The Charlie Kirk Thread

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So just to be clear you have zero problem with the Trump admin threatening baseless FCC enforcement action against Kimmel/ABC to coerce ABC into taking him off the air?
This action by the Trump and the FCC is absolutely disgusting.

I truly hope that the next Dem president relentlessly goes after Fox, OAN, etc to make a clear point.
 
boy does those revenge politics work well and a money saver
I'm not big on revenge politics, and lowering yourself to the level of shitty people, but I hope the next Democratic president absolutely rails on Fox, OAN, etc to teach the current spineless Republicans a lesson about standing up for free speech.
 
I'm not big on revenge politics, and lowering yourself to the level of shitty people, but I hope the next Democratic president absolutely rails on Fox, OAN, etc to teach the current spineless Republicans a lesson about standing up for free speech.
I don't think that will go the way you hope. I'm afraid the lesson learned wouldn't be "oh, we shouldn't do that because we don't like it when they do it to us." I think the lesson learned would be "oh, we need to make sure they're never able to do that to us again."
 
I don't think that will go the way you hope. I'm afraid the lesson learned wouldn't be "oh, we shouldn't do that because we don't like it when they do it to us." I think the lesson learned would be "oh, we need to make sure they're never able to do that to us again."
Sadly, I agree. What we've learned from the last 25 years is that Pubs will take whatever they accuse Dems of doing, amplify it 10+ times, and then claim that's the new normal. So even if Dems do to Fox, OAN, etc. what Pubs are doing to mainstream media right now, Pubs will just use that to make things 10x more extreme the next time they have the chance to do so.

I don't know the answer. The Pubs have put us into a Top Gun-like death spiral. "Going high" hasn't done anything to stop it, but joining the Pubs in going low just seems like an acceleration of our plunge to the sea. In an ideal world, the "Christians" who purport to care about loving one's neighbor and doing unto others as you would have him do unto you would help us out of this. But the vast majority of that group appears to now be all in on accelerating our path to destruction.
 

Trump, Vance to headline Charlie Kirk memorial​

Several members of the Trump administration will speak at the event to honor the slain political organizer.


"...Trump will headline the event on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona — which is home of the Arizona Cardinals football team — alongside Vice President JD Vance, a longtime friend of Kirk’s who hosted his podcast on Monday to honor his legacy, and Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk.

In addition, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet are slated to speak at the memorial, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The lineup also includes several of Trump’s top White House aides, like chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy Stephen Miller, as well as conservative commentator Tucker Carlson...."
 

Trump, Vance to headline Charlie Kirk memorial​

Several members of the Trump administration will speak at the event to honor the slain political organizer.


"...Trump will headline the event on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona — which is home of the Arizona Cardinals football team — alongside Vice President JD Vance, a longtime friend of Kirk’s who hosted his podcast on Monday to honor his legacy, and Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk.

In addition, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet are slated to speak at the memorial, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The lineup also includes several of Trump’s top White House aides, like chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy Stephen Miller, as well as conservative commentator Tucker Carlson...."
Dummy Feeling Dumb GIF
 

Trump, Vance to headline Charlie Kirk memorial​

Several members of the Trump administration will speak at the event to honor the slain political organizer.


"...Trump will headline the event on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona — which is home of the Arizona Cardinals football team — alongside Vice President JD Vance, a longtime friend of Kirk’s who hosted his podcast on Monday to honor his legacy, and Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk.

In addition, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet are slated to speak at the memorial, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The lineup also includes several of Trump’s top White House aides, like chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy Stephen Miller, as well as conservative commentator Tucker Carlson...."
I'm actually glad about this. Will be really nice to create a juxtaposition between Trump's speech at Kirk's funeral and Obama's Mother Emmanuel speech. MAGA won't care, but for anyone with a semblance of objectivity, that could become the defining contrast of the modern political era.
 
Sadly, I agree. What we've learned from the last 25 years is that Pubs will take whatever they accuse Dems of doing, amplify it 10+ times, and then claim that's the new normal. So even if Dems do to Fox, OAN, etc. what Pubs are doing to mainstream media right now, Pubs will just use that to make things 10x more extreme the next time they have the chance to do so.

I don't know the answer. The Pubs have put us into a Top Gun-like death spiral. "Going high" hasn't done anything to stop it, but joining the Pubs in going low just seems like an acceleration of our plunge to the sea. In an ideal world, the "Christians" who purport to care about loving one's neighbor and doing unto others as you would have him do unto you would help us out of this. But the vast majority of that group appears to now be all in on accelerating our path to destruction.
I worry the only thing that could pull the country out of the death spiral you describe, at least for a while, is a common enemy. An enemy without so we stop searching for an enemy within. And that, of course, would be its own tragedy.
 

Trump, Vance to headline Charlie Kirk memorial​

Several members of the Trump administration will speak at the event to honor the slain political organizer.


"...Trump will headline the event on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona — which is home of the Arizona Cardinals football team — alongside Vice President JD Vance, a longtime friend of Kirk’s who hosted his podcast on Monday to honor his legacy, and Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk.

In addition, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet are slated to speak at the memorial, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The lineup also includes several of Trump’s top White House aides, like chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy Stephen Miller, as well as conservative commentator Tucker Carlson...."
So many dbags packed into one place.
 
What all seems very funny to me about this is that in some ways the Trump admin is acting against its own interest here. Broadcast TV is a dying medium; cable news is not far behind. People like Charlie Kirk recognized this and pushed Trump to a much more "new media"-friendly campaign where Trump spent way more time going on influencer podcasts and creating content with people who traditionally weren't thought of as political information shows - not just Rogan but Theo Vonn, the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz, etc. That strategy - which helped Trump reach the ears of younger, typically apolitical but in many cases now angry and disaffected young men, and in turn get them out to vote - basically won Trump the election. But because Trump's brain is fundamentally locked in place in, like, 1989, he still thinks of broadcast TV as the ultimately most important medium (and thinks of the fact that he gets made fun of on broadcast TV as the ultimate betrayal).

So ultimately I think there's a very good chance that this all backfires on Trump and his people. They're attacking an entire medium that is waning in influence, and in doing so will probably drive people like Colbert and Kimmel off that medium and into "new media" instead where they will be harder to regulate or threaten. And meanwhile, there are signs that the obviously illiberal policies Trump is pursuing are starting to turn off some of those "manosphere" voices who gravitated to Trump, and supported, for example, the Musk takeover of Twitter, because they were the "anti-cancel-culture" and "pro-free-speech" options, but now Trump and his admin are making very clear that they are not, in fact, pro-free-speech at all. That won't matter for some of the manosphere people, like Ross for example, but it will potentially matter for people like Schulz and Vonn and maybe even Rogan, some of whom have already started to express various forms of skepticism about whether Trump is really what they thought he was.
 
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