Bulwark Takes - If a Liberal Wrote This, They’d Be Fired INSTANTLY

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

Geoffrey Ingersoll, The Daily Caller’s editor-at-large published a shocking column calling for “ultra violence” and “blood in the streets” in response to political tensions. JVL and Andrew Egger take on the extreme rhetoric, the hypocrisy of MAGA’s approach to violence, and why conservative leaders refuse to denounce it

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everyone. This is JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Andrew Eger, with, you know, another unhappy video for you explaining the things that are going on in the world that are terrible. Before we get started, you should go ahead and hit like and subscribe because it's not going to get any happier after this. Andrew, people are very concerned about political violence these days. We've written a lot about that at the bulwark, starting in 2016, when Donald Trump was. holding political rallies and telling supporters to assault people and promising to pay for their legal bills, going through Charlottesville, murder of Heather Hire, going through the various spates of political violence we've had on the right and the left, right, shooting of

Steve Scalise, and through January 6th, and then to the terrible assassination of Charlie Kirk. Um, this is a thing that I think you and I can agree that, uh, not the president or Stephen Miller or many Republicans, but some people have been very responsible about, uh, on the right. On the left, every name brand Democrat or liberal, I think has behaved responsibly. I don't think we can point. You can find posts on blue. guy in Twitter with progressive types saying irresponsible things. But I don't think you can point to like, hey, this representative or this senator or this governor or the editor of this magazine has been bad on this stuff. Would you agree? Yeah, you can kind of stress test that proposition by the fact that, you know, the people who have been upheld, especially sort of in the, in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the people have been kind of held up as. as like the most grievous examples of left-wing justification of this sort of violence

have been like small town mayors, you know, some guy who maybe runs the city council and some 800 person, Pennsylvania town. There's one of those. And more at the national level, there's been this effort to censure Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman who, you know, retweeted a video basically right after the assassination, basically saying, like, I condemn political violence, but let's not like sugarcoat, you know, Charlie Kirk's life and work and, you know, when the video kind of went after his work in pretty strident terms, but was explicitly saying, you know, no violence. We don't sanction the violence. And that's kind of been like the person that that Republicans have sort of held up is as like the worst of the worst right now. So yes, I think it's basically fair to say. And to be to be clear, again, want to give credit where credits do. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, very good on this. I mean, even Ted Cruz. Very good on this. Like no justifications of violence from them. Donald Trump, a little less so. Steve Miller, a little less so, but that's okay. Today, we have a piece over at the Daily Caller, which is, you know, it's not the New York Times, but it's not nothing.

I would say Daily Caller exists. Would you agree on the same level as like Breitbart, like a rung above the Federalist, sort of maybe a half rung below Breitbart in terms of prominence? Does that sound about right to you? Yeah, and they were founded, you know, however long ago, before I got to Washington. It was Tucker Carlson who originally found up the collar, right? And it was kind of supposed to be sort of this upscale, you know, reporting first, more sort of respectable right-wing publication sort of ended up doing the thing most right-wing publications do or did at that time, which is chase a lot of traffic

with, you know, sort of histrionic content, although the Daily Collar, I seem to remember, also itemized pretty hard into like cheesecake, like listicles back in the day. So that was sort of a weird moment in time. Yeah, exactly. When are we going to do that? But yeah, I mean, as far as like where they are now, it's like they still have a pretty decent DC presence. So they do more actual reporting than a lot of these other right-wing outlets, not just sort of like opinion stuff. Well, don't go crazy.

I mean, they have reporters, right? They occasionally do a reported piece through their news foundation. That's about it. Okay. So today we get a piece by, again, not a nobody, not a not a, not a 22-year-old. intern. Jeffrey Ingersoll, who is currently editor at large, was one time the big boss chief over at the Daily Caller. And he has a column, the headline of which is, enough is enough, I choose violence. I got to say, as a huge fan of Circe Lanister,

I was not immediately put off by the headline. I was like, okay, like I'm ready to roll with that. I'd like to journey through this, though, with you. We need, so I'm just going to read loads of quotes for us to book club here. Here's Jeffrey Ingersoll. We need to reinstitute a public debt for antisocial and subversive behavior. In my opinion, some of this cost needs to be summary and ultra-violent. Is this a call for violence? Yes.

