Tangle - PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: The response to our coverage about the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

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.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, you're your very sick host. currently. I six all. It is Friday, September 19th. I am going to sound like crap today. I apologize. Unfortunately, also, we're also at a team offsite. Well, that's good news. We're at a team offsite. The tangle team is all together. I'm not going to say where, but we're in a cool spot together. We're doing a team retreat this week. So I'm recording from a non-studio room.

And I'm very sick, which is a huge bummer to be sick for the team retreat. but making the best of it. And we're going to talk about some of the Charlie Kirk feedback today. So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to read an intro. I'm going to just kind of set the table for some of this stuff and respond broadly to some of the feedback that we've gotten in the last week. And then I'm going to get into some specific criticisms from readers and listeners,

which we're going to read on the air here. Will and Ari are going to jump in. They're going to help me out as well, reading some of the feedback that we got. I'm going to respond to some of it. I'm not going to respond to some of it. And then we're also going to include some responses and feedback that we got that were positive

or were sort of mixed, like maybe not outright criticism but also not outright positive feedback either. There were some people who had really mixed feelings, which makes sense. So we're going to just share a bunch of that feedback today. That's going to be the podcast. I'm excited to do this.

We love doing these kinds of shows because, you know, as we always say, this is not just about us. It's not just about me. It's not just my views. The tangle ethos is that we're elevating viewpoints from across the political spectrum, which means we share views from all across America

and people feel really differently about these issues. And this is a great way to do that with these sort of reader, listener, mailbag feedback edition. I'm really excited about doing stuff like this. I hope my voice holds up for the whole show. Pray for me. All right, we're going to jump in.

So 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 this event and its aftermath with the whole country, I've been pouring over that feedback. Some of it was frustrating to read. Some of it was compelling.

Some of it, I thought, merited a response, while other pieces of feedback seemed to stand fairly 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 it the most of the most of the most of the fundamental stance that I'm trying to take, 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 the 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 has said many detestable things, at least to me, which drew many criticisms, including from me when he was alive. He is, in simple terms, exactly the kind of partisan firebrand I created Tangle to counteract. At the same time, Kirk could have said some of the nastiest, cruelest, most deranged things imaginable and still not deserved a bullet in his neck. The day after his death, I believe 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 are already losing our way. I'm doing my best to resist that

urge. In resisting it, I'll take the criticism that I think I overcompensated and lionized him or tried to whitewash 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 they see him as, and the only clip social media algorithms

presented to so many people. I do not think he was a simple person. I think he was a complicated person, like all of us. I plan to make that case more in depth in response to some of our reader feedback today. 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 tar. target of Kirk's ire. Also, a lot of people have reacted to a clip posted on our Instagram page of me breaking down in tears while describing Kirk's death. That came from our podcast. So if you're a listener of the show, you've probably heard it already, but I'll play it now. And it just broke me. It's like, I was sitting there holding my son in the dark and he's asleep in my arms

and it's the best fucking thing in the world. And I just like started crying. and it's like you hold it in all day. You know, you like consume this shit all day. It's like you're going from like dead kids in Gaza to fucking Charlie Kirk's head getting blown off on a live stream. So yeah, like some days you want to quit it.

It sucks. Well, 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 co-host Ari Weitzman about something I had written, which was that all this news, news made me want to quit my job. In my reaction, I was describing what it's like to do this

work and to 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 mentioned in the actual clip, whose deaths I have been bearing witness to for more than two years. There for the Israelis murdered on October 7th, whose deaths were streamed across the globe. They are for the Ukrainians, for victims of school shootings, for Arenas Zarutka, 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. 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 well-being simply for having moderate politics that quote-unquote enable bad people. Some of you even accuse me 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 not, numb ourselves to violence against someone whose views we consider bad enough, any of us can frame

anyone else's views is bad enough and then decide to kill them. And that part is really, really frightening. I think a little reinforcement of our humanity is a good thing. I did see a few reactions that seem 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. 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 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 milk-a-toast joke about Trump not expressing empathy and for claiming that 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. More than anything, I'm 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 out into the world. Now, I'm going to move on to the criticism. I'm going to share some thoughts from some readers, and then I'll respond to those thoughts. We'll be right back after this.

quick break. All right, first up is a reader named Kayla from Tampa, Florida. Kayla said, I want to start by saying that I appreciate what you were doing at Tangle. Discourse across political lines is even more important now than it has ever been before. I subscribe to challenge my beliefs and biases, and I've been impressed by the Tangle writer's ability 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. He was 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 of 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 had the right to live the life they choose, 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 nuance tangle takes going forward that I and many of your subscribers have come to love. Thank you for the work that you do, Kayla. Okay, 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. Hey, everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode.

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I will join you again for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul,

and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback, and associate editors, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for our membership,

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