The Texan Podcast - Gaza Ceasefire, Weiss Takes CBS, Kirk Assassination Fallout: SMSS Ep. 21

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

In this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron Abrams and Rob Laucius discuss the recent decline in craft breweries, the online reactions to Charlie Kirk's assassination, and the controversy around Bad Bunny performing at the 2026 NFL Halftime Show. They also explore the impact of Bari Weiss becoming editor in chief of CBS News and delve into the complex Israel-Gaza hostage deal.Listen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello and welcome back to Send Me Some Stuff, episode 21. My name is Kamen Abrams, a reporter here at the Texan. And I'm assistant editor Rob Laosches, also at the Texan. We haven't had someone, not from the Texan, appear on this podcast yet. Not on this podcast. We have on senior reporter Brad Johnson's podcast Smoke-filled Room. And you just cut off half his title. Did I? What's his other?

Oh, senior reporter and managing editor, Brad Johnson. He, of course, in the absence of our senior editor, the temporary absence of our senior editor, McKenzie DeLullo, Brad has been bringing in all kinds of interesting guests from outside of the office to come and talk about Texas politics. And, you know, even though we're in the interim, hopefully for a decent amount of time, there's still interesting things going on.

So there's lots of interesting people. to talk to. Yeah, Brad had a really good episode with current revolt founder, Tony Ortiz. That was really interesting. I encourage everyone to go check that out. And it's sort of an evergreen sort of episode where they do talk about some current events, but just their more overall experience in the Texas conservative world. It was really, really interesting. But we're going to get into some stories here. There's been a lot happening. Around the world in the United States here in Texas, we're going to talk a little bit about the recent ceasefire hostage deal with Israel and Gaza. We'll talk about some articles that have come out in response to the Charlie Kirk assassination because we actually recorded some stuff shortly after the assassination occurred.

and there's been troves of articles coming out since that happened. We're also going to talk the response from the right to the halftime, NFL halftime show announcement. There's been some interesting articles about that and sort of the cultural consequences that have been incurred therein. And then we'll talk about the Barry Weiss deal. Our own founder, Connie Burton, in her hot take this week, wrote about that deal. And there's lots of interesting angles to talk about there. It's something for those of us, if you're watching a podcast like this, have probably been paying attention to the online reaction to that deal.

So there's a lot to say there. And then also, if we have time, there's been there. some interesting articles that have been coming out about what comes next after the Trump phenomena, meaning that where do Republicans go in a post-Trump world? So lots of interesting things to talk about. I want to start off, though, with a interesting article that elicited some responses online. There was a New York Times article talking about the decline of craft breweries. And in this article, they talk about the sales of craft beer, fell 4% last year,

the lobbying arm for small and independent brewers. There have been more brewery closings and openings over the past 18 months, the first time that has happened in 20 years. And what's interesting is a lot of the commentary that I've seen on this article has been directed both at millennials more generally, but then also the sort of decline of hipster culture. Which was, of course, heavily associated with, like, craft breweries. And, you know, I'm not drinking my dad's Budweiser. Yeah, they want to get, they want to get $20 for a four pack of my, my hazy IPA or something.

Yeah, they want to get their small batch brewery while they ride their fixy bike. Who would ever do that? after they purchased their mustache wax and, of course, of course, with the, you know, what they can easy because they've got a pocket on their suspenders. They got a pocket on their suspenders to make sure they have enough money on them before they go to the vinyl co-op. Right, the vinyl. Well, and that's the thing. And if you're hungry, there's an organic farmer's market right across the street. Right. Right. Where you can get your small batch kombucha in case beer is not your thing. But I'm sure you've seen some of these responses online to this article.

There's been a lot of discourse about this particular article because in response to this article, somebody posted it with the comment, the long 2010s is over. Yeah. Well, what do you think about the sort of assessment there, about the decline of this hipster culture, millennials having a very unique. cultural context in which they exist. What's your sort of assessment on that? So I am a member of Gen Z, right? I'm 25. I'm one of the earliest Gen Z or Zer, as we're also known.

But, you know, I was a little bit too young, of course, to participate in hipster culture at its peak. You know, I wasn't really being led into breweries at the age of 12. But it's, I think it is, the most interesting change here to see is that Gen Z is far more likely than other generations to simply not drink at all. I believe I saw some statistic on Twitter saying that Zoomers are 20 times as likely to be teetotelers as baby boomers. So drinking in general is down. Some of that's due to health concerns. And some of that is due to the fact that a lot of Zoomers don't go out in

public, right? You know, if you grew up, if you were a teenager in the 2010s, you know, you can always hang out with your friends online. You know, a lot of Zoomers didn't need to get drivers. They didn't feel a compulsion to get a driver's license because, again, you know, you can play video games and hang out with your friends just over the internet. You know, nobody needs to really leave their bedroom to talk to each other or have social interaction. but yeah the decline in alcohol consumption in general also I think it's probably got to be a little bit oversaturated right the craft breweries you know there's we live in Austin so you know there's a lot of breweries you can find all over the city right but this the thing in a lot of big you know

metropolitan areas you can throw a stone and you'll hit a brewery right yeah everywhere and at a certain point you have to think that they're the you know the market's kind of got to tap out at a certain point, right? You can't have this many hazy IPAs before you start to. As, you know, I'm 32 years old. I was born in 1993. And when I was in my early 20s, I was living in a metropolitan city with a group of friends who would like to go out. And, you know, we weren't hipsters by any stretch of the imagination, but we did like to go out and go to breweries and hang out with each other and meet new people. And so what I've been seeing and something I agree with is sort of a defense of sort of the hipster ethos in terms of... What's the hipster ethos? Well, sort of being rooted in real

world experiences and having sort of a long-term view of the material. possessions that you might incur. For example, you know, we make fun of the vinyl records that hipsters would like to collect. But there's something about fiscal media that has a rootedness to it, something that is hearkening back to the past while also saying this should be preserved for the future. You know, there is the cringe element of the hipster identity. But there is something adjacent to that where they identified something that was lacking in the culture at the time, the era of the hipster rose. But we're seeing that decline now.

