting for more information.

So I don't want to be one of those people who says definitely not. Something from the left, definitely not something right. We just don't know. But the information we have right now on Friday morning suggests a much more complicated picture than anyone's narrative is willing to cope with. Yeah, and I guess the good news in this case is this person was captured alive, so we will be able to get more information. But I think people might be asking, why does it matter what the motive is?

Well, because you're hearing a lot of very scary stuff in sort of MAGA circles that is understandable anger and rage and a feeling of being attacked. But you're all, but, but that could be turned into, well, now we need to fight back or reprisal violence. And Dan, as you know, I'm, I kind of a sicko and listen to right wing stuff sometimes. And I listen to like a two-hour Nick Fuentes stream last night, which is for folks who don't know, he's like a far right neo-Nazi. And it's, it's dangerous to take what folks in that world say at face value for all the reasons we're talking about right now because a lot of stuff is said with a wink and there's double meanings and memes, et cetera. but it was interesting to hear him tell his listeners directly, like, not to take up arms and to actually follow Christ.

Like, that was kind of the core message, which, I don't know, it was good to hear someone who I think is probably, like, the furthest right, the most divisive person in kind of the right-wing political world, actually encouraging people to please not start down a path of reprisal violence because it could end in something very scary. You are right that there are definitely a lot of people. who knew Charlie Kirk, cared about Charlie Kirk in right wing circles. He was like incredibly well connected to people in the Trump White House, people of the conservative movement,

who are reacting in legitimate anger and grief in ways that maybe some of them will come to regret, you know, in over time. But there are a lot of people who are doing it through purely who are, even if they are, they knew him or upset by it, a lot of what, there's a lot of cynicism involved here to try to exploit this for things that they have used. Of course. Many, many other incidents, even it didn't involve people they knew as a pretext for a greater

assumption of power from the right as reasons to crack down on the left, to begin policing political speech on the left, not the right, to get cracking down on political organizations on the left, not the right. And to begin targeting vulnerable groups like the trans community in this country, and we've seen this many, many times. And just because Charlie Kirk, and just because some of them knew Charlie Kirk does not excuse that behavior, especially when you go down that path without any evidence that to support, like at the time they were all pushing this, we didn't even know who the shooter was. We still don't know, have a real picture of what the motivation was. And yet this is being used as pretext for a potentially large scale crackdown using the full power of the federal government to crack down on people who opposed Donald Trump or opposed MAGA.

And that's scary. It does not excuse any call to violence ever. I'm just sort of like thinking as a human being if like one of my friends from kind of like the progressive media world was killed. You better believe I'd be rage tweeting and blaming people and angry. But again, that does not excuse call to violence. It also does not justify crackdowns on free speech, which ironically like was the thing Charlie Kirk talked about the most. I mean, he firmly believed that speech is not violence and that we need speech to avoid violence because that kind of debate is is the steam valve that lets us, you know, figure out our differences. Dan, President Trump was on Fox & Friends this morning.

He decided to break the news about the arrest before Governor Cox or before law enforcement officials. He was also asked about how we can unify the country in this fraught moment. Let's listen to his answer. I wrote a little song to remind you, choice hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The can be a hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceotails.com.

Radicals on the right as well. We have radicals on the left. People have gotten or watching all of these videos and cheering. Some people are cheering that Charlie was killed. How do we fix this country? How do we come back together? I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right, oftentimes they're radical because they don't want to see crime.

They don't want to see crime. Worryed about the border. They're saying, we don't want these people coming in. We don't want you. our shopping centers. We don't want you shooting our people in the middle of the street. The radicals on the left are the problem. And they're vicious and they're horrible and they're politically savvy. Although they want men and women sports. They want transgender for everyone. They want open borders. So Lincoln asked Dan. But I mean, look, I mean, this is why like Governor

Cox's message, I think probably resonated with you, resonated with me, because we have Trump, who's just an arsonist there. He's justifying right-wing violence because, you know, in his mind, their motives are good and pure, and the left is evil. And that's so dangerous. Yeah. And it comes from someone who enabled and then part in the perpetrators of the largest mass incident of political violence in recent history. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like you and we praised Cox. And I think he did what the way he spoke did feel authentic. But it is what he's saying is also the bare fucking minimum. Yes. Of what people should be saying in this moment. And the fact that it is notable says so much about today's Republican Party that so few people are willing or able to call for unity who willing to look inward and recognize that a lot of political violence in this country comes from the right. Yeah. Some come from the left, but a lot comes from the right.

And like what Donald Trump is doing here is so dangerous. It is so dangerous. It is like it's demagoguery pure and simple. and like it we've just come to sort of expect it like I saw someone tweet in the uh surprisingly but not shocking category which is true like that's like I guess it's kind of surprising that he couldn't even pretend for one freaking second to care to try to unify the country but like we've come to tolerate a truly extraordinary level of demagoguery from our president in this country it is like deeply deeply deeply dangerous yeah it's incredibly scary and look there of course have been

some fringe, broken brain, overly online, like edge lord assholes who have made jokes or celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination. And fuck those people. I think they're disgusting. I thought it was disgusting when people celebrated Luigi Mangione murdering a United Healthcare CEO. I think it's very easy to draw a line at violence and to try to be just a human being in these moments and think about Charlie Kirk's wife and his two little kids. what this will mean for them going forward.

I don't think that is too much to ask. It doesn't mean I endorse TPSA or his political project or his political views. We actively argue with Charlie Kirk and fought with him all the time. Like there's a record people can look at there. But it's just like it's okay to be a human in this moment. But I will say, setting aside those like that tiny sliver of French people, I've actually seen the overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats, including the far left, like Jacobin had a long op-ed about how that headline was

Charlie Kirk's murder is a tragedy and a disaster. Like people are roundly condemning this because they all know that once this kind of violence starts, it is very tough to stop. That is exactly right. And two, like, yes, you can find examples on the Democratic side, for sure, people who are random people online, but the almost to a person, I think probably to a person, elected Democrats, prominent Democrats, promiss, socialists, have all decried, condemned the violence against Charlie Kirk condemned political violence and said we need to do something better as this country.

And that is not like there is a massive asymmetry here between the left and the right on condemning political violence in this case and more broadly. Yes, there is. Finally, Dan, before Trump, I think, got on a helicopter to go somewhere, he was asked about how he personally was holding up, given that, you know, Charlie Kirk was a close friend of his, a close friend of his sons. Let's listen. How are you holding up for the last three and a half a day?

I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all. the Trump, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it's going to be a beauty. It'll be an absolute and magnificent construction. So he pivoted from a question about how he's doing and how he feels about the assassination of his friend to bragging about the construction of a ballroom. I'm just like, I have no words, Dan.

It's truly just the lack of empathy, sympathy, just a just general. general human emotion in the man is like gobsmacking. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's, he can't find even a second to just have some at the, like, look, that said, I know he has, you know, called Charlie Kirk's wife. He's giving him the Medal of Freedom. He's memorializing him. It's just like, it's just so weird to pivot a question like that to like wanting credit about constructing a ballroom. So do you not hear that in your own head have wrong that sounds, Mr. President? Yeah, it's just an inability to even fake it.

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