Explicitly, it is. I mean, full credit to Ingersoll for not hiding the football year. he's not trying to there is we should say this there is nothing in this piece that is put there to give him plausible deniability do you have thoughts here

or do you want to save him to the end should we keep moving through you tell me my first my very first initial thought is just not just violence but ultra violence I wonder what I wonder if Ingersoll means anything specific by that or whether that's just kind of a punch up word to make the copy sing a little more well we'll get

to that he has some some some examples. So he then goes on, he then begins to justify why ultraviolence is necessary. And it is because society has become so rotten and legal structures no longer, basically, it's the Batman. That's why he gives, because Batman, that's why. Here he is again, in corrupt legal scenarios where the judges, prosecutors, and even police are all a part of a rigged system, What do we do? Choose violence. We all know the government is not going to help you in your time of need, especially a Soros-sponsored government. Conservatives looking to peacefully assemble and publicly debate need to be realistic. Nobody is going to help you. In fact, they're going

to encourage violence. They're going to excuse, justify, and encourage it. We saw as much with Charlie Kirk, they were practically begging someone to go after him, and when someone did, they quickly justified it. So a couple things here. I think everybody could probably recognize that governments and laws do not always and everywhere satisfactorily handle outbreaks of political violence and violence, right? Sometimes people. who appear to be guilty, get off. That's a thing that happens, right? Many people thought the Kyle Rittenhouse killings were not actually good examples of lethal self-defense. A lot of jury of his peers didn't agree with that and found him innocent. And so this is a thing that happens, right? Sometimes

prosecutors don't do the thing that we want them to. Sometimes juries don't do the things that we want them to, et cetera, et cetera. He doesn't seem to recognize it. He seems to take, like, you know, any case in which he doesn't get the outcome he wants is an example that society is rotten and the government isn't going to help you in your time of need. But then he talks about how they justified what happened to Charlie Kirk. And again, as we said at the top, like, who is they?

I mean, he has some examples through here, right? it's he takes a weird detour into like, I don't just mean like physical street violence. I also mean legal violence, which, uh, which we should deploy to go after Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Barack Obama and, uh, Anthony Fauci and like anybody who's ever, uh, displeased me, the editor at large of the daily collar should probably have the pants suit off them and their lives ruined. I mean, it's, I don't know what's, is there one through line? I don't know. I mean, I it's, it's all, it's all he's really letting it fly. Yeah. So here we're getting. I'm I'm going to let the legal violent stuff sit to the side because I think that's wrong.

But like, you can have a, you can have a conversation about that. Like, you know, that's not, here's the stuff that starts getting pretty rough. Bring security with you that's dying to dole out drubbings. I'm sure a fair amount of ex-cons who found Jesus loved Charlie Kirk. Maybe they need work. Whatever works, we need to reinstitute the cost. So some activist takes the sign next to your table at a public debate, like what happened here, and he includes a link, she gets instantly clotheslined. I don't care if police

are present. Do it anyway. In fact, be wildly disproportionate. A fat black lady assaults your on-camera talent. Book the kind of security that has no qualms hospitalizing her and people like her. I mean, I wonder what he means by that. Dudes rope up your car and start vandalizing it. Bros. Dismounting with cudgels will fix that real quick. Turn it into an instant brawl, break bones, force corrupt police to intervene. I want blood in the streets. Before we go on here, I just have to ask, can you imagine what Fox News would say and how much airtime they would give if the editor of the New Republic wrote a piece demanding,

I want blood in the streets. We had a little mini scandal along these lines when a random Canadian alt-weekly had a piece in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death. Did you see anything about this? I don't remember the name of the, the name of the publication, but like that was how keyed up they all were

for like an instance of, you know, leftist rhetoric going too far. They dragged this poor, you know, mid-tier broadsheet from, from, I don't know, Calgary or something. It wasn't Calgary. But, like, yes, you are 100% correct. It would not go unnoticed if, you know, current affairs or the New Republic or the New Yorker

were to itemize into this kind of rhetoric. We must stop clutching our principles and shouting stop. I mean, only some of you are clutching your principles and shouting stop, my conservative friends. They own the legal system. That will achieve nothing. Not in Texas, is it? Where you're allowed to run people anyway. never mind. We need action, disproportionate, violent action, pain and suffering. We need to raise the cost of obviating the social contract, measure it in blood if necessary. Change requires pain, and you're either taking it or inflicting it.

That is Jeffrey Engersoll of The Daily Caller. Again, not an intern, former head of the Daily Caller now editor at large. Also, not a one-off. If you go through his most recent pieces, uh, restoring public order starts with viciously arresting more street liberals. Street liberals. Nice. Okay.

The rotten smell at the core of liberal politics is unmistakable. The playbook Trump should follow in Kirk's wake is simple, but it'll take brass balls. Charlie Kirk's murder should resolve. in a purge, does Trump have what it takes? Can I talk about this just for a quick second? Because

sure, this is, as I was reading through this and hearing you read those clips, the thing that was going over and over in my head is you would think these two things are like totally irreconcilable, right? That like, if it is true that like the federal government is starting to like really already crack down on these people,

you wouldn't have to all. call for street violence, right? I mean, you could just do the, you know, everybody relax, Patriots in control. Donald Trump's getting rid of, you know, the horrible George Soros prosecutors and the left wing judges. And we've had this huge reactionary movement in this country to kind of distance ourselves from, certainly from defend the police, but like from any real, real concern for like, you know, human rights in policing that there's been this enormous pendulum swing back toward, you know, law and order anti-crime policies and, like, all of those things are having these effects throughout the justice system. And isn't that a good thing? But on the one hand,

he's calling for more and more and more of all of that. And then on the other hand, he goes over to this column and says, now as all of us know, the justice system is completely incapable of dishing out justice. No one will ever receive their justice earths through legal channels. And the only thing for you, Joe Patriot, to do is get out there and start cracking heads. Like, I don't really understand that. The other, the one other thing that I would say is just really grinds my gears how like these things are always written from a sort of like a posture of like, I'm the only bold truth teller who's willing to say the thing that must be said, right?