And I think the examples you brought up with the interactions people are having are almost exclusively online. They're declining in their social interactions. For a lot of young people specifically. And that's not all. You can go to plenty of bars and you'll find plenty of young people. It's just that there are a lot of them, the ones who are posting online about how everybody is lonely and everybody, nobody has any friends. It's because they're not at the bar, they're sitting at home posting about how lonely they are. Yeah.

It's more like it's obviously you can have a social life and still have a social media presence. But the people who have like this overwhelming social media presence, I have to imagine is because they're taking time. time away from being outside. Yeah, but it's been an interesting discussion to observe that's been, it happened as a response to this article. But let's jump into some of the news here. I think the biggest thing we want to start off with, with this international news being the Israel-Ghazadeal was approved just a few days ago.

It's going to be a multi-phase ceasefire hostage release agreement. It's going to be mediated by the United States. Donald Trump was intimately involved with this, along with Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. Interesting aspect of that, Jared Kushner, sort of being brought in. Steve Whitkoff has been the man on the ground for the past few months since the Trump administration stepped into office in January. Whitkoff, a former, you know, he's a real estate mogul sort of guy. similarly with Kushner during the first Trump administration Kushner was the one who

brokered the Abraham Accords and so he came in here and sort of took up some of those existing relationships that he had and appears to help bring this deal along and there's some you know this is a complicated deal this is we're coming up on the two-year anniversary or we're past it to your anniversary now of October 7th and there's been lots of discussion about how the United States has been both under the Biden administration now the second Trump administration attempting to come to some sort of resolution to this conflict and it appears now that there's going to be hopefully some sort of peace found in this region And obviously this is a generational issue, something that's been going on for hundreds of

years, and this is just the latest that has been agreed upon by both sides. And so what was your initial reaction, Rob, to hearing the news about this deal? I mean, this is something that Trump emphasized, I believe, early in his campaign, you know, saying I'm going to end this, you know, I'm going to end this war. He obviously views himself as a very good deal maker, as a peacemaker. You know, his attitude is, I'm going to be the guy who's going to walk into the room. Everybody's going to shut up and hear what I have to say, and we're going to make this conflict end.

In recent months, he kind of was like soft launching a campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, as we're recording this, the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to Trump for 2025. He's just waiting for next October after he, security Ukraine-Russia peace deal. There you go. But yeah, I mean, I'm happy to hear that there is a ceasefire, you know. I mean, it's a terrible conflict. You know, thousands of people have died. And hopefully the hostages can be, hopefully there can be a hostage exchange and all the living people can go back to their families and hopefully the dead as well, you know, so that they can be buried and treated with the respect that they deserve.

So, yeah, I mean, I would be very happy to see that this conflict ends. My question is, how do you prevent something like this from happening again? So that's been a lot of the discussion I was actually looking and listening and reading some reporting over the past few days about this. One person who has been doing some reporting on this is Jeremy Scaill over at Dropside News. and Jeremy Scahill has a number of sources in the Palestine region and a lot of the things he is hearing is sort of a tepid celebration where the Palestinians in that area are happy that there's going to be some sort of resolution hopefully that these are sort of the first. steps towards an enduring peace in the region, but it sort of remains a fragile situation because the first face is going to be this hostage exchange where the Israeli hostages held

in Gaza are going to be released, and then there's going to be, Israel is holding thousands of Palestinian hostages as well. going to be a big exchange that happens there. But then Israel is going to remain active in Gaza, but in a sort of peacekeeping control. Well, there's going to be an international stabilization force. Well, yeah, so there's going to be forces both from the United States and like you mentioned from other countries in the surrounding region, sort of providing security for the area. And again, when I was listening to Jeremy Scahill yesterday on Breaking Points talking about this deal, what he has been hearing is hopefully the United States remains involved in this

process of the second phase of this deal in terms of the peacekeeping resolutions and the forces being introduced because Palestinians from Skate Hill's reporting are worried that any sort of mistake that could be made by either side of this conflict could spark up the conflict again. And it appears, you know, that the United States who just took the will of the president, whether it was Biden at the time and now Trump, to really take a hardline stance and say, this war is going to end. One of the other big things that has to be pointed out here is that, you know, they specifically include in Trump's 20-point plan that Israel is not going to occupy or annexed. It's not going to become a part of Israel, but that Hamas will have to be removed, essentially, from the governance of Israel. Because Hamas was elected, right, to govern when they held an election in the Gaza Strip. That's who they elected, right, was Hamas.

