Within hours of the reports of Charlie Kirk’s assassination in Utah this week, people took to social media to respond. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined to discuss what the online reaction to Kirk’s death could expose about the discourse surrounding modern American political violence.
“What we see—and have seen so many times before—after acts of political violence: this sense of regret, this sense of ‘We need to pull it back; this is going too far,’” Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, said last night. “You heard a lot of people say that this week on Democratic and Republican messaging—but not in the way that’s necessarily going to change things in an enduring way.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times; Laura Barrón-López, a White House correspondent at MSNBC; Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker; and Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.
