We are in danger of letting our most valuable ideals die with Charlie Kirk

People attend a vigil and memorial on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, U.S., September 11, 2025, the day after U.S. right-wing activist and commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah. REUTERS/Marco Bello

On Aug. 9, 2016, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, stood on his steel-enforced soapbox in Wilmington, North Carolina, and said this through a smirk about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton:

"Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. But the Second Amendment people … maybe there is, I don't know."

This was Trump at his absolute worst, which makes it as bad as it gets, or anyone can be, with his veiled suggestion that his supporters exercise their gun rights to stop Clinton from abolishing the Second Amendment.

Like so many toxic statements Trump made on his campaign trail of fears that year, it should have ended his candidacy on the spot. No presidential candidate in the history of our country had openly hinted at a call to arms against an opponent. And for the record, Clinton never once said she wanted to incinerate the Second Amendment.

Many Republicans called it simply a “joke gone bad” at the time because they had all heard those horrible words and the context in which he delivered them. Trump later denied he was advocating an assassination attempt, and instead was simply trying to coalesce a political movement.

I know how I felt when I heard his disgusting comments, and have no doubt what the odious Trump was implying with his sick “joke.”

Just four years later, Trump left no doubt about his violent intentions when he tried to overturn an election by instigating the worst attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. Law enforcement officers were beaten with American and rebel flags. His vice president was threatened with hanging, and his thugs whom he later told us that he “loved” roamed the halls hunting down Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others.

I remind you of these terrible things, because much of our broken-down legacy media refuses to in the wake of the murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk.

I remind you of this, because any reporting that doesn’t mention Trump as the root cause of the Republican hate speech and political violence across this country, isn’t worth the screen it is printed on.

I remind you of this because any reporting that doesn’t mention Kirk’s overt racism and misogyny as the catalyst for his popularity on the right is fooling itself, but worse, trying to fool you.

This is incredibly dangerous, because by treating the death of Kirk as some “political assassination” instead of yet another preventable gun death among tens of thousands in this country, our media is providing fuel to a fire that Republicans would like to burn to the point of out of control.

As I wrote on Friday:

I am not celebrating Kirk’s death, but I am lamenting the demise of truth in this country.

So here is the truth:

Trump is a hardcore racist, and Kirk was one too. I could fill 14 columns using only their racist words to buttress this fact.

He was not as New York Times columnist Ezra Klein typed Thursday, presumably with a blindfold on: “Practicing politics the right way.”

Klein’s column defied belief, because up until the moment he wrote those idiotic, dangerous words, I had a fair amount of respect for a guy who generally takes a reasoned approach to these unreasonable times we live in.

Here’s the column. I’ll guess it’s paywalled, but assure you it’s not worth a dime or a single minute of your time. Klein was slammed by NYT readers in the comments section, before they had to close the one-way discourse down. I’ll hope he read them. If he’s not embarrassed, and rethinking his shoddy, tone-deaf take on Kirk’s killing, he’s not human. Worse, he’s never to be trusted again, which would be a damn shame, because he generally is a voice of reason, whether you agree with him not.

I am not here to exclusively batter Klein, but I am saying he is one of the leaders of the chorus in our broken media, whose mishandling of the Republican attack on our Democracy has helped lead us to this terrible place.

The man who violently attacked our country, now has troops in our streets.

The man who tried to overturn our 2020 election, is now relentlessly attacking our election process.

The man who lied on the camping trail that “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” is now implementing it almost to the letter in an effort to make sure we never recognize our government or our country ever again.

I have not seen ONE story in our legacy media calling him a fascist, even if he is the definition of one.

The same way I did not hear anybody in our legacy media call him a liar when in fact, he told a documented 30,573 lies or mistruths during his first, disastrous term.

The same way, I am not seeing the legacy media calling him a racist even now …

I want to remind you of something else I typed on Thursday, that is keeping me up at night:

DO NOT LET THE CORPORATE MEDIA FRAME THIS MOMENT.

As a lifetime journalist, that isn’t easy to type, but I was taught to report the truth, and that accuracy breeds credibility.

Without truth, accuracy, or credibility you are finished in the news business.

We all must gravitate toward the truth-tellers in our society right now, and become truth-tellers ourselves, if we are going to survive this rightwing onslaught on our Democracy.

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