Yeah, well, from I to understand, there's issues with who's actually in charge of Gaza right now. it's sort of a mismatch of different political parties who are vying for being the next leader of the region and again just like in politics around the world there's factions on the left and the right and some of those leaders have actually been held as hostages in Israel following the during the conflict so there's actually negotiations still happening about certain Palestinian prisoners being held in Gaza being released because there's issues concerning who is going to be the next person who's going to be the Palestinian leader in that region. So it's a very complex situation, but I think everyone is just taking a really

zoomed outlook is just taking a deep breath and happy that there's some sort of deal on the table that hostages are going to be released and obviously many people are excited that there can be some furthering negotiations happening hostages released aid coming into the region opening up of those aid routes so that's the other big thing is Trump wanted to have a bunch of international aid to develop the Gaza Strip I think he believes that if Gaza is a, like, wealthier and more prosperous area that it will sort of take the wind out of the sales of these, like, fundamentalist organizations like Hamas, which isn't just some, you know, secular Palestinian nationalist organization. It's an Islamist organization. And so I think

Trump's mentality is, you know, maybe these people join Hamas because they're very poor, and it is, it's a very poor area. And so if we develop it and make it more prosperous, then that will you know, it'll remove the incentive for people to join a radical Islamist fundamentalist group like Hamas and thus you can achieve a kind of lasting peace, maybe. Yeah. But yeah, he definitely, Hamas itself, according to this peace plan, has to be removed from governing the Gaza Strip. I believe they specifically say it's going to be a apolitical technocratic board that would govern it, which apolitical is always very difficult.

difficult, you know, but this does seem to be something that could be, it could be a lasting peace if, of course, because Israel will never trust Hamas ever again. So I think after October 7th. Yeah, there's a lot of distrust in all, coming from not just from the Palestinian region, the leaders in the Palestinian people themselves, but also distrust on the Israeli side, but also distrust in the surrounding region. It's very fraught with conflict, not just between Israel and Gaza, but many other countries in the surrounding region. So speaking of fraught conflict, it's not quite as violent, fortunately,

but nonetheless, still a new battle in the American culture wars that has come up is, Cameron, do you know who's playing at the Super Bowl in 2026? Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny. Now, I am not a bad Bunny fan. You're not? No, I'm not. I have to admit it.

I don't listen to Bad Bunny. I also have to admit that I don't always watch the Super Bowl halftime show. Yeah. You know. But what's happened here is Bad Bunny. He is a Puerto Rican rapper. As I understand, his music is primarily Spanish language music. and he has been selected to perform the Super Bowl halftime show in 2026, which got a lot of people in the sort of online MAGA space very upset because Bad Bunny is also a critic of President Donald Trump and the deportation policies under immigration and customs enforcement.

And so a lot of people are viewing this as like a political attack, essentially against Trump by the NFL, right? or they view it as the NFL being, you know, out of touch and saying, oh, you know, the national mood has shifted, you know, the majority, you know, Trump won the popular vote. It's, you know, why is, why are they bringing a guy who's so active against Trump, who apparently at one point said that he would no longer do concerts in the U.S. Yeah. So it's an interesting, it's become a very interesting debate, I think. It's, you know, everything in culture now can become a political battle. Yeah, yeah. Everything can be left-coded or right-coded somehow.

But this is very clearly, I mean, this is a political thing that happened. So what do you make of this whole situation? Well, as such a bad bunny fan as you are. I know you say that sarcastically, because I had no idea who, I knew the name bad money, bad bunny but i had never listened to any of his music couldn't name one song of his um it's just i think it's just an interesting choice um because the nfl has found itself in a interesting space by trying to tailor their brand both towards um their base of you know at the average football football watcher who might is probably center right sort of like a barstool type conservative

person or more just sort of general even if they vote for democrats might be more culturally conservative yeah but then also it seems like they hire mackenzie for all of their branding and they're always talking about uh esgdei sort of style initiatives especially since 2020 well that's what i'm saying and so um it it's the NFL brand is like i mentioned they're sort of trying to walk this line here because bad bunny obviously huge artists international international artists uh constantly at the top of the Spotify charts Apple music charts so um you know the average NFL person probably knows who he is you know i'm not super into watching the NFL anymore and he's still a very popular artist in the United States, too. And of course, it must be noted because some people,

I think, are a little bit confused about this. Puerto Rico is part of the United States, right? He's not a foreign artist. Puerto Rico is not a state, but it is a territory of the U.S. So, you know, he is like an American artist, just not from a state, you know. Yeah. And we talked about this issue a bit in the office after I suggested we read an article and unheard that was talking about this, sort of analogizing this to what happened with the Dixie Chicks. The Chicks, you mean? Remember, they're not the Dixie Chicks anymore.

Return to tradition. But in sort of the cultural backlash when they spoke out against the Bush administration. And now we're seeing sort of that paralleled here with the bad money situation. But I think it is a bit different in the sense that we're just in a different era of politics, a different era of communication as well. Where the Dixie Chicks, or the Chicks, now that they're known as. There you go. They existed in an era of domination by the mainstream media, where everything could be sort of framed in a certain way where people were observing things through their television almost exclusively. Yes, there was talk radio at the time where many conservatives found their outlets, a la Rush Limbaugh, obviously.

but now in the social media age there's so many competing narratives out there you know I talked about the corporate governance style of the NFL that's one angle people have taken other people have taken the sort of wokeness angle of this other people have taken the conservative versus progressive view in terms of culture there's been the is bad bunny even an American, even though he's from Puerto Rico, speaking in Spanish. Well, that's something that this unheard article gets at is there are some people, like, further on the right online, who have criticized him saying, well, he can't really be American because he's singing in Spanish and America is an English-speaking country.