Like everyone else will clutch to their pearls and, and respect to the liberal pieties of, of course, we oppose violence, but not me because I know what really needs to be done. And it's like, it doesn't take any particular. particular like bravery to say what is really just sort of the default like animal human response to like hostile stimuli. You see a lot of people out there who you don't like for one reason or another and you think that like they're getting more over on you than your side's getting over on them. And your kind of Neanderthal response is to want to dish out violence. And like we've sort of moved past that sometimes. We have we have sort of lifted ourselves

gradually out of the, out of the muck of sort of, you know, Thomas Hobbs, you know, state of nature of, of, you know, nasty, solitary, poor, brutish and short human violence one on another by like building all these social structures that like channel that those anger, that anger off away from violence and, you know, channel better human behavior and better constructive things. And like, those are fine. It's good that we did that.

It's like the idea that like everything that we have done, since sort of like the stone age is really just sort of like these liberal niceties. It's a mistake. Yeah. I mean, it's like, come on, man. Like, I don't want, I don't want to live in a cave and wear animal furs and try to bash your head in with a club before you can do the same to me. That doesn't sound great.

And I don't know if you would make it very far in your job as a web columnist under such an environment either, Mr. Ingersoll. So that's, it's all very, it's all very silly. I mean, this is, it's all about power, right? And this is what fascism always, always winds up being. It's just about power. It's not about internal consistency. It's not like, you know, believe me, Jeffrey Ingersoll is not bothered by the tension between, yes, Trump is doing what needs to be done.

Look at all these ice agents throwing people down to the street. That's awesome. And you can't trust law or the government to safeguard you. we need to form up our own vigilante gangs and go out and put blood in the streets. Like that there is no pause being given between like, hey, hmm. And the biggest tell on this is how MAGA approaches police authority. So whenever, whenever you see armed agents of the state committing violence against say anonymous black or brown people

the default reaction for MAGA is well you know they deserved it and it's always like well they shot this guy and well you know he didn't comply fast enough or they threw this grandmother

down onto the ground well she touched them with her elbow you know like there's always a but then you get to like January 6th you're like these people were beating the police. How dare they shoot that brave patriot, that poor lady, right? And it's this weird, again, it's all just power.

There's no, it's just pure might makes right. And it kind of collapses really any actual distinction between like actual spheres of authority where, you know, specifically delineated agents of the state are, are righteous in wielding force under specifically delineated situations under the law in a constrained way, right? Like that's that matters less, much less. In fact, I mean, like he's, he's very plainly making it here. He wants the agents of the state to continue to wield power because the state is currently in the hands of a right wing government. But he also thinks that you, you know, again, Joe Patriot out there on the street corner have just as much of a right as those cops do

to wield power because you also are wielding power on behalf of the political right. I mean, is ultimately what it what it boils down to is cops who are who are you know trying to trying to forcibly constrain a right wing you know trump supporting mob on january 6th from doing whatever they might want to do are not wielding their authority like duly because because they're doing the opposite of the right thing which is for the political right to get its way right and and and so like you you strengthen the the left right distinction here to such a degree that that there really is no is no distinction between like an ice agent beating up somebody and you yourself beating up somebody because it all really amounts to the same thing, which is putting the left in their place.

Yeah. And final thought here, there is this impulse, especially in the media, to both sides, everything. And be like, well, you know, left wing political violence is also really bad. And not a look, you know, not not everybody on the left said the right things about the Charlie Kirk murder. Here are these five anonymous accounts on blue sky that said terrible things justifying violence. I just think it is very important to say that if some liberal magazine editor wrote this column, basically every Democrat with any sort of national ambition would be put on the spot and told to repudiate it.

I think that editor would probably lose his job within an hour or two. He certainly would never be welcome as a panelist on CNN again or CBS News. This is, again, we're not nutpicking. We're not grabbing some piece written by an intern for a blog that you've never heard of. This is the Daily Caller, which is, you know, I would say like the, a second or third-tier conservative media institution, and this is a guy who was the editor and is now the editor at large saying explicitly that he's making a call for violence and he wants blood in the streets.

And you guys out there listening to this, I want you to leave in the comments for me the name of every Republican, elected Republican and conservative writer, conservative personality out there who you see denouncing this guy. Because it's going to be a short fucking list. That's the asymmetry. Guys, hit like and hit subscribe. We'll bring you more of this sunshine on a near hourly basis from now until the end of America. Andrew, thanks for hanging out with me.

I always show you a good time, don't I? We have fun, you know? Good luck, America.