Or some people who would even say that because he's Latino, he's not really American. You know, this article brings up the whole debate over heritage Americans, which is kind of a sort of a far-right meme that's kind of spread online about how, you know, the real, like, real Americans are people whose family, it's, what is it? You have to have family in the Civil War registry, right? If your family didn't fight in the Civil War, then, you know, you're certainly, you might be legally an American, they'd say, but you're kind of not, you're not like as much of an American as other people, right? And so this is an idea that, like, a lot of people on the left and the center right are critiquing, you know, saying that this in and of itself,

as an un-American idea, which further exposes just disagreements again over what it means to be an American if you say that the concept of a heritage American is un-American. Well, that's what I was sort of getting at with the competing narratives online, which sparks deeper conversations like you just mentioned, where it starts off as disagreements about Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl and sort of evolves into this conversation about what is an American, right? And the other thing, this article just sort of concludes that, you know, it was saying that MAGA risks making anti-Trumpism cool if it sort of tries to crack down on it, right?

Which is saying that it's trying to just say it's analogous to the situation under the Bush administration, which we'll see if that works. The article also concedes that the political left is going to have to sort of loosen up a little bit and not be quite so insistent on like orthodoxic thinking and be a little bit more willing to work with people they might disagree with in opposition to Trump but um you know we we shall see i mean yeah well what do you think uh do you think this is would be is more or less controversial than of course the infamous rumor that it was going to be like taylor swift i mean i don't know that's that's kind of a uh i mean this is still probably less controversial right

Less controversial? Than Taylor Swift? Taylor Swift is loved on all sides of the political discussion. That's not necessarily true. I think people on the further left and further right don't like her. People in the center left and the center right seem to like Taylor Swift. Which is the base of the NFL's? That's a good point.

Yeah, probably. I imagine that the base of the NFL are people who are normal people with moderate political opinions and not the people who think that Taylor Swift is secretly like a fascist or secretly like a woke communist which these these two opinions do seem to both exist online they do exist online but they're small circles i would say it's just the problem with these crazy people is that they can post um you know a hundred times a day whereas a normal person is not going to be posting a hundred times a day about how taylor swift is secretly a fascist or a communist right um but yeah it was an interesting article uh i encourage people to go check it out it's an unheard it's by

Dylan partner. But speaking of competing media narratives. Yeah. I think you flagged an interesting story for us earlier in this month. So tell us about Barry Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Well, yeah, Barry Weiss, let me, I'm actually going to pull up here the hot take that Connie published today because it was it was really great she's uh touches on how at the time when berry right barry weiss left the new york times in 2020 um very right very wise i'm sorry wrote here quote but the lessons that ought to have followed the 2020 elections lessons about the importance of understanding other americans the necessity of resisting tribalism and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society have not been learned and she continues here

stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions that was Barry Weiss in 2020 and now she has she then started up the free press she started that up with her wife who was also a writer at the New York Times at the time to the time And the free press has really just exploded in growth since they started. It's really become a force in independent media hosting not just articles on their substack, but hosting live events, debates. They have a number of podcasts where they engage in interesting conversations.

And what we just saw was paramount after they agreed to a merger with a number of other media company that's going to be owned by Larry Ellison's son. They purchased the rumored amount that they purchased the free press for was $150 million, and Weiss is going to be stepping in as editor-in-chief of CBS News. So before we get into more information there, what was your initial reaction to the deal that was announced? Well, I'll tell you, I was not actually a free press reader. I wasn't very familiar with Barry Weiss. So, you know, I learned about this more so from you bringing it up in the office.

Okay. I do think it's an interesting phenomenon of how, you know, getting back to this early 2010 thing we were talking about with respect to, like, hipster culture, right? It used to be the case that the Internet was a place you went to kind of get away from the real world. Like, it was this parallel, right? You would go on the internet, all this internet stuff existed, and then you get off the internet, right? The problem is that that's not how the internet works anymore, because it has gone from being a means of communication to being the means of communication. It has effectively replaced television as the main way that Americans, it's become our new dominant form of mass communication. Right.

And of course, this brings lots of changes, right? television is a few to many means of communication, wherein the broadcasters speak to millions of people at once, whereas the Internet is many-to-many communication, where it's not you have obviously people who make popular videos or something or popular posts on social media, but everybody can talk about it all at the same time, and that leads to a very different kind of information ecosystem. But the Internet has replaced television, you know, as I like to bring up, and I'm sure I've brought it up on this podcast before, but when President Joe Biden announced that he was not running for re-election again, he did not go to the Times. Yeah, he didn't

go to the New York Times. He didn't go on TV. It wasn't televised. He made a Twitter post. And that right there is the sign of how, for all intents and purposes, you know, the Internet is no longer parallel to reality. It's from a media perspective, it's like the core of reality. Like, this is where information comes through, right? If you're not on Twitter, you are behind the times. Yeah, the media ecosystem has definitely changed, like you mentioned, where conversation is being let out into the public is no longer through the major TV channels

or even major newspapers. It's through these independent creators, whether it be a group of them, like the free press or even individual content creators. are the ones driving in the conversation. And I think that's really interesting. So with the very wise deal here, I think there's a few different things to look at.

One, the current situation and then also projecting out into the future, right? So it's well known that Donald Trump gets a lot of, his information about current events from Fox News. They're eating the dogs and cats. I saw it on television. Right. And so... Which is a very maligned comment, right? Well, I was listening to Matt Gates the other day talk about how he would, how when he was a congressman and he was very well connected with the Trump administration

and the Trump team is that he and others would coordinate with people on Trump's staff to make sure that he was watching certain channels when certain people were going to be on the television so Trump would become aware of certain issues and where the current, and where the current feelings were on certain things. And so with Barry Wye stepping in as editor-in-chief of CBS News, that could sort of give a lane for CBS news to become influential in terms of providing policy direction for the current administration. But projecting out into the future, as everyone, again, is probably aware that the younger generation of politicos who have come onto the staff of not just the Trump team, but the J.D. Vance team, also someone like Cash Rettel, Dan Bonino, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr.

All these people had their ascendancy in independent media. Much of their staff is intimately involved in independent media. So where I'm bringing this is when we're talking about how independent creators, individuals and outlets like the Free Press have seen their ascendancy is because, of the people who are working on these staffs who are looking towards these independent creators for information and where to direct policy. And so will CBS maybe get a boost in their media influence with Barry Weiss at the helm as editor-in-chief in the short term? Yes.

But in the long term, I think we're going to see social media even play a more dominant role in shaping discourse, especially as more young people find themselves in not just staff positions, but elected positions as well, because, you know, we've seen not, you know, it seems like the online discourse is dominated by the quote, unquote right wing. But Democrat politicians, Democrat staffers have noticed this and they attempted to react as well. We've seen people like AOC jumping on different live streamers, their accounts and talking with them. AOC definitely is someone who has dominated something like TikTok live or Instagram live and things like that. So there is an awareness of this rise of social media on the left. But right now it's just dominated by the right. And in the conversation with wise, there is the short-term gains, but then how you can sort of see things project out in the next decade or so. What do you think about my sort of assessment I laid out there? No, I mean, I think

that you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I don't know what to tell you. I think you've pretty much summed it all up. Okay. No comment. You know, that's the problem is, again, I feel like you have your finger on the pole sometimes, Cameron, of some of the online developments about, you know, the media, but like you listen to more podcasts than I do, you know. So on a lot of this stuff, I'll defer to you on. Okay. Well, I think just a little peek into how I'm reading this. Like you mentioned, I do listen to podcasts, and that's how I sort of catch up on. domestic issues and international issues because while we're here at the office we're really

focused on Texas politics and when I get home I try and catch up on everything else and so when I'm hearing conversations from a lot of the big independent creators they're echoing sort of this assessment and analysis that I just laid out there but it was also what is playing into my analysis here is what we saw in the 2024 election cycle when J.D. Vance was announced as the vice presidential candidate, what did we see from many of these mainstream media outlets is they tried to cast J.D. Vance as some person who was connected to these shadowy far right online figures, right? Whether it be, you know, someone like, like the Tealian, Peter Thiel network or the Curtis Jarvin.

Lord of the Rings sort of ideas, you know, those sort of ideas. It's sort of people who once again gained their prominence through the Internet. Well, that's what I'm saying. And so that's what's playing into my analysis a bit when I talk about people. Same thing, of course, with the podcast election. Yeah. This is 2024 was characterized as a place where the online media was more important than traditional media. Right.

And so that's sort of planning into my analysis there. But what's the next story you want to get to here? There's a couple of things left on the docket. Well, I think speaking about online media and how specifically relating to this bad bunny debacle, I think we could pivot for a little bit to talking about the current sort of cultural divide over how people are talking about Charlie Kirk. Okay. This is what I think. Yeah, I think that we've segued nicely into that.

But there's been a lot of discourse over how, you know, obviously we talked about the Kurtz assassination very shortly after it happened. We were, we were, you know, recording our podcast, I believe was it the day of or was it a couple days after? We record the daily, the weekly roundup, the very next day, and then we recorded a send me some stuff episode that Friday. Yeah, so it was only two days after. Yep. but now the biggest thing that's happened is there have been a lot of firings across the country of people who said some pretty harsh things about Charlie Kirk or celebrated his assassination or said that they were glad that he died and this got the attention of a lot of Republican activists

and lawmakers and even Vice President J.D. Vance got in on it when he was asked to host an episode of Charlie Kirk's podcast. In general, you know, what a lot of these people have been saying is, if you see somebody online who is celebrating Kirk's murder, you should report it to their boss and get them fired. This is a tactic that's existed for a while. You know, it's called cancel culture. We've all heard of this.

That's what, of course, the people who are criticizing this behavior are calling it. whereas, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these Republican and conservative figures are saying you are not, you know, nobody's being criticized, nobody's being fired for, you know, saying you didn't like Charlie Kirk. You're being fired for praising an act of political violence. Or, you know, so a lot of online, like liberal outlets or writers have argued that the right is essentially rejecting the free speech argument that it has sort of been holding on to. for the last 10 or so years, right? And that the right is now essentially becoming intolerant of dissenting speech. This is a big concern for a lot of liberals under the Trump administration, right? But I do believe you have to draw a pretty hard, a pretty strong line between talking about Kirk and talking about his death, because as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been anybody fired for saying something like, I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk, but I, you know, he did not deserve to get killed.

As far as I'm aware, there haven't been any big firings or anything like that. But there have been people who said things like, you know, I'm glad Charlie Kirk died. He deserved it. And, you know, this is, this is, it's, you know, it seems to me that praising political violence is a pretty bad thing. And it doesn't seem to me to be. anti-free speech to say that you should not be allowed to praise somebody for committing a murder in response to speech. That doesn't seem to me to be really a pro free speech behavior, especially since we've seen

from a lot of people on the online left, to be fair, in the past 10 years, have not had a problem with the idea of people, but, you know, these are the people who would say, oh, well, there's no such thing as cancel culture. People are being held to account, people are being held accountable for their words. where people are saying, you know, well, getting fired or getting disinvited from speaking at a campus, you know, you're not being shut down. You're just being told, we don't want to associate with you. But that's the same thing that's happening here if your employer says, hey, I don't like the fact that you made this post celebrating the Kirk assassination, so we're going to fire you. This happened, for example, in this is, well, there have been cases of nurses, there have been cases of Texas public school teachers who've had these kind of complaints levied against them.

And obviously, you know, a complaint is not proof of guilt, right? Accusation is not evidence of guilt. But, you know, if you make a post like this, especially under your real name and face, that's the other thing is, you know, you can make an anonymous Twitter account. Well, and for some reason, people feel comfortable praising an act of political violence with their real, you know, it's like the joke people you say about the internet. Oh, you know, on the internet, you know, you can hide your real name and face so everybody can be a jerk. And it's like, well, the problem is, now people do show their real name and face, and they still act like jerks. So I've subscribed more to the Mike Tyson theory of the Internet, which is that when you can communicate over a screen, people say a lot of things that in real life would get them punched in the mouth. Yeah, well, and there's a lot there.

I think one of the things you brought up about the anonymous posting versus posting on your real name, there's quite a bit of difference between what was happening over the past decade and a half, two decades, in terms of how people who held conservative or right-wing ideas were posting things anonymously, and they were effectively tracked down and doxed online for having dissenting opinions. and they were, quote, unquote, held accountable for those. Very different than someone posting under their real name on a LinkedIn page saying the disparaging things about Kirk's assassination. So that's one thing. Another thing that I think is interesting to touch on here is, especially during the Biden administration,

when there was enormous amount of pressure put on, private companies and public institutions to enforce DEI and ESG-style regulations where if someone had said something that was counter to that government-enforced ideology, they were, quote-unquote, again, held accountable for that, losing their job, whatever it may be. So it was a government-enforced mandate at that point. Whereas now it's sort of a cultural accountability or people are being held accountable for things that they're saying via a private institution under their own created code of ethics, let's say. And so it's not a, it's not the government coming in and saying you have to enforce these certain speech codes or whatever it may be.

So you can also look, of course, at during the Biden administration, during the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come out and said, yes, the Biden administration did put pressure on us to censor certain content that was like skeptical of vaccines, you know, asking them to put pressure on that. You know, the bully pulpit has existed for a long time, right? The ability of the president to kind of step into the arena as it was. and talk about ideas or try to distinguish between truth and falsehood or something. But there's a very real difference between a president expressing their opinion on something and trying to pressure people to believe, to take essentially the president's side on an issue, right? Yeah. And, of course, when it comes to the Kirk stuff, again, I don't believe anybody should be fired for not liking Kirk.

You can say, I disagreed with him on everything he had to say, and I didn't even think he was a good person. but that's completely different than saying he deserve to be assassinated. Like it's the act of political violence that is that that's what, I mean, that's simply what crosses the line, you know, because if you concede that political violence is an acceptable way to deal with disagreement, you are essentially saying that you do not believe in the idea of free speech. Well, and I think what's important, though, in your description there of those types of statements where people are critical of his character, but then also critical of the assassination,

that's two statements included in a single post, where we have not seen the latter half of that statement be included, where people are confining their description of Kirk to being critical of his character without adding that big butt to it. And so I think that's that area where people are trying to sort out what is the proper course of action when dealing with individuals who are making those styles of posts. And so like you mentioned, the Texas Education Agency is currently conducting investigations of hundreds of Texas public school teachers and staff who have supposedly made those types of posts. we haven't had any updates on those investigations. There have been a couple of teachers who've been fired, a couple of educators who made posts that were like...

But not action from the T.E.A. No, not from the T.E.A. You're right. You're right. And so, but there's another angle to this as well in terms of how the right wing has sort of identified Kirk as this martyr for conservatism. Well, if you want more, there are in more liberal outlets you can find. a plethora of articles talking about how, you know, conservatives have, as you said, turned Kirk into a martyr and are embracing a scary form of militant Christianity, you know, in response to Kirk's murder and everything.

Yeah, one of the, they're abusing this for political gain and stuff like that. Well, one of the articles that caught a lot of flack online was in the Atlantic from Thomas Chatterton Williams, who. concluded his article about Kirk saying, in becoming a martyr, Kirk has been reduced to slogans and half-truths that obscure the real tragedy of his death. But if Americans are to learn anything valuable from the deceased, both sides will need to find the courage to reject such opportunistic can't. This was as he was speaking of Kirk in the same vein as George Floyd's death. If I recall correct, the article was titled, The Right.

has found it's George Floyd. That's correct. And that caught a lot of flack online because we don't even have to go into how different. The basic argument is that conservatives believe that Kirk was a better person than Floyd and stuff like that. So, yeah, I mean, it's one of those articles. I think the Atlantic is fantastic for these kind of articles where we'll jump in and say, well, you know, both sides are kind of wrong here, you know. And like, well, really, we have the secret third.

solution to the problem. You know, I feel like this is one of those things, the Atlantic is very good at creating that kind of content. Yeah, and I, but I think when we talk about council culture and after Kirk's murder here is the political left has been the ones who established these quote-unquote council culture rules. And, And the right over the preceding decade has been attempting to champion this free speech idea and not wanting to engage with those sort of tactics. But those rules are now sort of established, it seems, where despite continuing argument from the right about how this is bad, this shouldn't be happening, they have remained

no matter if it's a Democrat or a Republican in office. if you are someone who is saying things or posting things counter to a progressive worldview, you are at risk of losing your job and your income stream or friends, family, even. So I think the right just has identified that in order to secure any sort of political proudness in the current situation, they have to also play by these new rules. Well, I guess you could summarize it by saying that, you know, people characterize the world that the Internet and globalization was making as a global village, right? But the thing about a village is that everyone's got their noses in each other's business

and people are gossipy and people are, you know, this kind of shame tactics. You know, when you have a kind of, I think, village environment, that's the kind of behavior that you get. something like the internet it's it's essentially one big high school right that's the problem that and if that's the way yeah a lot of conservatives just don't see a reason to not adopt cancel culture tactics if they believe that liberals have been employing them for again as you said over a decade now now again you should be able to say you should be able to criticize here's the thing you just should be able to criticize charlie kirk's ideas without praising his assassination

It's as simple as that, right? That, I believe, is a very low bar. Some people don't want to meet that bar, though. Exactly. And, you know, at the end of the day, I don't think that your boss is required to keep you on if you support political violence. Your boss might not want that. Well, and I think what's important to mention as well is what I've seen as a reaction on the right as what was most shocking about the Kirk assassination is that Kirk was sort of advocating for

a sort of moderate version of conservatism, something that your grandma would agree with. Well, this is something that, you know, a lot of liberal outlets have described him as being somebody who spreads like far-right beliefs. Which he did not. He pushed the conservative wing into the far right. But there are actual truly far right people, like the kind of people who dislike Charlie Kirk because they thought that he was essentially a liberal, right? Well, I'm saying what I'm trying to get at is I think the reaction from the right is as we've seen people celebrating Kirk's assassination or people advocating for further violent actions to take place is. conservative commentators or even just people who like to post online say I'm now scared

for my own life in as in the same vein as as we've described because of Kirk's assassination even because they might be one step or two steps or three steps to the right of Kirk and if they're willing to if there is individuals who are not just celebrating but advocating for further assassinations people other people's lives are at risk here and so it's just an interesting dynamic that has been set up now but you know turning point has continued to hold campus events other conservative online organizations are doing things similar so you know those who are out there advocating for a conservative worldview have not been deterred but we have seen some reactions from people who hold positions of elected authority here.

So we do have one more topic we want to touch on. You flagged this article for me. It's from Law and Liberty. And why don't you give us a brief rundown about what it's about? Sure. So it is a look at a new book by George Hawley titled The Moderate Majority, real GOP voters and the myth of mass Republican radicalization. And so this is a book that attempts to make the argument that liberals, a lot of people on the

left perceive the Republican Party as having gone down a very radical route since the election of Donald Trump. They believe that the average Republican voter has become significantly more extreme in their beliefs and is willing to embrace a lot more fringe radical ideas. And Hawley attempts to use empirical research to demonstrate that this is not the case, that Republican, he says there are, you know, he says there are conspiracy theorists, there are even white supremacists who exist within the sort of GOP milieu, he says. But this is a fringe minority within the party and the overwhelming majority of people are essentially still, you know, moderate conservative people, right? then really not, they don't, you know, he says that some of the officials might have stronger beliefs than the voters, but the voters themselves are still essentially, you know, moderate on

the majority of issues. I think one thing he does mention is that Republicans are simply more likely to identify as conservative than they used to, because of course, as we know, the Democrats and Republicans used to each have like a liberal and a conservative wing. You know, just the thing that divided the parties was not ideological liberalism versus ideological conservatism. The parties have become more ideological over the last several decades, with the Democrats now established as this sort of liberal progressive party and the Republicans as like the conservative party. And what's the article's assessment of why this has happened? It doesn't really discuss why specifically that I saw like why that happens, but it does share that, for example, I'll read this quote, Republicans have changed over time by becoming more conservative as they understand the term, which also changes. In other words, how rank and file Republicans understand conservatism is a moving target, but a greater share of them now compared to a generation ago, say they are conservative. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just. trying to talk about how, you know, the idea that the average vote, you know, this is,

this is, I think, a fear some people on the left seem to have. It's like, you know, the average Republican is a crazy, you know, super far right person. And that's just not true. You know, Democrats, and, you know, I think that the same kind of thing also exists for a lot of Republicans, right, who assume every Democratic voter must be as crazy as the craziest Democratic official. And, you know, it's just not true. The overwhelming, the average person is average, right? Well, I think, well, I think, well, my, my assessment of what you've just described is I think what we're trying to understand is the center, uh, what we're calling moderate, has moved so far to the left that the right has opened up so wide to encompass a, a larger definition, a more,

a more expansive definition of what it means to be conservative. I'm not sure if that's the case. You don't think so. No, I mean, I think that it might have, you know, you can say that what liberals and conservatives for what liberals consider normal might have moved further to the left, but certainly not what conservatives consider normal. I mean, you know, it wasn't his justice assessment that in this article that the term conservative is a moving target?

Yeah, but he, I mean, as far as I'm aware, he doesn't really go into specifically what makes you a conservative. The point is he's trying to say is that the party has not embraced, like, rather, the average voter doesn't embrace more radical positions. They just describe themselves in more ideological language, right? Whereas the parties, you know, the political parties in the U.S. used to just be, you know, essentially these bizarre coalitions of ethnic groups and, you know, economic groups and regional groups, right? The New Deal coalition famously combining, like almost all these, like all these different kinds of groups that supposedly would have nothing to do with each other.

What you're seeing now on the right? Well, that's something that you can argue, yeah, Trump has definitely done, is he has basically built his sort of coalition of the fringes, right? He's willing to bring on people who were, you know, unabashed liberal Democrats, take RFK Jr., for example. Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard. You know, he's willing to take on anybody he believes is going to be with him against what he perceives to be this kind of monolithic, you know, the, you know, call it what you will. You call it the deep state. You call it this sort of political consensus that wants to, in Trump's mind, you know, wants to keep power for itself and resist any attempt by outsiders.

to change anything. So, well, that's why I, I mentioned the, the center moving to the left is that as this, if this scale is stagnant and the center is moving to the left, the left becomes much more concentrated and it becomes much more foundational in how they are observing the types of ideas that are allowed on their side, which opens up the right. to bring in those who don't, who are in slight disagreement with the left, they can move across the center to the right and there's much more space and much more welcoming to those ideas because the right has opened up so much.

Perhaps, but I mean, when you say just the center moving to the left, that only, when you say the center, I mean, if you're talking about, for example, certain mainstream news organizations maybe, but, you know, I guess I don't, I don't think everything just exists. a single binary of like the center just moves you know what i mean if you're saying that like some liberals have become more you know orthodoxic more demanding of conformity i you can make that argument but i don't i don't know if i would agree with the sense that the sense that the center has overall moved to the left you know because that implies that there's sort of a single binary that like everybody's on all the time does that make sense but yeah because i i know there's

different presentations of the political spectrum, either it being a binary or the quadrants or a triangle, right? Well, sure. And so, but I think that's an interesting thing to bring up, especially when we're talking about this article here about how people have maybe identified with an ideology more so than they have in the past with a certain moniker either being liberal or conservative is people are sort of not taken in the totality of certain viewpoints people can have and only viewing things on a binary and we've seen lots of

conversation about that online as well and so is what what does this mean for in terms of the future of our politics. Do you think things are going to get more radical where it really is going to exist on this binary skill that I was attempting to describe here, which I agree with you. It's much more nuanced than that. I absolutely agree.

What I was trying to present is how people are sort of viewing things in the public as being on a binary. Do you think it's going to increase this binary? I would say that it's the nature of our sort of more democratized online communication that people will not go back to sort of the single source of news. You know, you're not going to have like Walter Cronkite, right? You're not going to have the single source of news that absolutely everybody subscribes to and gets all their information from.

And in an environment like that, you know, you're going to have, especially on the internet where attention, you know, it's the attention economy, right? You're going to have more extreme radical viewpoints, even if they're not actually more popular. They're going to get more popular online because simply even if you agree with them or disagree with them, you're still going to go take a look at it. Even if you're hate watching it, you're still going to take a look at it. And moderate, tepid opinions that people might say, I agree with that. And they're going to scroll past and it's not going to be boosted by the algorithm. On the social media algorithm boosts what generate.

It serves people what they give their attention to. And if you give your attention to stuff you don't like, it's going to show you things you don't like. So that's what I would say is I'm not convinced that the, I mean, I do still believe the average person is basically a, you know, I don't believe the average person is crazy politically or anything like that. I just believe that the main thing that the Internet has done is it has given the fringes and some of the crazier people.

Because, I mean, again, like, I don't really remember a world before the Internet. But I'm certain anybody who does can agree there were always, you know, kind of crazy people. It's just crazy people didn't have a voice, right? They didn't have a way to broadcast their ideas all over the place. You know, more radical people nowadays can simply promote their ideas. It's just easier to do it. And so that's the thing. I don't know if politics itself will continue to be polarized.

I mean, in some sense, polarization. is a sign that people are really civically engaged and care about ideas, you know. So I've seen some arguments who say, you know, hey, polarization's not really as bad of a thing as people think it is. You know, disagreement is good for the country. It produces a more vibrant sort of dynamic country when you have this kind of tension, of course, as long as it doesn't boil over into actual conflict. So that's the thing is you have to have that respect for hearty disagreement with the understanding

that at the end of the day you're kind of on the same team and you're both looking and you have to just acknowledge the other person is ultimately also doing what they think is right and is doing what they think is best you know

yeah you have to have that that understanding that while you might be competing you are ultimately on the same team yeah and I think what you brought up is really important in terms of there was a time before the internet where people could I've been so I've been told yeah where people could I was born after the World Wide Web so I mean I don't know right well and I think that

this brings up a an interesting issue that we're all sort of continuing to grapple with is there's no going back to that time so how do we deal with the internet in online politics moving forward is that going to create a greater bifurcation between the two parties increase radicalization. How does social media companies deal with that? How do our politicians deal with that? How do we as average media consumers do with that? If I knew the answer to those questions, Cameron, I'd be sitting in a big mansion and have a yacht and all kinds of stuff. If I had all the answers. Yeah, but this is something that is going to stay front of mind for many of us who are engaged in politics, especially online politics, that we do here at the

Texan. The Texan dot news is where people should go to read objective news. News you can trust. News you can trust, no fake news. Anything else before we wrap up here, Rob? I think we've pretty much, I think we hit the nail on the head. I think we pretty much we got it all. I think we did.

So thank you, everyone, for tuning in to send me some stuff, episode 21. Thanks for listening. We enjoy taking a deep dive into these topics. If you have any interesting stories, you think we should cover on our next episode. Send us some stuff. And where should they send it, Rob? They should send it, Cameron, to Editor at the Texan.News. Thanks for tuning.

Thank you.